Discovering the new Old Europe (Dental Tourism … again)

I took the whole week of Thanksgiving off ostensibly to travel with Kate to Budapest so she could get a permanent crown. Her appointments were Monday at 11 a.m. and Thursday at 2 p.m. In between those appointments, we rented a car and drove into the Balkans where we explored what I like to call the four “Hotspots of Tomorrow” (said in the booming and hopelessly optimistic voice of a 1950s television announcer). These destinations (two cities, two nature sights) are well known to locals, you see, but unknown to today’s tourists who will soon be looking east to get more bang for their ever weakening buck.

Day 1: From Budapest we drove southwest to the former Yugoslavian country of Slovenia, a peaceful and prosperous country with healthy influences from Austria (Lippanizzer stallions), Italy (pasta), and the Balkans (stallion meat served on pasta).

Actually, cuisine aside, the country really is top notch. They have snowcapped mountains, tons and tons of green space, and probably one of the liveliest and entrepreneurial cities in Europe: Ljubljana.

This city was our first stop and we were excited to see it. Alas, we spent our first night in prison. (In reality, it was a hostel that used to be a prison. And it wasn’t as scary as you’d think. There were no handcuffs or tasers, just bars and me calling Kate my “bitch.”)
But before we went to sleep in the Big House, our warrant officer let us go out for one final stroll (“parole”) around the energetic city. Here we took in the sights, which included a castle on a hill in the center of the city, a “dragon” bridge, and a lovely town square.
We ended up at a restaurant that served, among other things, horse. I’m not sure if it was from a Lippanizzer stallion, but it pranced into my belly very gracefully.
My actual thoughts: It tasted like horses smell (manure-y). It wasn’t as stringy as I heard it would be. I’m certainly never going to say “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse” again.

Day 2: This was probably our most interesting day, but it started and ended with a little frustration. After a restful night in jail, we spent several hours visiting the many internet points in the city, as Kate had work to do. Every place we went had a problem (no Windows, no printer, no Java). Finally, someone recommended the city library and Kate rejoiced with success. I rejoiced by taking pictures of Kate.

Around noon we went 25 miles north to Bled, a romantic town with a hearty mix of tourist attractions, including a castle overlooking a crystal clear lake, a small wooded island in the middle of the lake, a cute church on the island, and a location right on the foothills of the snowy Julian Alps. Poyfekt for tourists!
And we, as tourists, loved it – despite the overcast skies and chilly weather. Kate and I climbed up to the castle, went inside a small museum dedicated to Slovenian history, saw some great views of the island church, and played a little Where’s Waldo. (Can you find Waldo?)
Our next stop was the Vintgar Gorge, a clear ravine carved by the runoff from an Ice Age glacier. It had just closed earlier in the month, we found out. Disappointed, Kate had given up and was ready to turn around. I was more rebellious.

Afterward we drove south, got stuck behind slow moving vehicles on small country roads, redubbed the country “SLOW-venia,” drove up snowy mountainsides blanketed in icy mist, redubbed the country “SNOW-venia,” and entered Croatia where the roads were mostly clear but the snow was even higher.

The closer we got to our destination for the night – Plitvička Jezera, a national park with 16 turquoise lakes connected by waterfalls – the snowier and icier the roads got. The one-lane roads near the park were like something out of “the Lion, Witch, and the Wardrobe,” with evergreen boughs laden with snow that framed the road like a Widow’s Peak of winter. It was dark outside, but I could tell it was absolutely beautiful.

Although we made a couple more wrong turns, we finally found our hotel (House Tina) around 8 p.m., were informed that we were one day early (I was obstinate at first, then embarrassed), but were eventually let in. It was just a typical family home in Croatia, but it looked like cloud nine to us road-weary travelers.

Kate then convinced me to go out to eat, which involved leaving our first choice restaurant because they had no gas for cooking and finding another (and better) restaurant – with gas. I had lasagna. Kate had beans (and made up for the lack of gas in the other restaurant.

Day 3: Waterfalls! About 14 inches of snow had fallen two nights before, which did several things: 1) It made the waterfalls even more beautiful; 2) It made it easy to make snowball “boats” that Kate and I would name and toss into cascading falls and watch them drift underneath our footbridges; 3) It made for cold enough weather that big scary icicles would intermittently come crashing down (see picture below); 4) It made the narrow wooden catwalks that hovered only inches above the blue-green water treacherous (heck, even sure-footed mountain goats would bite their toe nails).

Here, Kate shares her initial "deep" thoughts upon seeing the 78 meter waterfall.

Most treacherous, however, was climbing down the manmade staircases.

We took way too many pictures of this UNESCO World Heritage Site. Waaay too many. Here are just a couple. Later that day we drove to Croatia’s capital, Zagreb (pronounced ZAH-greb, not zah-GREB), where we noticed the disproportionality (is that a word?) of this city’s eminence. You see, it’s a small city (800,000) in a small country and it was only important starting in the 1990s, when it became the capital. But it has 30 museums, several theaters, opera houses, and civic centers, and countless other large and ornately decorated cultural, scientific, economic, religious, and governmental buildings. So we did the touristy thing as much as our patience allowed (i.e., walked around with maps and travel guides that talked about all the large buildings, took pictures of the large buildings, got a little bored looking at the large buildings, ate a slice of pizza to go, got lost ambling through the cobbly streets where there were no large buildings, and found a place to sit down for dinner.) Roasted red peppers never tasted so good.

Day 4: Our last stop in this multilingual, multiethnic corner of Europe, was Budapest, where it all began and where Kate finally got her crown (the whole purpose of our visit). It was Thanksgiving day and we were meeting Jay and Linda after the dentist’s for an all-you-can-eat-AND-drink dinner at Trofea Grill, where Kate and I went in June. Again, the place was wonderful. Unlike a kid in a candy store, however, who stands mouth agape marveling at what he should pick first, I didn’t bother to look around. I opened the fist lid I saw and put its contents on my plate. I knew I would eat everything, you see…meats, peppers, soups, salads, desserts, wine, espressos, macchiatos. And I did. That night we slept in a dingy loft without doors in a single guy’s pad. It was on hostelworld.com, but it was definitely just some guy’s dirty apartment. Weird. And since the power went out sometime in the middle of the night, causing us to have no hot water or light at 6:15 a.m. (think peeing in the dark), I would certainly not recommend it.

But there you have it: two bustling cities, two spectacular nature sights, no tourists, and cheap dental work. No more will these places be known for their checkered past. They will be known as the “Hotspots of Tomorrow.”

What really happened in Switzerland - by Pecos

My version of Switzerland - by Justin

After their positively frothy jaunt through Italy, riding first class trains through Tuscany and enjoying long, basily dinners and escorted tours of Pisa, Florence, and Rome, Randy and Gillian were ripe for a misadventure.

They literally went from a sumptuously velveteen castle on the Rhein to an austere wooden cabin with a hole in the window. Welcome to our world.

As for Kate, myself, Barbara, and Bill, we’d been in Vienna for the past couple days, and, from the looks of these two pictures, having a really, really good time testing toilets.
There were seven of us in total now – including Pecos – and none of us had any idea what we were getting ourselves into.
Our drive down to the Swiss Alps started inauspiciously, when a “CHECK COOLANT” light stubbornly flashed after about an hour’s drive. A quick pit stop later, we were on the road again, as Willy Nelson sings, and ready for a kraut and pork lunch in the city of Triberg, our first planned stop on this regretful ride. Located Center Square of Germany’s fabled Black Forest – a historic locale we haven’t truly visited since we’ve been living in Germany – Triberg was home to delicious Swabian cuisine and Cuckoo clocks. Lots and lots of Cuckoo clocks.
Just as we were swerving up up up the pine-ridden bluffs on our way to Cuckoo clocks and Black Forest Cake dessert, we entered our first snowstorm. Our van had a little problem skidding outside our recommended restaurant, but otherwise was just fine. So far.

What we didn’t know at the time was that our car had summer tires, front wheel drive (when all the weight was in the back and all the snowy roads the rest of the way to Switzerland were steep), and that it was generally very bad in the snow. We also didn’t know that it was going to snow the ENTIRE expedition and that Gillian really likes Swabian cuising – yes, large servings of Spätzle, hefeweisen, and Black Forest Cake all became best friends in Gillian’s tiny tummy; and they met there often.

In Triberg, some of us (including Pecos) visited the main attraction, Germany’s highest waterfall, which is the highlight of this small, half-timbered town and of the entire Black Forest.
The white petticoat didn’t look half bad enveloping the cascade, but the snow was sticking to the roads and our cabin was still a ways away.
After three more hours of driving higher and higher altitudinally, we arrived at our snowy home for the next two nights. Sort of.

We approached the Alpine town of Grindelwald, located at the foothills of the Jungfrau Region, under the cover of darkness and, at this point, at least an inch of snow. The road to our doubtless picturesque cabin in the mountains was as steep as the prices in this Swiss town, and no amount of ardent pushing by Bill and Randy could prevent the rest of us in the van from adhering to the laws of gravity and poor planning. So we parked nearby and hoofed it the rest of the way to the awaiting warmth of the snowed in cabin.
After more than 14 hours of sleep, Randy and Gillian awoke to a smorgasbord of delights purchased by Kate and me after precarious 20-minute walk down to the one small grocery in this part of town. (Kate got up to pee just before 7, you see, and noticed that it looked like Santa’s Village outside. So we took pictures, made coffee, and busied ourselves with a little morning shopping.) Saturday’s continued snowstorm imprisoned us in Grindelwald that day, but allowed us to wander around the skiers’ town, do a little window shopping, and play in the snow.
Kate, Barbara, and I even finagled some sleds for ourselves and managed to avoid injuring each other while riding them.

That night, we drank Glühwein, ate Kaiserschmarrn, and played cards from dusk on. We didn’t mind spending our time this way because it was the off-season, so everything was closed.

Sunday morning showed us the first glimpses of clear roads and blue skies, and we took advantage of that the best we could, taking a cable car up to the hill town of Mürren, which offered us short-lived by breathtaking views of the Alps. This marked my fourth time coming to this region of the world, but it’s by far my favorite in Europe, so I didn’t mind. I really can’t say enough how beautiful the scenery is. Even Randy managed to lift an eye away from his Gameboy® (without hitting pause, though) to sneak a peak at the beauty.
Driving back that afternoon, we saw even more of the atypical views that are practically mundane in Switzerland. While driving by one of the lakes engulfing Interlaken, we saw peaceful green bluffs, cedar speckled fields with cows munching on lunch, spire-filled towns resting along the lakeshore waters, and stony tunnels piercing snow covered mountains – and all those adjectives were seen through one window.

Our one stop on the way back was in Heidelberg for dinner, where we briefly gazed upon the old church, ruinous castle, and Alte Brücke that make this city famous for tourists. We actually took a wrong turn and ended up driving through the tourist-riddled and car-free pedestrian zone, which appropriately puts a cap on our misadventure, but also made me appreciate even more the trip. Sure there were difficulties, but we managed to smile our way through them and chalk up another exploit for the blog.

Wien and die Schweiz: A blog by Barbara (Justin's mom)

[Editor's note: OK so here's how this is going to work. Kate and I asked Barbara to write a blog about her trip here (below), but we thought she'd just write about Vienna, leaving me to write about our trip to Switzerland. Well, we both wrote a little something about Switzerland....so, since I'm not one to let intellectual property go to waste and since we have so many good pictures of the trip, I'm going to post my version of the trip as well. Enjoy!

Kate and Justin are amazing when it comes to making travel arrangements and using local transportation systems. We thought flying to Vienna the same day we crossed the Atlantic would be exhausting, but somehow because they knew what they were doing, we managed to get there smoothly and effortlessly. Our accommodations at the Golden Tulip-Art Hotel in Vienna were very nice and the buffet breakfast was a fun challenge, as we each strove to outdo our personal best every morning. It seemed no matter how much Kate and Justin walked us during the day (Bill called them "forced marches" which required medicinal hot baths at the end of each day, as well as the emergency purchase of new, more substantial sneakers for me), according to our scale, it did not quite compensate for our breakfast of champions.
Vienna is a very regal city and we took in as many sites as we possibly could: the Winter palace, the Maria Kirche, St. Stephen's cathedral, Hundertwasser village, the Summer palace (Schonenbrun), the Glorietta, morning exercises at the Spanish Riding School, the Hapsburg hearts in their golden urns, Spittlebug, the old Jewish quarter with the Vienna
history clock, the Belvedere, the Naschmarket, etc. And, since Vienna is famous for it's music we also enjoyed a concert of Mozart and Strauss at the Kursalon, an Organ concert at St. Peter's and a little Hayden at St. Augustine Kirche. We also enjoyed the cafes with their Viennese Sacher Torte and Apfel Strudel and tasting the new wine (Heuriger) of the season.
Bill says the Bier was "ok" too! :) Yet, of all the sights, sounds, formal gardens, food and architectural beauty our favorite part was simply being together and walking through the parks of golden trees and being silly together.
Bratislava is quickly being rebuilt and becoming quite an up and coming city. We climbed the hill to the castle that overlooks the Danube as well as the Novy Most (the new bridge with a restaurant at the top). We walked into town and went through Michael's Gate (the original gate to the fortified old town, saw the canon ball in the side of the church, the various bronze statues and lunched at the Butterfly where Bill found a great Bier- Zlaty Bazant (12%). He liked it so much he had it again at the Cafe Mayer because it went so well with his crème cake!
As happy as that sounds, Bill was even happier when we got back to Wiesbaden to find that Navy beat Notre Dame, 46 to 44 in triple overtime, ending Navy's 43 (year) game losing streak.

On Wednesday we headed north to see Gisela in Köln. After traffic delays we finally got to meet her outside the Kölner Dom. We went to lunch at the Brauhaus Sion and had Kölsch bier (a special bier made in Köln) and Bauerschnitzel and then went to visit the Dom and saw the oldest crucifix and the mausoleum for the three Magi as well as the beautiful architecture of the second largest church in Europe dating back to the 1200s. We especially appreciated the flying buttresses (makes me smile) and the beautiful stained glass of the cathedral, and of course our time with Gisela. Thursday was spent getting ready to head to Triberg (Germany’s largest waterfall) and Switzerland with Randy and Gillian, and of course our favorite dachshund Pecos! It started to snow just as we were entering the Black Forest and by the time we got to Triberg we were in a picture postcard. Snow covered pines and a rushing water fall, and of course, Justin torturing the dog by throwing snowballs into the waterfall. Fortunately, the dog is much smarter than the boy, he did not jump into the falls to get the snowballs, he just skidded to the edge and whined!
The snow wasn't a problem until we were about a mile outside of Interlaken. Then as we watched the temperature drop to 0 degrees and our directions got a little sketchy we knew we were in trouble. Fortunately, when we did get stuck in the snow (think pushing a minivan up a mountain) it was right outside our cabin. So we simply left the car at the bottom of the hill and hauled ourselves and our luggage up the rest of the way. Through the rest of the night we kept hoping that the snow would stop, but it didn't stop that night or any time during the next day or night … which wasn't a big thrill for the Pennsylvanians (they get plenty of snow) but for us south of the mason-Dixon we were pretty impressed with the beauty of the snow accumulating on the mountains and trees all around us.
The view of Grindelwald from our balcony was picture post card beautiful! Fortunately,
as we were leaving the snow stopped, the roads were clear and the sun came out to make our trek up to Lauterbrunnen (the Swiss waterfall) and our cable car ride up to Mürren out of this world! The pictures speak for themselves, this was by far my favorite day...absolutely beautiful!
Our stop for dinner in Heidelberg was the perfect ending - back to the Schnookeloch for family, food, bier and surreptitiously feeding Pecos under the table...as good as it gets!

We left the next day a little tired with big smiles on our faces as we reminisced about our great European family adventure.

First snowfall of the season

Jack Frost visited us briefly yesterday, giving Wiesbaden (and most of Germany) its first snowfall of the season. Although the occassional flurries were short lived, they were a welcome sight for those of us living here who have experienced weeks of cold weather but no snow.

The flakes aren't the first we've seen this year, actually. We first saw snow this year during Andy, Mandy, and Greg's visit in late September (blog is still on its way I'm told) and then we saw A LOT of snow last weekend in the Swiss Alps (Guest blogger Barbara McCracken will tell you more about that).

Next week Kate and I will make our way to the former Yugoslav territory to take in some of the natural beauty (and beauties if Kate doesn't mind my oogling). It'll probably snow there too....but we'll provide you will all the frosty details!

TTFN