Prague 2003

On August 13, 2018October 11, 2018 By vickieb324In Europe, PragueLeave a comment

My mother lived in Prague from 1990 to 2008, and so we visited her quite a number of times. If you do not know the city, it is charming, easy to navigate, affordable, and friendly. There are so many sights Prague, as well as great day trips out of the city such as Pilsen (yes, the brewery tour is a must!), Kutna Hora (home of the Sedlec Ossuary – rooms completely made out of human bones!!), Karlovy Vary (home of 12 healing springs and a 13th: Becherovka liquor!), and so much more! But I digress. I could write all day about things to see and do in the Czech Republic. (message me if you are planning a visit! I’d love to offer tips!)

A few years ago I was taking my sister-in-law around Prague to see the sites. We took the tram to Hradcany (Castle hill) and after touring the St Vitus Cathedral and other castle buildings, we decided to walk over to Strahov Monastery. It has a beautiful library and other rooms with magnificent decorations from the 17th century.

1280px-Strahov_Theological_Hall,_Prague_-_7565 — Strahov Monastery Library

As we were walking, we heard a very loud commotion coming from one of the inner courtyards, which we could look into through an archway. It looked like people were rioting! I could not understand what was happening! So being courageous, we decided to investigate… and as we could see more and more of the courtyard we saw people jumping on parked cars, setting fires (!), etc.

No one was paying any attention to us so we slowly edged our way around the perimeter, and I know my heart was racing! 😳 I just couldn’t figure out why there were no police!!

Suddenly a young man came up to us and shook his head, and pointed to the exit…….and then he pointed to the camera crew over in the opposite corner!! We hadn’t even seen them! Turns out they were filming a music video!! 😯 🤣

We sheepishly made our way out and continued with our walk!

Follies at the Opera

On August 8, 2018August 19, 2018 By vickieb324In Europe, New York City, opera3 Comments

I am an opera buff, I am not ashamed to admit. I have seen operas in New York, Florida, London, Prague, Italy, and more. But not all evenings went as well as I had anticipated.

operadeNew-York — NY Metropolitan Opera House

New York Metropolitan Opera, January 1996

My father and I were so excited to be at this gala event at the Met, where Jessye Norman was going to be performing in ‘The Makropulos Case’. We had the best seats ever – right in the center of of the orchestra.

BroadcastMakCaseBcst2hdl1512 — The Makropolous Case by Janacek

The lights dimmed, the curtain came up and there was the tenor, Richard Versalle, up on a 15 foot high ladder singing the opening aria. It was a stunning set, with giant file cabinets, etc. All of a sudden, he stopped singing, and fell backward, making no sound, and landed on the stage with an awful thud. The audience was at first very quiet, and I thought, well, maybe this part of the show? But then almost immediately the audience erupted in loud exclamations, and the curtain was quickly lowered. Sadly, Mr. Versalle had suffered a massive heart attack…. and died right there in front of us!

It was unimaginable. And horrible.

Of course, the performance was cancelled, and my Dad and I went to a local pub to recover and drown our sorrows!

Verona Opera, Arena di Verona, July 1998

veneto-arena-di-verona — Verona Amphitheater

I had been so looking forward to seeing Carmen in this Roman amphitheater that was built in the 1st Century. It was a beautiful evening, and my friend and I, with my son and his friend, had great seats right on the main floor. The stage is massive, able to accommodate horses, all sorts of other animals, and a huge ensemble. It was breathtaking. But as the opera continued, I began to realize there was something wrong with the tenor’s voice. It progressively got worse, and my friend leaned over and asked, “Is this the way it is supposed to sound?” uh, no.

38912carmen_arena_di_verona_2015 — Carmen in Verona

The act ended and I assumed they would substitute an under-study. But apparently there wasn’t one! So they made an announcement over the loudspeakers (really!) asking if there were any tenors in the audience!!! And yes, incredibly enough, there was one! But instead of going on stage, he sang from the orchestra pit….and the tenor on stage LIP-SYNCED!!!!

I am going to go out on a limb here and say that I witnessed the ONLY lip-synced opera in history!!! and I do not recommend it! But it made for a good laugh!

PS. a friend in Washington DC was going to invite me to the Kennedy Center (he had season tickets) but after these two mishaps, he said, “Oh no! you are the Typhoid Mary of opera! I can’t let you anywhere near the Kennedy Center.” sigh.

Trans Siberia – Part 1 (Moscow to Ulan Ude)

On January 22, 2018 By vickieb324In China, Europe, RussiaLeave a comment

In 2008, my mother was leaving Prague after living there for 18 years and was moving back to the US. As a farewell trip, she and I decided to take the Trans Siberian railroad across Russia. We have talked about it for years and decided it was now or never.

Monday, June 30: Direct flight from Prague to Moscow, but still they lost my big duffel bag! (I should have realized this was an omen of things to come.) Off came all the suitcases except the one that I have been packing and adding things to for the train for months!! I was beside myself as you can imagine!! The guy at the Lost Luggage counter, said “why are you so upset? Haven’t you ever lost your luggage before?” I almost hit him! I said, “yes but I am getting on a train for 6 days tomorrow and this bag has all the stuff I need” He assured me the bag would arrive later that day, but still I kept going over all the things I could replace and all the stuff I couldn’t if the bag didn’t come. (Food, books, scrabble, pillows/blankets, CD player, cleaning supplies, etc.) But luckily around midnight it was delivered!

Tuesday, July 1: Sightseeing in Moscow. Not impressed. The only thing of any interest is Red Square. The rest of the city is drab, architecture wise. Only the old buildings that are still standing from the Czarist days are of any interest. And they do have beautiful parks and flower displays everywhere. On Tuesday we were on our own and realized we could not get anywhere without a taxi. Everything is ONLY in Russian (Cyrillic) – nothing is written in anything we could even decipher. Unfortunately we could find no one who spoke any English – not even the young people do. And they are not very friendly. Finally found a receptionist in the lobby of a business center who spoke enough English to understand what we wanted and she called for a taxi for us. Woman driver came! (Unusual in Europe) Took us to Red Square which was really fascinating. Saw Lenin in his tomb and St. Basil’s Cathedral with its famous onion domes. Also the GIANT G.U.M. store which used to be one gigantic state store but is now more of a mall with hundreds of luxury shops, even an Apple Store. Went into a gourmet food store which was selling those small boxes of California raspberries for $15!! Red Square is smaller than it appears in pictures but is still quite impressive.

Tuesday: July 1 9PM: Boarded the train (Trans-Mongolian Train #4)!! The Trans-Siberian #2 to Vladivostok was boarding on the track next to ours. It is a prettier train (blue and white) while ours is green. However we had very nice Chinese attendants who were friendly and very helpful. Don’t speak much English but usually a smile and pointing got the message across! Our compartment was just what I expected – two berths on one side, a seat on the other and a table by the window. It is carpeted and has a fan! (weather was actually pretty nice along the way so it didn’t get too hot) We shared a “shower room” with the compartment next door (occupied by a smelly old man who wore Depends!! really, I am not lying. He stayed in his room almost all the time and when the door opened, Wow! the smell was horrible! After he came out of the “shower” I would go in and spray perfume! (One thing missing that we didn’t bring was Lysol spray – I had Lysol wipes which I used every day in there and in the toilet). Anyway in the shower room is a sink and a spray hose (which didn’t work very well) and a drain in the floor. You can hang your clothes on a peg and close the waterproof doors to keep them dry. Then you pour the boiling water from a big thermos (filled from the samovar at the end of the compartment -the attendant does this for you) and mix it with the cold tap water (I stole the sink stopper from the toilet sink!) Then pour it over yourself!! That’s the shower. The toilet is at the other end of the compartment and sometimes there was toilet paper and soap and sometimes not. So luckily we had our own. I used my Lysol wipes a lot!

Took me a few tries to get up on the upper berth! But once I got the hang of it, it was easy (as our friend Ryan, a Navy man, told me it would be!) Glad we had brought our own lightweight comforters (all they had were heavy WOOL blankets!) and pillows. I am so glad we had the instant coffee (International Viennese Coffee) for the morning. With hot water always available, we made our soup and oatmeal and coffee whenever we wanted. We also had packets of cheese and crackers, peanut butter, trail mix. There was a dining car 5 cars down from us which we made it to once (!) and had an omelet which wasn’t bad. But we actually had more than enough food – supplemented by bottled water and bread bought from vendors on the platforms. My mother kept hoping for homemade food from these vendors but that didn’t happen until we were way far East. Until then all they sold were chips and sodas and other packaged snacks.

Anyway the first night we both slept like logs! The movement of the train is very soothing – I was totally not prepared for this, as I worried beforehand if we’d be able to sleep with the noise of the wheels, etc. But everyone we met had the same experience, and in fact we all took naps during the day as the movement of the train would make us feel sleepy!

I must acknowledge ‘the man in seat 61’ website as my go-to guide for this trip. Highly recommend! (https://www.seat61.com)

Wednesday – Friday: We followed our route on a big map I had brought to track our progress. Mostly the scenery out the window is trees – white birch trees. There are small villages we pass now and then but they are very poor looking. Of course they may be nicer away from the train tracks but we couldn’t see that. Crossed into Asia the second night on the train. The train stops for about 15 minutes at various stations along the way (usually only two times a day). We passed through Ekaterinburg (I saluted the Czars!) and later Novosibirsk which is the largest city in Siberia and quite nice looking. Very modern. We passed the time reading or playing scrabble or looking out the window at the scenery. It was actually quite pleasant. (Note: the Ural mountains which separate Europe from Asia are not really mountains at all. This was a surprise. Just sort of hills. You climb up for a while very gradually and then very gradually descend – you would not know you were in the Urals without looking at a map.)

Saturday at dawn: Reached Irkutsk at 5AM. If you’ve ever played the board game Risk you can appreciate how exciting it was to be in this city.

One of the main reasons I wanted to take this trip was to see Lake Baikal. And we reached it just after dawn Saturday. For many miles, until we actually caught our first glimpse of the lake, we could see a beautiful rainbow which we knew had to be over the lake itself. The terrain here is the most beautiful of all we’ve seen – rolling hills, beautiful dense forests, mountains in the distance. Finally the train reached the crest of a mountain and there was the lake in the distance!! What a moment! The sun still low on the horizon and reflecting on the water. This is the largest and deepest freshwater lake in the world. The train skirts the southern edge of the lake for almost 200 kilometers so we got magnificent views all morning and into the afternoon. It is so big it seems like an ocean especially with the waves breaking on the shore. (double rainbow over Lake Baikal)

C4DCF6FE-880C-4BE6-92CC-1F7990C96454@local

Once we left the lake, we traveled about another 3 hours to the Siberian “city” of Ulan Ude. No vendors on the platform which made all of us passengers really mad. The city is very big – spreads out forever it seems. In about 5 hours we would reach the Russian/Mongolian border. Where all our troubles will begin.

The Matterhorn

On December 12, 2016 By vickieb324In EuropeLeave a comment

July 1994 we traveled by car through Switzerland. What an experience! From Zurich to Lucerne to Interlaken over to Montreux and Vevey and Lausanne and Geneva, it was quite a wonderful drive. Cheese and wine and chalets and Alps: what’s not to love? We bought fruit and olive oil at farmer’s markets, sampled cheese at dairy farms, toured vineyards, and so much more. One of our later stops was Reichenbach Falls. I imagined Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty fighting it out at the top! There is a very steep funicular that runs to the top of the spectacular falls. I had my eyes closed the whole way! The falls are a short distance from Meiringen, the town that claims to be place where meringue was invented.

Anyway, after Geneva, we swung back around Lac Leman and went southeast to Zermatt. You have to park your car in the small town of Tasch and take a train, the Glacier Express, into car-free Zermatt.

Jim fell in love with the town, it is so charming and surrounded by the Alps, every view is spectacular! The town is dominated by the Matterhorn, with its distinctive peak able to seen from everywhere in the town.

We arrived at our chalet-style hotel, got settled in our room with its balcony overlooking the town, and went out exploring. Early the next morning, sitting on the balcony, Jim calls his brother Tim back in Arizona. He said, “Just wanted to call and tell you I am sitting here, looking at the Matterhorn”.

What did Tim say? …………… “I didn’t know you were going to Euro Disney” !!!???

Jim says, “NO, Tim, the REAL Matterhorn!! I’m in Switzerland looking at the real thing!!”

We’ve been chuckling over that one for years!

Madrid-Tangier 1969

On July 23, 2015July 24, 2015 By vickieb324In EuropeLeave a comment

My mother and I were on a plane in July 1969 flying to Morocco from Madrid. And everything was going along fine, ride was smooth. All of a sudden the pilot comes on the intercom, and starts counting down.

10…..9…….8…..

(you have no idea how time slows down when you think your life is about to end. seriously. Air Maroc made me nervous to begin with, and then this? I looked around, no one seemed to be panicking, but that didn’t help me at all. I looked at my mother, and said, oh well I guess this is it. Good bye)

7…………6……….5…………4

(I was almost ready to stand up and start shrieking, but knew it would do no good. So I sat, bathed in sweat, thinking, geez I hope it ends fast.)

3…….2……….1 (OMG)

(well, wait, we’re still here)

Pilot comes back on: “Congratulations to all the Americans on board, the rocket just took off from Kennedy Space Center for the moon!” And all the passengers started clapping. For goodness sakes, couldn’t he have said something first??