Maggie's Farm

I am back in ye olde saddle early this AM from Austria and Bavaria, and the Danube and Main-Danube Canal. I will provide some photo travelogues if and when I can get my pics organized - and also when I can persuade our website to upload my photos properly.

Special kudos to my in-laws who arranged and hosted this family trip as a celebration of their 60th wedding anniversary. A wonderful, elegant treat indeed, especially with the entire BD gang of adventurous, high-energy, and curious travellers. For us, vacation travel is a physical sport. We specialize in "run for your life" vacations. Relaxation is for home. On further thought, not for home either. I guess we believe that relaxation is for after you die...Carpe diem, etc. Plenty of time to relax when dead.

Just one link this morning: How Winston Churchill Stopped the Nazis.

However, I will share a few of my general cultural observations from our trip:

- These folks seem to live a cafe culture, but it's more about beer than coffee. The Romans brought vineyards up to their northern frontier, but the climate changes after the Medieval Warm Period limited wine grapes only to specific microclimate areas, so they turned to beer brewing. Wine grape-growing in northern Euroland remains limited to those specific areas today, but we are all hoping climate change will correct that problem someday soon...

- There is no litter. Everything is clean and neat. There is almost no graffiti and what little there is, under bridges for example, is, as my daughter observed, "lame." When a bus driver is waiting for a group pick up, he uses his time to clean the windows, the tires and the hubcaps.

- We saw very few obvious Moslems, and they were all in Vienna. Yes, finally inside the gates of Vienna and on the subways. Vienna has a great subway system, and so simple you can figure out how to use it to go anywhere in about two minutes.

- Everybody still smokes cigarettes.

- All taxis are Mercedes-Benzes

- They are prompt, like the Swiss. You are expected to be prompt. One of our tour buses in Nuremburg waited 7 minutes for 3 or 4 missing American riders, then just left without them. "Seven minutes. OK, we go now."

- Their farms are impeccable.

- Austria and Germany feel quite prosperous. Nice big new cars unlike France, Italy, and Spain. No old cars. People well-dressed, and clearly in possession of beer money.

- Bikes are more for transportation than for recreation.

- Fresh, unfiltered beer is good. All of the local beer is terrific, and each has a unique flavor. I developed a taste for the fresh Weissbrau (and possibly enjoyed to very slight excess maybe once due to being overserved by zealous bier-frauleins). They do not sell old beer. Many of the beer joints and biergardens we tried make their beer on Tuesdays, begin selling it on Friday, then toss out any left-over and begin selling the next batch.

- "Burg" or ...-burg means castle or fortified city, not town

- No cops. You never see any police. People seem quite well-self-regulated. I did see one cop car in Vienna. My father-in-law counted three officers on the entire trip.

- They all seem proud of their sausages. Towns seem to compete. We tried lots of them. They are all OK, but not great cuisine. I began to call them all "hot dogs," but they call them wieners (after Vienna: "Wien") or "wursts." That weisswurst they make looks like an unappetizing giant beetle larva. Excellent sauerkraut and mustards, though. Americans are the ones who came up with putting sausages in a bun so you could eat them with your hands. The Euros never do that.

-Un-American as it may sound, I came away with a respect for European land-use laws (same as I did with trips to the UK). Perhaps we can debate this on a post sometime.

- Plenty of Medieval, but Baroque is growing on us. Mrs. BD even ventured to indicate some appreciation for rococo. Just like Bauhaus, it had a point and a purpose for its time. Things go to excess, then snap back.

- Germans and Austrians are a lot like native (I mean native, not Indians) Americans, but more blond, thinner, more quiet, and better-dressed.

- You make friends on boats. It is quite a remarkable thing the way it happens. We were mostly Aussies, Kiwis, Brits, and Americans.

- The Chef on board was excellent. A Croatian, Paris-trained. Our river boat was perfect. A Dutch Captain: aren't ship Captains always Dutchmen? Some sort of affirmative action, no doubt, for Dutchmen in the merchant marine.

- Small World story: Mrs. BD and a BD daughter decided to check out the Vienna Opera House. For amusement while waiting for the next guide through the place, they let people try on opera costumes and take photos. Mrs. BD sees a face poking through an elaborate opera costume and thinks "Holy mackeral - that's John." Yes, a dear friend and neighbor (and hunting buddy) in Vienna with wife and all four of their daughters. She snuck up behind him and said "Hey, John. You look great in that outfit." Seeing people you know, out of context, is always momentarily bewildering.

More thoughts and observations later...and pics too.