Budapest

Chain Bridge from our Hotel

In the morning we took the U1 back to the Hauptbahnhof and caught the 10 o'clock train to Budapest. There was a crush and a couple of mohawked punks were in our reserved seats. They acceded to our demands that they vacate, but left their suitcase. Frieda was suspicious of them and wondered half-seriously if there was a bomb in the bag. But in a few minutes they returned for it, revealing they were just absent-minded. 

After traversing a verdant landscape of small farms, we got into town about 1. The cold was now working its way down into my chest, making my bronchi hot and scratchy. Fortunately we had decided to luxe it up a bit so a driver for the Sofitel in Pest picked us up at the station and guided us through the crowds of refugees. Our room wasn't ready so we left our luggage and took a walk across the nearby Chain Bridge. On the Buda side we had a spritz at a cafe called, oddly, the Meat Boutique. As in Prague, they were using sparkling water to make them, and consequently they lacked the prosecco punch they have in Venice.

Buda Castle from near our Hotel

Right away we both felt that of the 3 cities we had visited on this trip, Budapest was visually the most dramatic and this was confirmed when we returned to claim our room and got a look at the view from our 3^rd floor window. With the cold, I was feeling fairly miserable, but nevertheless we went back out, walked down the Pest bank of the Danube and then cut inland to a delightful little square called Vörösmarty ringed with sidewalk cafes. In Prague there were many restaurants with outdoor seating, but not many cafes like these. Here, like Vienna, like Paris, there was a real cafe culture. Frieda drew 50,000 florints out of an ATM (about $180) and we headed up Attila to Sas Utica where there was a restaurant named Evidens recommended by the driver who'd picked us up at the train station. We sat outside because it was still quite mild at 6 PM. I had some chicken soup for my cold, some paprika chicken and Hungarian beer for the rest of me. Frieda had goulash. It was all quite delicious, even though I had to blow my nose every few bites. I'd taken a Tylenol but it had done nothing to staunch the flow. After dinner we strolled back to Vörösmarty and sat at another cafe that advertised “Homemade Ice Cream.” I ordered chocolate and an espresso. The ice cream was rich, thick and creamy. When we were done we headed down the famous shopping street Vaci Utica, which takes off from the square. It was teeming with stylish young people whose exuberance made me feel better. All in all, everything, the dastardly cold excepted, was delightful. 

Vaci Utica

 

The bed in our room was supremely comfortable but the cold wasn't any better in the morning. Not only that, but Frieda began showing symptoms as well. We had breakfast delivered by room service, then headed for the funicular to Buda Castle. From the National Museum we walked down to the Fisherman's Bastion and the Matthias church. The former offered spectacular views of the Parliament and the rest of Pest, but was jammed with tourists and tourist-parasites. Later in the afternoon we went looking for some ruin pubs, bars that have been built inside dilapidated buildings, the hip thing in Pest. We dropped anchor for beers at one called Anker that sported a large courtyard full of young people hunched over their cellphones. The windows of the 2 upper stories were blown out, twisted ends of rebar left hanging from jagged concrete, which gave the sense of being in a war zone or in some post-apocalyptic environment. We decided not to eat there and instead wandered up a street parallel to the boulevard Andrassy into the theater district where we found a bistro. We both had goulash that didn't measure up to what we'd had at Evidens, but there was a couple from San Jose sitting next to us so we amused ourselves chatting with them. Also it was another lovely, mild evening so we were sitting outside and the theater next door was attracting plenty of elegantly dressed people to ogle. Afterward we returned to Vörösmarty for ice cream and expressos again, and lingered there savoring the enchantment of Budapest. Even at 10 PM the temperature remained mild. But finally we were forced to reluctantly head back to the hotel to get some sleep. We had to get up at 6 to catch our flight back to the States. 

Fishermen's Bastion

 

We both agreed that were we to do the trip over, we would spend more time in Budapest, which seemed the most congenial city of the 3, even though it's a lightweight in the art department. Frieda liked Vienna a bit more than I did, Prague a bit less, but we were both bewitched by Budapest.

Pest

Vienna

Hofburg Palace

We'd planned on buying our tickets to Budapest when we arrived at the train station in Vienna but to our surprise found the huge, sleek, modern station full of Syrian refugees and police. The restroom was jammed with dark young men waiting for a stall to open up while, curiously, the urinals room was completely empty. A few were trying to bathe in the sinks until the woman caretaker came in and scolded them for splashing water on the floor. At the ticket counter the police were shunting refugees and tourists into separate lines. There were several clerks for the latter, only one for the former, so we weren't held up that much but it still took us longer than expected and consequently we were late getting to the apartment on the northeast edge of the Ringstrasse for the meeting with our landlord. Despite failing to notice our text informing him that we were running late, he was still standing out in front of the building as we dragged our luggage up Untere Donau Strasse from the U1 stop at Nestroyplatz (he had sent us detailed directions). The apartment was on the 6^th floor but the building had a lift. It was nearly as big as the one in Prague but was better laid out and furnished cohesively, the walls adorned with Klimt prints. The landlord was charming, answered all our questions and gave us the keys. As it was already late afternoon we asked for a restaurant recommendation and he suggested a place inside the ring called Pachutta. 

Egon Schiele, "Edge of Town"

 

When we arrived there we saw all the locals were wearing jackets and ties so I felt under-dressed. I even wondered for a moment if they would refuse to seat us, but then I noticed some other tourists in attire similar to ours. Looking at the menu we learned that they specialized in a traditional Viennese dish called tafelspitz, consisting of boiled beef with creamed spinach and fried potatoes. The broth from the boiling is served, with vegetables and crepes cut into strings like noodles, as a soup. I was skeptical because boiling did not strike me as a civilized way to treat a good cut of beef, but in conformity with our policy of going native when traveling we went for it and I was pleasantly surprised. It was all exceptionally tasty, even the Austrian Pinot Noir we'd ordered. I'd never heard that Austrian wines were particularly good, but this one was excellent. As I savored it all, a sense of gratitude welled up that I was so fortunate as to have the opportunity to sit in this restaurant halfway around the world enjoying an exotic and delicious cuisine that most people in the States didn't even know existed and might never have the chance to taste. I doubted any of our friends in California had ever even heard of tafelspitz, much less eaten any, yet here I was, loving it.

We slept in the next morning and didn't leave the apartment until 11:30. It was a brilliant day, the sun flashing off the traffic on the Ringstrasse. We bought 2-day Vienna transport tickets and took the ring tram to the Opera, walked past that magnificent building to the statue of Goethe, and then cut through the park to the Albertina museum, which was putting on a special exhibition of Edvard Munch, the Norwegian. We'd seen posters for it, and decided to go through. Of course Munch is terribly gloomy, but he came up with some powerful images to communicate angst, anxiety, loneliness, and his pessimistic perspective, including “The Scream,” which finished the show. Afterward we went to the Cafe Tirolerhof, a stodgy, old-fashioned, snooty place recommended by Rick Steves, but the waiters ignored us, despite our repeatedly making eye contact with them, so we left and went to the nearby Mozart Cafe instead, which had tables available outside in the sun. There we both had coffee and Frieda had a sacher torte while I had apple strudel in vanilla sauce. Both were superb, as was the coffee and the service. “Maybe Steves is losing it,” I said. “Or maybe he's getting payoffs,” Frieda speculated. We decided we should pay less attention to him. 

We Live in Paradise

 

Refreshed, we strolled down to the Hofburg and circled the courtyard to get a sense of the stately majesty of the place. Frieda, who grew up in NYC, was basking in the metropolitan energy. You could feel the grandeur of an imperial capital in those monumental facades. From there we crossed the ring and went through Maria-Theresa-Platz to the Leopold Museum where the Egon Schieles were pulsing with complex, angsty intensity. Really an amazing body of work when you consider the guy died at 28. Afterward we walked down to the Nachmarket and bought some stinky but delicious cheese plus some squid ink pasta to take home. My feet were killing me by then (my little toe was also singing the blues now, along with its neighbor) so we headed for the tram stop. On the way we passed a grocery where we picked up a cooked chicken for dinner and some pastries for breakfast. We stayed in for the evening to rest our feet and plan the next day. 

Hundertwasserhaus

 

In the morning we got to the Hundertwasser museum as it was opening at 10. It was only about a 10-minute walk from our apartment. We both enjoyed it immensely. We bought a print of his painting “We Live in Paradise.” An eccentric, fascinating, amazing guy, superficially crazy but profoundly sane, even though he apparently failed to appreciate the benefits of the Enlightenment. Besides painting, he worked in architecture. His efforts in this field are reminiscent of Antonio Gaudí's work in Barcelona. He was born a couple of years after Gaudí died. The only structure he created in North America is in Napa, so we made a note to go see it. After our visit we had a light lunch of soup and Caesar salad in a cafe across the street from the apartment building he created called the Hundertwasserhaus.

Schonbrunn Palace

 

We then caught the U4 (the metro is sleek and smooth) to Schönbrunn Palace, the Versailles of Vienna. Talk about income inequality! Such an excessive display of wealth (1441 rooms) seems not in the best taste. It becomes crass at some point well short of the point this place reached. But here it was clearly all about 1^st impressions, wowing the yokels. Because the imperial quarters themselves were quite modest, not to mention monumentally dull. Your average middle class home today offers more in terms of comfort and convenience. Even at the time, perhaps the most envied item there may have been the water closet, which was state of the art for its day. I wondered how the emperor would feel about the hoi polloi traipsing through his quarters and looking at his loo. After a quick glance at the vast gardens, we got on the U4 back to Karlsplatz where we caught the D tram to the Belvedere to see the Klimts. The exhibit there was a disappointment, inferior to the one we saw in May at the Neue Gallery in NYC. There were only 4 rooms of Klimts and only the last had any of his mature work, climaxing with “The Kiss.” They did have “The Bride,” which looked as though it could have been amazing, had he finished it. There was a nice garden around the palace, but my feet were again complaining so we headed for the apartment to rest a bit before dinner. Sitting on the couch there I began to feel the telltale tickle in the back of my throat that denotes the onslaught of a cold. I began to wonder if the nasal distress I'd experienced in Prague, which had diminished since we'd left, making me think it had been allergies, had been, in fact, the first onset. About 8 we caught a tram to a restaurant called Huth that claimed to make the best Wiener Schnitzel in town. I don't know about that, but it was certainly the best I'd ever tasted. 

Belvedere Palace

 

There's a lot to see and do in Vienna. It's a big city with big city culture: lots of museums and galleries, a magnificent opera. I loved the Klimt and Schiele, but for me the highlight was Hundertwasser, who was a visionary, an advocate for the reunification of man and nature. Nevertheless, Vienna's a bit stodgy, a bit too pretentious in its stately grandeur and too redolent of the self-worship of the state. All that imperial hoopla, the pomp and circumstance: a little goes a long way for me. I don't mourn the loss of that at all.