A Little Trip to Europe

Those of you that observe my life on that Facebook will no doubt have evinced that I have been away recently; we had a week in bits of Europe, namely Budapest, Bratislava, Melk and Vienna.  This was because Karen's mum, who died last September, had asked that some of her ashes be scattered in Melk, a city in Austria.  We decided to make a trip of it, and visit Budapest, a place I've yearned to see, and which Karen has yearned to see again, having visited with her mum at the end of the 80s when it was still in the grip of communism and Russian control.

Her recollection of it was that it was attractive and yet gloomy and foreboding. An egg set before the curate it seems.  The fact that it rained the whole time, and that it was so repressive and repressed due to the regime, no doubt fostered that impression.  For our trip, we were fortunate to have sunshine and warmth, and a distinct absence of commissars about the place.  And - it is attractive, beautiful and stunning indeed. I would highly recommend it.  Our experience was enhanced by staying at the Hotel Corinthia, which was formerly known as The Grand Hotel Royal.  It has been faithfully restored to its original splendour, with the rebuilding of the main features of its interior modelled from photographs and any remaining artefacts, such as some of the glass from the ball room chandeliers being used to work from and create the whole.  I had a 'behind the scenes' tour with one of the concierges, who spoke of the history.  He had worked there as a young man, before working around the world in the hotel business, and, finally, in his anecdotage, returning to his alma mater, if you will.

He told me of watching films in the Red Star cinema, which is how the ball room (which now is returned to its opulent glory) had come to be used, and how the building had been destroyed by tanks and fire when the revolutionaries took cover there in 1956.  Then, taking me to a display of blown up photographs ranged in the area near the entrance, showed me his young self, in tails, looking very elegant, carrying a tray of drinks.  Marvellous stuff.

After our three nights there, we were to move on to Melk, but, we had  first to drive to Vienna airport to pick up Karen's daughter Laura, and her boyfriend Fouad, who were joining us for the remainder of our time.  We had looked at the map and found, to our pleasure and amusement, that Bratislava was but an hour's drive from us, and Vienna airport a mere 40 minutes from there.  We simply had to go, partly because, well, come on, it's Bratislava, it's another country, it's another European capital city I can tick off in my (probably never to be achieved) quest to visit all the European capital cities.  The task is frustrating since they will insist on adding countries, and hence capitals, or breaking other countries down into smaller parts, thus multiplying still further the capital cities. So the finishing post grows ever further away.

Anyway, before I enter rant mode and lose your attention (they even include Moscow as a European capital in lists. Moscow! The one in Russia. That Moscow. For Heaven's sake!) another reason, and the one which allowed me to suggest it was to our amusement, for visiting was that when I first knew Karen, and met her daughters, Nic, the youngest, used to dismissively, in her 6 year old way, refer to me as 'Welsh Boy', much as to say 'that's how insignificant you are'.  It was highly endearing really, and my response, which became a sort of mantra, was to say 'Bratislavan Girl', which confused her somewhat. So the city had a certain resonance for us.

Having found our way there, we had the usual anxieties about trying to park, and identify where the centre and points of interest were.  When we did park, it turned out to be a good 15 minute walk from the 'historical centre'.  Walking along past brown, concrete edifices, and grey buildings of old age but shabby and uninteresting demeanour, wasn't the ideal introduction, especially after the beauty of Budapest.  But then we found the centre, hidden away behind all the dully uniform Eastern European modernity, what a pleasure it was to see.  It was chocolate box, jigsaw cover quaint and lovely.  All 16th century town houses and cobbled streets, and absolutely spellbinding for it.  I do confess though, that there were moments when I was reminded of the child catcher scene in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and looked about me with some concern.  We had a lovely goulash and a drink in the square then had to make our way back to the car.  We passed, on leaving the square, a building sporting the sign 'The Narnia Bar'.  Curious, I went in but it was nothing more than a wardrobe.

And so to Vienna, collect the young lovers, and then a further hour's drive on to Melk.  We knew little of it, except that it had an Abbey.  Probably baroque.  We had learned, from riding around Budapest in one of those open topped tourist buses equipped with a spoken guide, and on a carriage in Bratislava similarly equipped, that most of the architecture in that part of the world is baroque.  Since the pre-recorded information is done by Americans however, the style is referred to, not as is the correct way, 'bar-rock', but as 'bar-roke', which lends itself to the paradoxical impression that all these ostentatious buildings were the result of the instigators running out of funds, or that they are in a state of disrepair.  'The church of St Peter is built in bar-roke style', or, 'the Parliament buildings are bar-roke' for example.

Arriving in Melk, it would have been difficult to have overlooked the Abbey, as it is built on a rocky (perhaps bar-rocky) outcrop between the River Danube and the city and rather impressively looms over one wherever one is.  Melk itself turned out to be even more quaint than Bratislava, especially so as it is not hidden in the midst of a modern city, but is a little district all by itself.  It consisted of a square, a main street, a church and of course, the enormous lowering Abbey, and not much else.  And it was fabulous.  Due to its small size it was easy to get around, and picturesque in the extreme.  We settled in splendidly and enjoyed three days of wandering, eating and drinking.

Except of course, we had also to attend to the real purpose of the trip. At first, we had thought that the Abbey would be the ideal place, however, two reasons deterred us from that.  The first was that the large grounds and gardens, where we had thought we could unobtrusively go about the task, were closed and didn't open until May.  The second was that impressive though the Abbey was, it didn't have the right feel for what we wished to achieve. Later we strolled down to the Danube in glorious sunshine, all the while, quietly 'scouting' for an appropriate spot there, accompanied by Laura and Fouad who were riding bikes supplied by the hotel. Laura offered me the opportunity to have a ride on hers, but she warned me that pedalling backwards was like applying the brake.  I wasn't sure what this meant, got on, attempted to push the pedal back to get it in the right place for setting off and... It just stopped.  So I pedalled forward a quarter turn but then tried to push back on the pedals, as I always do, to get them in the optimum place and the bike stopped abruptly, pitching me forward.  I decided there, and indeed, then, that it wasn't for me.

Later on the walk,  Laura and Fouad who, naturally, as they were cycling, were getting ahead of us, reported back that they had 'found the spot'.  They had discovered a tributary, with a natural weir, in the shadow of the Abbey.  The weir was like a small waterfall and so there was a constant gurgling and bubbling of water, something that Jan was always attracted to.  We agreed that this was ideal and we would come back the next day, which, being April 17th, would have been her birthday.

The following day we did just that, and Karen left behind a small part of her mum, in a place that she had loved, and it felt right. Oddly, and I draw no inference from this, having had bright sunshine and temperatures of the mid-20s all week, shortly after we had torrential, soak-you-to-the-skin-as-soon-as-look-at-you rain which lasted into the late evening.

The next day we had to leave Melk and drive back to Vienna.  Laura and Fouad were staying there for another 2 nights, but we were flying home that evening.  We had been to Vienna 9 years previously, a weekend break which had been a wedding present from Karen's mum, so to be able to return, if only for  few hours, seemed fitting.  We set out, with Karen understandably a little emotional at metaphorically leaving her mum there, knowing we may never return.

We had a very pleasant few hours in Vienna, including a ride on horse-drawn carriage, with commentary not, this time, pre-recorded, but from the actual, real-life and living driver.  Who not once mentioned architectural styles, bar-roke or otherwise.  A meal and hot chocolate at the café in the square that had been our haunt 9 years before, and then home, having thoroughly enjoyed the week away.