Walkabout: Prague!

What do you call a place where they encourage you to mix dark beer with your regular beer to make it bigger and stronger? What do you call a place where the food is slow cooked using the cheap cuts to make stewed, tender, hearty goodness that's big on flavor? What do you call a place where violence, anger, survival and passion are acted out in much of the artwork you see? What do you call a place where most people get a five-o'clock shadow before lunch? HOME!!! I'm Home, Baby!!! These are my peeps!

Okay, seriously, my roots go back to Hungary, not the Czech Republic, but I have to say the flavors here and the people in general feel pretty familiar to me. This may not be where my family tree is located, but I can certainly see a few branches peeking over the fence from here.

Our trip to get here started yesterday at 4:55 a.m. in Salzburg, Austria. After a dunk in the sink, I was ready to join the family on a scenic, though sleepy, train ride to Munich. We hopped on a Czech Airlines plane (two propellers, two pilots, one flight attendant with a Twuruly Outwageous Accent (and I do mean that as a compliment) and we were in Prague for lunch. We all had delicious variations on goulash, except my son, who was due for a hamburger fix. (For those of you who read "Cascais, Cheeseburger in Paradise", consider today's installment "Cheeseburger in Formerly Communist Paradise.")  Our waiter introduced me to "mixed beer," which adds dark beer to regular draft beer to make it stronger and more flavorful, as if Czech beer needs either of those things to happen. Seriously, it was the right call and all of us were raving about our meals...even those of us who did not have "mixed beer" with theirs.

Was the Goose Communist?

Of course, dinner completely blew our perceptions of Czech food. Our hotel sent us off the beaten path to a place that does modern spins on dishes using local ingredients. At School (www.school.cz), we had foie gras with a red wine reduction, vacuum cooked crispy duck, veal cheeks in a reduction of pan juices and red wine...all with a Monrovian (local) Cabernet that rivaled what we get back in California. It was an impressive meal, for any location, and came in at about 25% of what we would expect to pay for such a meal back in the San Francisco area, if we could even find it. (Foie Gras is now illegal in California.)

But Seriously, Icks-nay about the Ommunist-cay!

Ask a local about life under communist rule, even a tour guide who wasn't even in elementary school when they left, and they are quick to tell you that they will talk about it, but that they'd rather not. It's still too fresh. It's kind of like the joke I was going to tell about our 777 flight back home next week being flown by guest pilots from Asiana Airlines...yup, too soon. The same is true here about Communism. It's too recent and took too much from them. One of the sculptures (see below) we saw was incredibly powerful about this topic. It showed a Czech who literally disintegrated piece by piece under Communist rule as his soul was taken away from him by the Soviets. 

Flower Power Still Rules

One of the coolest things we saw was a wall (see below). Under Soviet occupation, this wall was painted Communist Government Gray every single day. Every single night, however, the wall would be painted by locals with images and poems of hope, unity, peace, friendship and love. Over and over, the Soviets kept painting over the wall to indicate that they were in control. And, over and over, the images and texts of hope and love kept reappearing on the wall every single night. Today, portions of it are still painted over, but only to make room for more messages and paintings, which are still added daily.

The people in Prague sometimes come across as stern due to their accent, but we've found them to be welcoming and genuinely interested in sharing about a city they are rightfully proud of. Prague is real. It's not a Disney version of a European city a la Salzburg or Venice. It's the real deal full of real people and that makes it all the more enjoyable. There are a few edges here and there, but nothing that has detracted from our visit so far. Prague has emerged from communism as a gem. Whether or not it wants to talk about it, Prague is better for its past pain and that makes its present beauty all the more appealing.

 

Walkabout: Salzburg: "We are 16 Going on 50 (Everybody Sing Along!)"

You'd think the Sound of Music was released just yesterday, not in the mid 1960s. The Von Trapps are on bus stops, billboards and, of course, tours, tours, tours. Sure, that Mozart guy was born here and there's his residence and music school and all, but you don't hear a lot of tourists singing the words to his songs...am I right or what?

Salzburg is beautifil with its gardens, music and music school of Mozart and the fortress high above that's best reached by finicular. Still, at times it kind of comes across as a village that was taken over by Disney...or maybe it should be to sort the logistics out a bit. Once you escape the bus traffic and bus parking to get to the old city, what you find in July is throngs of people packed into narrow streets to see "the real Austria," which looks amazingly like "Epcot Center Austria." 

Having just come from Vienna, a large city with a wealth of history and sites to see, I was amazed to find what I thought was going to be a quaint Austrian village so packed with people. Big (Vienna) turned out to be small and relatively free of crowds. Small (Salzburg) turned out to feel big, because parts of it are just so packed with people and their modes of transportation. There are times when the log jam of European and (now that we are up north) Asian tour groups just makes you want to escape back across the river for the quieter streets that aren't of interest to tourists.

Still, there's a lot of charm to Salzburg. It's nice to eat at an outdoor eatery with tables perched on pebbles. The food wasn't as good as we encountered when we got off the beaten path in Vienna, but it was still good. Nearby Hungary has contributed goulash to most menus, so there's a little more flavor to be found if you get tired of breaded, fried meat. The beer, as we continue to move north from Europe's Beer Equator, continues to improve with some very nice Weiss Biers.  

Linguistically Speaking

Okay, we admit, we're confused. After attempting to be polite and say "Please, thank you, check please, beer please, etc." in Portuguese, Spanish, Italian, German and now Czek, we are coming across as a bumbling mass of miss-matched languages. We say "bitte" for please and then go right to the "grazie" for thank you. We are starting to get some concerned looks from the locals. Still, one must press one, however confused we appear to ourselves or to others.

Walkabout: Vienna: The Buck Stopped Here

While other portions of Europe send messages of quaint images ("Look, a field of sunflowers!") or attempted romance ("Look, a gondola full of way too many tourists! Don't lean all at once.") or extreme liberation ("Look, another nude beach! Who would have thought? Perhaps there should be guidelines for this sort of thing. If you remember taking your TV's vacuum tubes to the store to be tested, maybe it's time to put on some trunks."), Vienna sends a very clear message when you tour it. It's two words: Money and Power.

Each palace, residence, castle and church that you see perched on massive parade grounds designed to move troops quickly from one side of Vienna to the other, just in case, let's you know where the power and money in Europe ended up throughout much of history. Where was the Roman Empire run from? Vienna. Where did the treasure end up after World War II? Vienna. Where does the banking industry continue to be a safe haven for funds from less stable European economies? It's Vienna. Even now, the Viennese are proud to let you know that their economy is the strongest in Europe..."much stronger than Germany." (Not that's any kind of a rivalry.) 

There is so much power and wealth concentrated in Vienna that it has the ability to even bend history a bit. A tour guide even confessed to us, "Two of Vienna's great feats was to convince Europe that Beethoven was from Austria and Hitler was not."

Where walks along some of Southern Europe's smaller towns have garnered "Oh, isn't that cute? Let's get a picture of that." reactions from us, most of the things we've seen in Vienna get more of a "Oh my God, how can we possibly fit all of that in one picture type of a reaction. It's big. It's pristine. The graffiti we saw all over Southern Europe is not here in Vienna. Who would dare? There must be huge penalties for that sort of thing here.

The Asian Invasion?

One of the things we've noticed now that we've crossed what I've nicknamed "The Beer Equator" (that being the line that separates really good beer in Northern Europe from just okay kind of watery beer in Southern Europe) is that Asian restaurants are now quite commonplace. Whether it's "Happy Noodles" stands set up next to the rail or Japanese and Chinese restaurants mere steps from a gothic church, the Viennese have clearly embraced Asian food.

Mr. Flintstone, Your Pig's Leg is Ready

While we did succumb to Indian and Asian food served at the Vienna Film Festival's outdoor food pavilions this afternoon, we did go with a traditional Viennese/German dinner last night at Griechenbeisl on a very charming patio. We dove right in with creamed cabbage, potatoes, salad, wiener schnitzel, and spanferkel. You probably already know that Wiener schnitzel is pounded veal served breaded, but you may not know that spanferkel is a pig's leg served with the crispy skin on it. Both were fantastic and even the kids enjoyed dinner, though I have to say we've already learned that dessert in Vienna always wins over dinner. Even for someone like me, who would rather have a plate of oysters on the halfshell than save room for dessert, it has to be admitted here that dessert here is amazing, even more so than France. After dropping the kids back at the hotel, we went to a nearby biergarten to drink local beer (actually, wine in my wife's case) and listen to opera that was being shown on a huge screen on the side of the city hall...pretty much a normal Sunday night for us at home in the suburbs.   

I have to say, if you want to "go big" in Europe (big monuments, big palaces, big churches, big shopping, big cinema screens on buildings, big food, etc.), Vienna is a good place to start. Just keep in mind that if you remain overwhelmed by what you see in Vienna for four hours or longer, you should probably call your doctor.