Apres-Bike

Esterhazy, Beethoven and Bartok


It was a day of disappointments: the buildings we wanted to see were either closed or fully booked. The tour of the Parliament, the biggest Parliament in Europe, was full. Apparently, you had to book a few days in advance to get a slot. I thought bitterly that we were faced with that beautiful building everyday for days ... our hotel was right across the river from it ... and never thought of visiting until the day before we were leaving.

The Opera House was another sight to see which we didn't, unfortunately, get to see. For a reason that I've forgotten, they didn't have their usual daily tour. Val and I did the second best thing, which was to admire the beautiful exterior from a cafe across the road, while we comforted ourselves with cake and coffee. The cafe had a pleasant turn-of-the-century feel and the cake was divine. I ordered an Esterhazy Cake, which is an Austrian cake named after a Hungarian duke, a member of the most illustrious noble family of Hungary. The cake certainly was good enough for royalty.

The highlight of the day was the fantastic performance of Beethoven and Bartok by the Hungarian Symphony Orchestra. It was held in the Palace of Arts, which was the same modern building that housed the Ludwig Museum. I had imagined it to be in one of the Art nouveau buildings in town. However, the opera hall did not disappoint. It was very striking and had a spectacular modern organ, its huge pipes making a dramatic backdrop. It is one of the biggest organs in Europe. As for the music, it was so intense, dramatic and passionate … much as I imagine the Hungarian character to be.

Apres-Bike

Art and Architecture

We looked forward to feasting on Hungarian sausages at a farmer’s market that was mentioned during the tour. We had a vague idea of where in the City Park it was supposed to be but after some fruitless wandering, we stumbled into the Agricultural museum complex and gave up on the sausages. There were several interesting buildings in the complex of different architectural styles. There was a beautiful Gothic building and a small Church that was, let’s see .. Romanesque? In the center of the complex was a brooding statue, face half-hidden by a monk-like hood, the spitting image of the evil Galactic Emperor in Star Wars. Meanwhile, the museum was housed in an ornate Baroque building called Vajdahunyad Castle. Sound like somewhere Dracula would live? Well, it was, appropriately enough, a copy of a castle in Transylvania.








From there, we proceeded on to see the Museum of Fine Art, where we joined the tour of an American docent. Unfortunately, he spent 2 hours going over the few mediocre Impressionists in their collection, completely ignoring the Raphaels, Dutch Masters, El Grecos and Goyas that were the pride of the Museum. Luckily, I took a quick run-through and discovered these at the last minute.

Without planning it, our museum visits that day started in the Middle Ages at the Agricultural complex, proceeded onto the eighteenth and nineteenth century at the Museum of Fine Art and finally arrived in the 21st, at the Ludwig Museum. There, they had a large collection of American Expressionists and contemporary artists. The building itself was very modern and part of a cluster of modern buildings away from the city center.

We made our way back in time to catch our Danube boat trip. It was obviously a popular tourist activity. There were several boats, parked 3-deep by the river. Lines of tourists filed in, some going downstairs for the dinner cruise, we going upstairs for the drinks tour. Strangely, our cheaper tickets seemed to have the better location. We could even go out on the deck to take pictures. What a beautiful night! All Budapest was lit up. We enjoyed the night air while one floodlit monument after another glided sedately by. I had been told that Budapest sparkles like a jewel at night, and it was true.

The ubiquitous gypsy musicians came on board and played the expected songs. Charo was in the mood to drink and dance again, the other passengers were in the mood to sing along, and I just sat back and enjoyed it all.

We had a late dinner in a restaurant near the hotel, where I had roast goose. It seems I ate nothing but cholesterol-laden foods in Budapest – every meal had goose, duck and/or foie gras, and pastries in between. Thank goodness for Crestor!

Apres-Bike

Dali Would Have Loved It

We decided to do the proper tourist thing and went on a half-day city tour. The guide was a tiny old, feisty woman who sat and, in a seamless monologue, rattled off facts, comments, opinions, instructions to the driver, jokes and observations in English and German, switching without warning or pause between the two languages. A tourist attraction in her own right!

The sun finally shone and never left us for the rest of the trip: hot, sunny mornings and warm evenings. Budapest is a romantic city, the buildings are predominantly art nouveau with exuberant carvings of sensuous bodies on their facades. The statues in Heroes’ Hill had fiercely staring eyes, aquiline noses and flaring nostrils. A noble, romantic look. There were many formerly beautiful buildings in a state of disrepair but just as many being renovated or already so. In 5 to 10 years, Budapest will be spectacular. Right now, the sense of a faded glory adds to its romance. Romance that has to peep out from under unending graffiti and is almost, but not quite, erased by the frowning, bad-tempered faces of its inhabitants.

We had coffee in a Gothic-style castle overlooking the Houses of Parliament, the second largest in Europe and imitative of the English one, serenaded again by musicians playing the Hungarian rhapsody. We strolled down Castle Hill. It is supposed to be prime residential property but we could not see any evidence of it yet, although there was much construction and a billboard promising condominiums soon.

We were not going to be deprived of the hot bath experience, despite our disappointment in Gellert's, since this is one of the things Budapest is famous for. The natural hot springs under the city were discovered and tapped by the Turks and for centuries they enjoyed them in baths which they built all over the city. There was a Turkish-style bath but, unfortunately, it was open only to men. So instead we went to Lukacs, which sounded inviting because it had indoor and outdoor pools. The building had the look and feel of a sanatorium but it was much more welcoming than Gellert’s, with a proper entrance pavilion surrounded by gardens. And the people were definitely more friendly. We were disappointed that we could not have a mud bath unless we presented a medical certificate, proving that these spas were of a medicinal nature, not for mere beauty and pampering. Well, once inside, it proved even more hospital-like. There were tiled corridors and white-uniformed, hefty matrons, impersonal and with more of a bureaucratic attitude than the attentive, smiling service we were used to expect. We changed in the utilitarian locker-room and then trooped off – uncomfortably bare-footed – to the baths. The first one, a pleasantly warm one, was full of overweight matrons. Then, through a curved archway to a small round pool with very hot water – I had to ease myself in little by little. Further on was a big pool with pleasantly warm water. Immersed neck-deep in the water were several men. The pool was dotted with their bearded, moustachioed heads sticking out of the water, all staring at me balefully. I felt I was in a Felllini movie or a Dali painting.

Nearby was the sauna room, which I had always been told I should never enter, since I have low blood pressure. Of course not, my doctor companions averred and they declared it safe, with the caution not to stay in for more than a minute or two. I entered, still asking myself why, coming from sweaty Manila, I would want to sweat even more in Hungary. The steam and heat pressed against my nose so that I found it hard to breathe at first but then it was bearable. Once refreshed in the pool with the floating heads, we decided to do what I’d heard crazy Scandinavians do: go from intense heat and plunge into intense cold. Beside the sauna was a small deep pool set at 60 degrees. I had dipped my feet in earlier but couldn’t bring myself to lower myself in. But – such was the surreal effect of that underground wonderland – I endured the steamy heat for a second time and then, with Charo and Myrna, rushed out (so as not to allow hesitation to take over) and jumped into the freezing water. Wow! What a delicious shock to the senses. I didn’t climb out immediately but dunked my head in several times, actually enjoying the cold. And what a wonderful refreshed feeling when I climbed out of that icy water! We repeated the experience several times until the floating heads tired of staring at us.

Ready for the next sensation. We found the outdoor pool. It looked very inviting. On one side, there was an artificial current that swept you around in a wide circle – not too gentle, either, because it turned me head over heels in the water. On the other side was a large waterfall with on one side a wall that “masssaged” you with water that gushed up from the bottom and erupted in lots of foaming bubbles. These “eruptions” were scattered all around the pool but were concentrated on the left wall, where there were little platforms and handles so one could lean back and brace oneself against the pushing water. The platforms were all occupied with frowning Hungarians, surrounded with playful, ticklish, laughing bubbles. The whole pool should have been ringing with giggles and laughter and oooohs and wheeeees but it was very quiet, while everyone looked deadly serious about getting the maximum health benefits. It was a sanatorium, I had to remind myself, and a former Communist, Eastern European one, at that. The attendants were unsmiling and indifferent, and were more like functionaries in a Communist bureaucracy. And despite the hospital-like tile-lined corridors and the white-coated attendants, it was not very clean. Nevertheless, it was a wonderful experience and great fun, made all the more so by the weird characters.

That night, we had dinner in a trendy (according to Lonely Planet) night spot in a pedestrian area near Andrasy Street. Everyone was pleased with their food but I was ecstatic over mine! Goose liver yet again, but this time unadorned with steak or chicken. Three round fat slabs were set before me, about 3 inches in diameter and 1/2-inch thick. The scandalized and disapproving ooooohs from my companions didn’t make a dent on my utter delight. I even took a picture of the plate for posterity! I was very pleased that my polite offer for a taste was flatly refused all around. The recommended accompaniment was a glass of Tokaji but I found it too syrupy sweet and remembered with longing the sparkling sauterne that was served me in the Loire Valley to accompany my foie gras.

We slept well that night, body well-exercised and toned, taste buds satisfied to the utmost – cholesterol be damned!

Apres-Bike

Budapest

The Parliament, a dominant presence in the cityscape.

The next stage in our voyage was a week in Budapest, which was only 4 hours away by train. We were loaded down with biking gear -- and, in my case, an overcoat which luckily I never had occasion to use -- so we tried to lighten our load by depositing some bags in the train station. But my suitcase still weighed a ton! The Hungarian train was nowhere near as clean and nice as the Austrian ones. The station was noisy and dirty …. as train stations usually are, come to think of it, but we had gotten used to the cleanliness of Austria after only a week. It just didn’t feel very safe. There was a special tourist office from where tourists were advised to get taxis, because there was rampant fare-rigging. The men looked swarthy, (shades of Zoltan Kaparthy in My Fair Lady!), and they loved moustaches that hung down the sides of their mouths ending in long points, and many were named Vlad.

Our hotel was right on the Danube, a beautiful location with a spectacular view. The building was one of the few that was not Art Nouveau, an ordinary semi-modern building, probably circa 1970s. But the inside was very pleasant with an indoor-outdoor café … the place incorporated 2 or 3 older townhouses linked together. There were striking modern paintings all over, apparently painted by the owner. The best part, though, was that when we complained of a room that reeked of cigarette smoke, they upgraded us to a junior suite!

Our first stop was the famous Gellert’s hotel, spectacular from the outside but a huge disappointment once inside, especially after the glowing write ups in the guidebooks. However, the food there was excellent. A pity we only had a wee taste: I had goose liver on toast (The first of many goose liver meals to come!), quickly sauteed with truffle oil – delicious. And sweet palacsintas were also delicious.

The next item on the agenda was supposed to have been a bath in their famous hot baths but several things made us hesitate: it was steamy, noisy and crowded with lots of barefooted people in towels walking around the public area – not very luxurious or spa-like. Nowhere near the hushed, opulent, pampered feel of the Asian spas we were used to. In fact, it felt more like Grand Central Station (the New Yorker in me speaking). There was an enormously long and confusing list of all the treatments and fees; and the frowning women behind the counters were not much help. After hemming and hawing about the entrance fee, which seemed rather high, we decided to splurge since it was pouring with rain outside and sightseeing was out of the picture. By that time, though, it was near closing time. (Close at 5? A spa?) So we wandered over to Liberty Hill in the drizzle and tried to peer through the fog at the view. Almost at the top, there was a chapel deep inside the mountain, either carved out of the mountainside or in an existing cave. There was a Mass going on and there was an atmosphere of deep devotion. I guessed that it must have been a place where Masses were secretly held during the Communist era.

We decided to have an early dinner and went out in search of a restaurant written up in Myrna’s Lonely Planet. It was rustic and had a quartet playing the Hungarian Rhapsody – the first of many Hungarian rhapsodies we would hear at every meal or coffee break. We enjoyed the place because the performers were so different from Austrians, more flamboyant and extrovert. On the menu, as with every other restaurant or coffee shop, was goose liver. The Hungarians must grow a lot of geese because goose liver is everywhere – with steak, with chicken, on toast – and I intended to try it in all its guises! That night it was on butterflied steak, the only good thing about the dish. But what can one expect from a recommendation from Lonely Planet?

The way home was an experience. We were totally lost and asked some people the way. They were very friendly and told us which tram to take, which happened to be the one they were taking. We got on and as we wondered how and where to pay, one of the group smilingly shrugged his shoulders, saying “You are my guests!” We were so touched at his generosity and thanked him profusely. It turned out that public transport operated on the honor system, and unfortunately not everyone, including ourselves, were always honorable! We got away with several free rides, and not thanks to anyone's "generosity".

The walk back to the hotel along the Danube was beautiful, the skies cleared and the river sparkled with all the illuminated bridges and buildings lining its banks.

The Bikes Roll to a Stop

Day 6 16 kms

Once again, Charo and I took a train, while the intrepid bikers, Myrna and Val, rode ahead. We had a leisurely morning, waiting for our bikes to be delivered from Krems. When the tour operator arrived, we had her check our tires and, lo and behold, both of mine were very soft and needed pumping. The reason, I instantly decided, why I could not keep up with the others no matter how I huffed and puffed -- that's my story and I'll stick to it! Charo and I would train it to Greifenstein and then we would all ride into Vienna together. This time there was no problem with train schedules: they left every half hour, filled with commuters. All of a sudden, the city seemed closer than the country and, as we elbowed our way into the crowded train feeling clumpy and out-of-place in our helmets and shorts, we felt the bike tour was coming to its end.

But before that, we had one more wine-tasting stop planned at Klosterneuberg Abbey. The little town at the bottom of the hill was very touristy and the trek up the hill was a killer, with cars whizzing by. The entrance to the abbey was very impressive: giant baroque Atlases holding up the ceiling and in the center, a very sleek desk made of brushed stainless-steel.

Unfortunately, there was no wine-tasting that day because a load of grapes had been harvested just the day before. So, disappointed, we went on our way. The ride was uneventful, the sights unspectacular until, finally, Vienna! What relief, joy, pride, wonder and satisfaction we felt! Myrna said that the Danube bike trail was 400 kms long; we calculated that we rode about 250 kms of it.

What a sense of accomplishment I felt when we tucked our bikes away for the last time! How nostalgic I felt as I peeled my gel cover off the bike seat for the last time! And how happy I was to remove those padded biker shorts and not have to rush to wash them for the next day!

We toasted ourselves and our odyssey not with wine but, fittingly, with coffee and cake -- to be exact, with apple streudel and sacher torte.

Our bike tour was over, but it wasn't the end of the odyssey, we would proceed on to Budapest the conventional way. The story continues, watch this space .......

Citified "Country" and Artsy Wine

Day 5 16 kms

Charo and I decided to have a bike-free day: see the sights around Krems, wander around its old town and at the end of the day, take our bikes on the train to Tulln. We took a taxi to Gottweig Abbey, another Benedictine monastery at the top of a steep hill. We would have had a beautiful view of the surrounding countryside but it was hidden behind drizzly fog. The monastery was yet another baroque wonder. Not as spectacular as Melk but still very impressive. It looked more like a royal palace than an abbey, with a magnificent marble stairway, the “Imperial Staircase” and beautiful wallpaper (or painted walls) in the rooms. It had even more books than did Melk but they were not displayed in the same impressive way. It had an important collection of religious engravings. I stood engrossed in front of one by Gustav Klimt depicting souls dying and ascending to heaven. Sick, decrepit bodies intertwined in a beautifully complicated composition with luminous, ascending souls.

Back in Krems, we explored a little of the old town. One walked through a massive stone arch and on the other side were small, quaint buildings and winding streets. The old town was more citified and sophisticated than the ones we had been passing through, but still very charming. We had lunch in a pretty tea-room that specialised in organic products; they had an array of organic fruit and herbal teas, very “country” chic.

Wine tasting was next, as we learned that there was a winery within walking distance. After a very long, uphill walk in the sun, we found the cooperative where wine was produced right in town. It looked factory-like and not very promising. However, it turned out to be an original and quite artistic experience.

The tour started with an overview of the vineyards around the Krems valley that were members of the cooperative. And this was a literal overview: the floor consisted of a huge map of the area on plexiglass lit up from underneath, so that we could walk from vineyard to vineyard. On the walls were pictured the varieties of grape grown in the Wachau, foremost among them Gruner Vertliner, endemic and grown only in Austria. I had actually seen rows of vines marked as such when we biked in.

The cellars that held their oldest wines were suitably dark and musty and filled with oak barrels but their newly-pressed wines were kept in modern, stainless-steel vats. These were lined up in a huge underground area that was bathed in a mysterious green light, which lessened the factory-like impression. The room that overlooked this was a combination of cellar and dining room -- the kind maybe that Dracula or the Knights Templar would dine in, sparsely lit with candles and small lamps. In the center of the long room there seemed to float a wooden table-top on which were a sculptural centerpiece, glasses and, of course, lots of bottles of wine. We were invited to taste and bring our wine glasses with us to the next room. This was another “dining room”, set for a virtual meal because the plates, food and cutlery were all projected onto the tabletops from under the tablecloths. One course would follow another, with the suggested wines, all in 2-dimension.

We proceeded out into reality, where real wine bottles were waiting to be bought. We had a really great time, aside from drinking our fill. They had made an effort to hire artists so that each room felt almost like an installation in an art gallery. However, our guide kept us rooted to the soil: her family owned several hectares of vineyards and she had been helping to harvest the grapes just that morning.

Feeling mellow, we returned to the hotel and picked up our bikes, only to learn, once we got to the station, that the only train that could take bikes had left that morning! Again, confusion and stress due to lack of information, all avoidable if we had been given complete documentation. Thankfully, the hotel receptionists were helpful, unlike the woman at the train counter, who gave us information in dribs and drabs as if one of her teeth was accompanying each item of information. Our dilemma was resolved when the tour company – curse and bless them! – said it was no problem, we could leave our bikes and they would take them to Tulln in their van in the morning.

Tulln was a drab town, not quite a city but without the charm of a country town. Val and Myrna were waiting for us there, ready for a good dinner, having biked all the way. Unfortunately, the food was the worst we’d had in a trip not noted for its culinary delights.

Entering Wine Country

Austria's Napa Valley




There was no chatting as we biked, as we had a ways to go and I had to concentrate. Usually, Val would bike alongside me and we would have wide-ranging conversations while we enjoyed the scenery. Myrna would have shot off like an arrow long before, and Charo would either be chasing after her or lagging behind watching out for birds, photographing and sometimes calling out to them. I was the slow poke, always struggling to keep up, while Val patiently kept me company -- I didn’t realize her patience until she admitted that the rides didn’t really challenge her and that she hardly broke a sweat the whole time! Later on, when she and Myrna biked without me and Charo and she was free to go as fast as she wanted, she easily outpaced Myrna, up to that point our star rider.

Spitz was the starting point of the Wachau Valley, the main wine-growing area of Austria. The cornfields abruptly gave way to vineyards and a series of beautiful little villages came one after the other. But all deserted. We came across a roadside fruit stand (the only one we came across in the whole trip) that was unmanned; one just left payment for the plums and pears in a box. Meanwhile, right next to it was a plum tree loaded with fruit free for the picking. All along the bike path we had noticed apple and pear trees groaning under their load of fruit but no fruit stands from which to buy, and we hesitated to just help ourselves.

There were a lot of little shrines along the road, again surprising me at how devotedly Catholic they were. But no farmers harvesting in the vineyards. The light was failing but we just had to stop at a flower-filled square for my daily helping of cake and coffee. Shortly after, we cycled into what looked like another quaint town but it turned out to be the old part of Krems. A kind lady volunteered to show us the way to the hotel, which was quite far -- she really went out of her way for us. Krems was bigger than we realized. The quaint town gave way to buildings, and before we knew it, the Baroque era was left behind and we emerged, reluctantly, into a big
modern city.

Seeing Magnificent Melk in Bulgy Shorts

Day 4 58.5 kms

Our intention was to take the train to Melk Abbey, in order to give us enough time to appreciate Austria’s most magnificent Baroque monastery (as the guidebook declared). Unfortunately, the train schedules didn’t cooperate with our intention.

It had seemed, when I signed up, that it would be the simplest thing to hop on and off a train or a ferry … wrong! Trains did not run often and not all of them could accommodate bikes. As for the ferries, there were many that crossed from one bank to the other several times a day but going up or downstream was more complicated. They went upstream on one day and downstream on another … and we usually wanted to go up or downstream on the wrong day. This was one of those days.

It was a grizzly, drizzly day and I was a little bit afraid to bike down that steep, probably slippery, hill. But Val and Myrna were untroubled so I followed their lead and went for it. Charo decided to have a lie-in, take the train and meet up with us later.

We were wrapped in our plastic raincoats against the wet. In addition, it was foggy so we started out very cautiously, as we had been told that people had taken bad falls on that road. But as we descended, the fog lifted bit by bit, we relaxed, and before we knew it, we were coasting effortlessly down the hill -- what joy! -- for a good 40 minutes. To top it all, the rain cleared and by the time we reached the bottom, the sun was out.

Melk Abbey was, indeed, magnificent. Although built in the 11th century, it was destroyed and rebuilt many times and then completely remodeled in 1702. As with everything else in Austria, it looked freshly-painted and neat as a pin. What I found nice was that it is a working, flourishing monastery. There is a school on its premises, it holds retreats and workshops and seems to be very active in the community. It looks like it is a very rich monastery. I loved the way they exhibited ancient artifacts in modern settings and illustrated religious concepts in a very contemporary and original way: a statue of St. Benedict and a book of his monastic rules in a neon blue room, leading to a neon-green room housing various relics. Gold monstrances were housed in glass cases in rooms that were mirrored from floor to ceiling -- a gaudiness meant to illustrate a passage from Corinthians, “Now we are seeing a dim reflection in a mirror; but then we shall be seeing face to face.”

According to Baroque sensibilities, the gilded carvings, the frescoes, paintings, and marble-clad rooms were offerings to the Lord that could never be too beautiful or extravagant, and were physical expressions of the joy man had in his faith. But on a superficial level, it felt like an embarrassment of riches, especially, I am sure, to the Protestant Val at my side, exposed to this overwhelming display of the material riches and glory of the Catholic Church. Proceeding on, we came to an equally impressive display of worldly wealth, the library. The room was almost 2 storeys high, its walls were lined with shelves of antique leather-bound books, and its ceiling was lit up by a glorious fresco, To think that the 16,000 books it displayed was only a fraction of the 100,000 in the monastery’s collection.

The four of us wandered around these princely surroundings in our sneakers and biking gear, carrying our helmets, sweaty hair plastered to our heads. After four days of hard biking, we didn’t give a thought to how we looked and strolled about unself-consciously in our padded nylon shorts, with bulgy buttocks. Actually, there were other groups of bikers, some of them maybe older than us, unconcernedly walking around looking like Lance Armstrong or, maybe more of our era, Eddy Merckx.

The Abbey had beautiful gardens but we had to pass this up as time was pressing. After a bad lunch in the Abbey restaurant, we set out to catch the ferry to Spitz, which didn’t materialize so we tried the train .. foiled again. So, with encouragement from Val and Myrna, but mostly because there was no other choice, I pointed my handlebars towards Spitz with grim resignation.

High on a Hilltop

Day 3 37 kms


What a comedy of errors! This is where the tour maps and info let us down. We intended to take an early train to get some sight-seeing in but to our dismay there was only one train that day. It left at midday and stopped short of our destination.

The delay meant that we couldn’t sightsee, and ended up having to bike straight through to Maria Taferl, the next town on the itinerary. Luckily, the countryside was interesting and the path wound inland through farmland: fields of corn and bright yellow rapeseed, barns with cows …. but hardly any people. We couldn’t do without our daily coffee and cake stop, though, and we chose to do this at Persenbeurg under a famous 700-yr old linden tree. The cakes were the best we’d had so far. We reached Marbach and summoned our ride to the hotel, which was up on a hill, a very steep hill …. it was such a relief that they provided us a car.

The hotel was well-situated and our rooms, identical this time, had a beautiful unobstructed view of the Danube meandering far down below. This hotel also gave us the best dinner we’d had up to then; Charo had an excellent steak and I had a very good perch. I was disappointed, though, that it was not locally caught. Apparently there is not much commercial fishing along the Danube, probably because of all the power plants and other commercial activity. The food throughout the tour was disappointing. I had imagined breakfasts to be country repasts with homemade breads and country-fresh cheeses and farmer’s hams and sausages in rustic baskets. Instead, they were almost identical in all the towns and seemed to have been bought in the local supermarket. Pats of butter and cheese wrapped in foil; jams in plastic pots, the kind they have in airplanes; liver spreads and flavored cheeses in the ubiquitous little plastic pots.