The War of the Roses

Five years ago, I wrote how in my quest to complete the Shakespeare canon, I was still five plays short. As of this writing, I only [still?] have two to go (“Troilus and Cressida” and “Two Noble Kinsmen” for those keeping track at home). “Henry VI” trilogy is done, and how!

I have to note that it took me fewer attempts to get to Henry (three) than to Vienna (five). I literally had tickets to see it at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in the fall of 2020, and we all know how that went. Michigan Shakespeare Festival was going to produce it this summer but sadly, had to go dark. I was merely wondering what might be playing at The Old Globe in San Diego during my upcoming trip next spring when I noticed that it is actually doing “Henry VI” this summer. And so I said to myself, who am I if I am not true to this glorious quest? I found the perfect weekend when the “Henry VI” Parts 1-3 would play on two successive nights, reserved a hotel room, and spent a couple of months in happy anticipation of a visit to the place of which I warmly think as American Crimea.

Credit to production designers: Lawrence E. Moten III, Scenic Design; David Israel Reynoso, Costume Design; Mextly Couzin, Lighting Design; Melanie Chen Cole, Sound Design; Caite Hevner, Projection Design.

I have been to The Old Globe several years ago, and loved their production of “Red Velvet”. However, checking the tickets shortly before the trip, I was slightly dismayed to discover that “Henry” is being staged at an outdoor venue. I pictured lawn seats, actors scurrying to not be seen behind awkward wooden set pieces, and lots of bugs. In the Midwest, I have missed more than one outdoor performance and sporting event (yes, I have been known to attend a baseball game, don’t look so shocked!) that have been rained out. However, I know as well as anyone that it never rains in Southern California, and was willing to put up with the rest of the potential unpleasantries just to cross this elusive trio of plays off my list. Spoiler alert: this did not turn out to be your usual Shakespeare in the Park.

Now, much as all I know about French history I learned from the novels of Alexandre Dumas, all I know about English history I learned from Shakespeare. While I still need to recite the opening lines of “Richard III” to help myself remember who is York and who is Lancaster (and need a mnemonic device I heretofore have not found to identify which rose is red and which is white), I am happy to have finally filled the gap between “Henry V” and “Richard III”.

It turns out that the gap includes some pretty exciting stuff, such as Joan of Arc’s last stand, epic battles between the English and the French, and intense subsequent plotting and fighting for the crown among the various English heirs and pretenders. What’s not to like? Ah, here is what: my least favorite line in all of Shakespeare, “let’s kill all the lawyers”, makes its annoying appearance. Even though in the play (and I knew this before seeing it) it is meant as the first step to chaos and political instability and is spoken by a villainous character, it has been misquoted for centuries. But I am getting ahead of myself.

I have been seeing Shakespeare performed primarily at the Stratford Festival in Canada, which is as good as it gets. I have seen some fantastic interpretations elsewhere, innovative, beautifully acted, creatively staged, but I have always thought that Stratford’s scale and scope is second to none. Until now. And unexpectedly, this “Henry VI”—actually, styled as “Henry 6”—an English Civil War saga 600 years old, filled me with patriotism. I was all like, look at our American actors being as good as Canadians!

First, the outdoor theater at the Old Globe is basically the same as any other theater but without a roof—and a roof is not critical to a play unless you are dropping a chandelier from the ceiling. But the way the natural surroundings of the gorgeous Balboa Park worked with the set, however, was both unique and exhilarating. Every time those giant doors opened to let actors on stage and we saw, instead of the usual backstage darkness, majestic trees lit in the night, it was a spectacle like none I have ever experienced. The most powerful moment came early on, when Lord Talbot, The Sword of England, first burst on the scene, from the actual forest, backlit and accompanied by stirring rock music. It was just too cool!

Second, rarely have I seen a Shakespeare production that is so accessible, yet still recognizably classic. The inventive prologue gave a quick summary of The Henriad (Richard II/Henry IV, Henry V–it was yet unwritten by Shakespeare at the time of the staging of Henry VI) and set the stage for what is to follow. The costumes, the crowns, the crowds, the chaos—oh, it is history all right, but what gripping history! Maybe these are earlier plays, but what they lack in familiar soliloquies they more than make up in the absorbing (and true) story that is better than any tragedy (or comedy) from the pen of the same author.

This production is full of fun anachronisms, including a hilarious presentation by Richard of York to explain his right to the throne with the aid of an overhead projector. I have to add that, besides the valiant Talbot, Richard was my other favorite character. Is he supposed to be sympathetic? I found his sincerity and single-minded focus on the throne endearing. There was one scene where others are talking, planning, plotting, and he just paces around the stage, literally circumnavigating it, talking to himself. I caught myself with my mouth literally gaping open, trying to absorb everything that was going on.

I liked the first part more than the second one, for purely subjective reasons—more of the French (Charles the Dauphin bearing hilarious resemblance to King Herod in “Jesus Christ Superstar”), Talbot and the cult of Talbot, and just a lot more humor. The second part, all about the infighting and plotting for the English throne among the English themselves, is quite a bit darker. And once that madman Richard III shows up on the scene, events start snowballing, and you know it will end badly. He gets his own show later; let’s see more of the other people.

Also, Part 2 started right off with the reenactment of the January 6 riot, complete with the QAnon Shaman, albeit with the Union Jack painted on his face—and, obviously, with Shakespeare’s words, which, I imagine, elevated that particular disaster. It was disturbing and a terrible reminder that we humans never change and learn nothing from history. We live through these cataclysms and they shock us, but there is nothing new under the sun. Shakespeare already wrote about it…

The thing about Shakespeare is, his words, or even what we take to be his words, are constantly edited and reinterpreted. Having seen “Henry VI”/”6” for the first time, I do not know if I have fallen in love with the play itself, or with this particular version of it. But does it really matter? It was a magical experience that touched my heart, and that is what great theater does.

Memories of The Fourth Sense

I recently had perfume custom made for me. It sounds fancier than it is, because you basically go on this website[1], pick several scents, and fervently hope that they combine into something that does not make anyone within sniffing vicinity gasp and choke. Suggestions of complementary scents are available, but I scoffed at those and proceeded to trust my own senses. I was not disappointed!

I knew nothing about fine fragrances growing up—which is no surprise, considering my upbringing. My no-nonsense grandmother (she of https://oldladywriting.com/2021/08/30/just-boil-water/) did not bother with such frivolities. She was kind enough to buy me a bottle of children’s eau de cologne one summer in Estonia. The bottle was shaped like a clown, leaked to the point of extreme transience, and left no olfactory impression on me whatsoever. She also, in a fit of unprecedented and unrepeated generosity, bought me a tiny bottle of adult perfume, Vecrīga (Old Riga), which miraculously survived to present day and, considerably less miraculously, turned itself into vinegar in the intervening decades without me ever opening it. I had vague plans to wear it on my wedding day, but forgot and instead dumped half a bottle of Dali on my wrists. As the latter is currently fetching $800 on EBay while the former is not, I can only say that my marriage was—and is—worth it[2].

In college, the same friend who introduced me to Elton John’s music [https://oldladywriting.com/2019/06/23/rocketman/] also introduced me to quality scents. She mocked the drugstore-bought Lutece supplied by my mom, who still picks perfume based on the attractiveness of its receptacle, and gave me a bottle of Oscar De La Renta from her personal collection. Fun fact: today, a half-used bottle of former would set you back the same $90 as the retail-bought bottle of the latter, which just confirms the old adage that there is no accounting for taste, as well as there is no limit to the pull of nostalgia. But, once I started drenching myself in that designer fragrance, no fewer (and yet no more) than two young men followed the scent straight to my apartment. In the immortal words of Simon and Garfunkel, “It was a time of innocence”.

When I was in Greece, walking through the Club Med resort on the way to my job as an ouzo drinker [https://oldladywriting.com/2020/07/30/the-wrong-way-to-the-parthenon/ ], a fragrance wafting from some flowers instantly transported me to warm nights on the Black Sea. I did not expect to smell it again until I discovered Orange Blossoms at Lush. I do not think oranges grow in Crimea, where I spent the summers of my childhood. In fact, growing up I was violently allergic to what everyone assumed were oranges, but it was actually the poison with which they were injected to make them ripen or at least appear ripe during their long trek to my North Volga hometown. Logic tells us that this particular scent should not evoke any memories more pleasant than a trip to the children’s hospital—yet it does, and logic is a sword by which I do not want to die. I am happy to report that Orange Blossoms, after suffering a couple of setbacks, did not permanently join the list of my favorite discontinued things [https://oldladywriting.com/2022/01/29/murder-at-the-marsh/] but has instead become my signature scent. I also read somewhere that it is the signature scent of French women, so in this case, logic is firmly on my side.

As for the ones that did join the sad list, there is Yves St. Laurent’s In Love Again. Like Orange Blossoms, it came, went, came back—but then disappeared for good. My tenuous connection with YSL was thus severed, and Fragonard took his place as my French perfumer [https://oldladywriting.com/2019/06/09/when-did-the-arc-de-triomphe-start-leaning/]. I owe allegiance to Fragonard for (1) creating not just one but—count them—four scents I love (Belle de Nuit, Emilie, Etoile, and Fragonard itself), (2) not attempting to cancel any of them, and (3) supplying me with its version of Orange Blossoms during the dark period when Lush did not.

Yes, this is a photo of the actual perfumes in my bathroom. All accounted for. Vecrīga is in the middle.

Some years ago, my erstwhile BFF asked what gift I wanted from the homeland; I had trouble coming up with something that I could not get here, and requested a bottle of Red Moscow perfume. Her cousin finally located it in a Soviet nostalgia shop in actual Moscow, and the two of them could not be dissuaded from the conclusion that this peculiar retro item was meant for my ancient grandmother. Rumor has it that it existed before the Revolution of 1917 as The Empress’ Favorite Bouquet, and was renamed like so many things during the Soviet era. I had no idea what it would smell like, and just thought it would be something weird at best, and most likely fetid. But you know what? I love it. It is a very strong floral chypre (there are those orange blossoms again, though I cannot detect them in it) that lasts from morning till night. There is something symbolic as well as ironic in the existence of a fragrance that survived two ages of empires—and hopefully will outlast a third.

And so what is this custom scent that I chose? Tulips and mimosa. Surprised? Tulips do have a smell, albeit a very subtle and delicate one. Mimosa—the flower, not the drink—overwhelms in this particular combination, but I am fine with that. In my childhood, mimosa was the earliest blooming flower of spring, omnipresent on March 8, International Women’s Day. The smell of this perfume conjures bouquets of those fuzzy yellow balls on the desks of all the girls in class. One of the big benefits of that egalitarian society was that no one was excluded, unlike the mortifying Valentine Day popularity contests in the U.S.[3] The homeroom teacher insured that all the boys participated, and all the girls got flowers, and sometimes even perfume, though I do not recall what kind (in any case, it would not have been Red Moscow). And now Queen’s Bouquet © (see what I did there?) recalls one of the most pure memories of my joyful childhood during these complicated times…[4]

[1] https://scentcrafters.com/

[2] I found a lovely write up which made me regret just slightly that I have never really sniffed Vecrīga myself. But, in my younger days, I would not have appreciated it, and now, I have enough, so all is well. And in any case, I still have never been to Riga. https://www.fragrantica.com/news/Spirit-of-the-City-Riga-in-Dzintars-fragrances-18365.html

[3] Do I even need to mention that the only carnations that I got in high school were from female friends?

[4] The many links to the previous blog posts are for my new subscriber(s) who might have missed them in the past. [insert smiley face]

Those Two Guys in a Painting in The Hague

I spent a summer in the Netherlands when I was in high school, and still feel that I know it better than anything. Those youthful impressions are just so much sharper than later ones, when everything sort of starts blending together. Besides, I kept a diary. It was the age before digital cameras, let alone camera phones, and a thousand words were cheaper and easier than a picture to be developed. What led me to the Netherlands in the first place is a longer story that stretches all the way back to my childhood, so will wait to be told another time, but today I am reminiscing about my first independent (meaning, unaccompanied by adults or even Dutch siblings) trip of that summer. It was to The Hague. Being the seat of government, home of the Queen *and* the International Court of Justice, as well as the other major museum in the country, it was the natural choice.

I set my alarm for 5 a.m., and once it buzzed, immediately turned it off and slept for three more hours. By quarter after 8, I was on the bus, and by a minute to 9 on the train heading to The Hague. I noted in my diary that a roundtrip train ticket from Amersfoort cost 27.80 guilders, which would have been around $9 at the time[1]. In a state of light but persistent confusion, changing trains in Rotterdam, I finally arrived, purchased a map sorely lacking in detail, and after several false starts made my way to Binnenhof and its Ridderzaal, home of the Dutch Parliament and the royal throne. I could have sworn that I went on a tour, but the diary (present recollection refreshed) denies it and confirms only that I saw an exhibit about the queen (Beatrix at the time) and the Dutch government. (I returned to The Hague a couple of weeks later, just for this, and a good thing, too—I have never seen it since).

I definitely did go to Mauritshuis, which was under restoration, and most of the paintings were displayed in the house of Johan de Witt. This may or may not explain why I have no recollection of seeing “The Goldfinch” and “The Girl with the Pearl Earring” at that time (books were not written about either one yet), but I was very impressed by Rembrandt’s “The Anatomy Lesson”. All these guys are hanging on Dr. Tulp’s every word, but then there are two—one a little dazed, probably by the presence of the cadaver, and one who is staring right at the audience, clearly thinking, what the heck am I doing here, at this boring lecture with this gross corpse? Way to break the fourth wall, Rembrandt[2]!

After some more chaos caused by my crap map, I found Panorama Mesdag, the very cool painting of 19^th century Scheveningen in the round (the diary says “last century”, but now the diary itself is from the last century, making the panorama from the “century before last”). And then I made my way to the Peace Palace. I do remember waiting a bit for an English language excursion, eating ice cream on the grass. It was a great tour, very informative, and the malachite vases that were the gift of the Russian czar made a particular impression on me. I even got to sit on the lawyers bench, dreaming of someday. That particular day never came, but I did have a professor who litigated at the International Court of Justice, so there is that, less than six degrees of separation.

The only photo from my first trip.
What even IS this?!

As the final sight of The Hague, I was determined to see the Queen’s palace, Huis ten Bosch. It was quite a trek, and a waste of time, because it is literally surrounded by woods. I walked by the gate several times before I gathered the courage to ask the guard if the Queen lives here. He said yes, but she is currently on vacation. It was enough of a thrill for me. I do have to add that my only brush, if we may even call it that, with royalty was when spouse and I glimpsed Juan Carlos I in his limo (or something) pulling out of the royal palace in Madrid as we were coming out of the garden. We do not talk about that exciting moment when we complain about The First Spanish Trip. https://oldladywriting.com/2020/11/02/the-first-spanish-trip/ But I digress.

The second visit to The Hague[3] was 20 years later, and almost 20 years ago, so there is a slight pattern here. We went to the Mauritshuis, now fully restored, and infinitely more crowded. I still missed “The Goldfinch”, for again, the book was not yet written. We then stumbled onto It Rains Fishes, a restaurant I read about in a guidebook, but did not seek out because I have learned to mistrust guidebooks. And thus the day was lost, but also gained, because the lunchtime meal in this Indonesian/Malaysian restaurant remains one of my Top Three dining experiences to this day. I was recently trying to remember the particulars of it, but all we could recall was the tiny green pea puree amuse bouche. My notes say that spouse had steak and crème brulée, and that I had seafood curry and rum caramel shake. We spent about $100, which was quite expensive for both the times and time of day, but the elegant décor, lovely music, and superb service made it worth it.

No one took photos of food 20 years ago, so It Rains Fishes lives only in mine and spouse’s memories. This is not it.

This year, the Annual Girls Trip took my mother and me to the Netherlands. We moved at a pace significantly slower than the frenetic speed of my teenage years, and mostly hung around Amsterdam, but could not miss paying homage to the Mauritshuis paintings that have been made more famous by books.

I have a logical, if not infallible, sense of direction, and a rich collection of memories (as some of these writings demonstrate, I hope). But The Hague looked entirely unfamiliar from the moment I exited the train station. I do not mean that it changed, but somehow I could not summon any visions of the city from my previous visits. My recollections of the gate to Huis ten Bosch and Peace Palace were not tested, Binnenhof was/is disappointingly closed for renovation, and It Rains Fishes closed down permanently. There was no déjà vu until I saw the staircase within Mauritshuis—I recalled ascending it with spouse on our prior visit. This time, I paid particular attention to “The Goldfinch”, and was relieved that he was fine after his ordeal[4]. And then I saw that panic-stricken guy desperately plotting his escape from Dr. Tulp’s gruesome anatomy lesson as he has done for almost 400 years, and all was well with the world.

Ars longa, vita brevis.

[1] It is about three times more now, but I am not sure that it is not a fair increase for four decades.

[2] Fun fact: in the copy which is in Edinburgh and not attributed to Rembrandt, all the observers are staring at Dr. Tulp or the corpse—and this alone makes it inferior. Don’t bother with it.

[3] Technically, the third, because I visited The Hague twice during that summer in high school.

[4] I know the theft of this painting is a fiction, but I have been mildly anxious about the fate of missing artworks for most of my life. I am still not entirely convinced that the original portrait of Whistler’s mother does not hang in Mr. Bean’s bedroom, and give the Musée d’Orsay’s version a knowing wink every time I see it.

Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are

When I first read “Hamlet” in a high school literature class, Shakespeare’s language was still difficult and unfamiliar, but I immediately and always felt affection for its conflicted [anti]hero. A family friend told me about “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead”, which I also immediately read, intrigued by the concept, and understood nothing. I have seen some magnificent productions of “Hamlet” over the years, and have been fortunate to ponder and debate its themes with folks much smarter and more astute than myself. Until now, I have never seen the parallel universe version.

When “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern” rolled into Toronto, with two of the Hobbits, Dominic Monaghan and Billy Boyd, as the leads, I was determined to make the trek. Now, the Hobbit connection is of no use to me—I slept through all those movies, sitting upright and with my eyes wide open, and actually listened to the book on tape, all 197 hours of it, and retained none of it. But, I appreciate both the tremendous stage training and presence of the British actors, and the immense talent of Tom Stoppard, one of the greatest—if not THE greatest—living playwrights. I have come a long way since I first read his words.

Toronto, on occasion, has served as an extension of my theater playground. It tends to have a slightly different lineup for big Broadway shows through the Mirvish theaters, and some straight plays in addition to the major musicals. I do not know the city, just how to find my way to the couple of theaters and, obviously, to the Hockey Hall of Fame. My favorite restaurant, Le Marché, fell victim to the pandemic economy, so the play was truly the only focus of this trip.

I was not disappointed (spoiler alert: far from it!). But I was surprised. My memory of this play was so hazy as to be almost nonexistent. I just knew what is common knowledge: absurdist tragicomedy, similar to “Waiting for Godot”, minor characters from a major play. All of this is technically true, and none of it is sufficient. I did not find it absurdist but actually quite heartfelt and authentic—unless life is absurd, and that is a premise that I refuse to countenance. And as for being minor characters—well, maybe they only passed through “Hamlet”, but they are the heroes of their own story. I was reminded of how Fredrik Bakman weaves the same cast of characters through several novels, with some front and center in one book but only episodically appearing in another. Stoppard did it earlier.

These guys were so gentle and genuine. Rosencrantz in particular was sweet, befuddled, with a hint of Eric Idle-esque wide-eyed mischief. Guildenstern was a bit more anxious and focused, and also wistful. There is so much to absorb and contemplate. They live in a parallel universe and we know how their story will end, but they do not know it. They are not entirely sure of anything, including the limits of their own power and will. They are floundering, but they are living—as are we all. And that is really the story. We might think that they do not have agency, but that is only because the title of the play gives it away. And even despite that, I was waiting for it to unfold differently. I did not get the sense that they are marching toward an inevitable conclusion. They are just making some decisions that will affect their lives in dire ways—as do we all. The Casablanca quote came to my mind, the one about how “the problems of three [let alone two—OLW] little people don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world”.

And there is no predestination, just a series of circumstances and how people make the best, and occasionally the worst, of them, because they are not omniscient. It is a story of two guys who are not necessarily worse than anyone else. And in this production, it also helped that Hamlet himself was the worst character in the ensemble: bearded middle aged man, prone to bulging eyes, with a startlingly booming voice and an utterly charmless manner. He was manipulative, callous, and revenge-driven. It was impossible to care, let alone root, for him. Perhaps that was intentional, but I do not know the play—I only know what I felt. This all goes back to who controls the narrative—“who tells your story”.

And so this experience just confirmed, yet again, my firm belief that plays need to be seen, and the power of live theatre to make one think and feel is unsurpassed. I wrote before about that one moment for which I wait in each show, and here there was the instance that I realized what is coming, and spouse whispered to me, “This is how they die”. So invested was I that I forgot the title of show! And then when Guildenstern said, “There must have been a moment, at the beginning, where we could have said — no. But somehow we missed it”. It broke my heart. And that is really it; “the rest is silence”.

Tooth Fairy

Last year, I lost my favorite tooth. I mean, I did not misplace it, nor did it fall out. It was surgically removed. This tooth, #6, was my first root canal and my first crown. My own grandfather put the crown on it, made from a melted down earring, and it lasted for decades. Eventually, the crown wore out, and then the tooth itself. There was even another root canal in the mix, so suffice it to say, #6 and I were bonded by hardship. On the day when #6 and I finally parted ways, the nurse offered me nitrous oxide and oxygen, and how could I say no? I welcome any option that results in less or no pain for me.

Jubilee Square. Motorbuilders Palace is on the left. The clinic is on the right.

As I was dutifully breathing in and out, an unbidden memory came to me, of me and my classmates trooping down Lenin Avenue to the Jubilee Square (the one with the Motorbuilders Palace [https://oldladywriting.com/2020/08/18/valor-and-glory-of-the-motorbuilders/]. In my mind’s eye, I saw the golden Russian autumn sung by poets, maple leaves everywhere, the only melancholy season of an ever-sunshiny year. The school year has begun long ago enough to be a bore and a burden, and the time has come for one of the most unpleasant organized events of the Soviet school system—the dental checkup. It is about a mile from the school to the clinic—the longest mile. If ever I felt like a lamb to the slaughter, this was most certainly the time. Usually, I got some kind of exemption, being raised by dentists and being dragged to the children’s dental clinic by my grandmother on my own free time, but that day, I was all out of aces. It is also possible that this was shortly after my grandmother took me to the clinic and I escaped, bolting out of the torture chair and making it halfway through Jubilee Square before I was captured (traffic in those days was unimpressive, but not nonexistent—I was absolutely in danger of being struck by a bus, a fate still preferable to any dental procedure). I have to add, individual cabinets are a Western luxury. In Soviet Russia, an army of Orin Scrivello clones with their whirring drills were leaning over screaming kids in one big room in a fog of ether.

I have a lot to say about growing up in an apartment where our kitchen doubled as the prosthodontist’s office, but that is another story for another time. But one thing I know is true, and that is that our home never smelled of ether. Maybe grandpa had no access to it. Maybe the smells of grandma’s cooking overwhelmed. Regardless, the scents of home were not medicinal. And I know this because had I been immune to these odors, I would not have been so jolted into panic each time I entered a Soviet dental clinic and been positively engulfed by that distinct piercing stench. A mere whiff was enough to activate the fight-or-flight instinct. It was always flight, because fighting presumes staying, and there are no fools. Flee, always flee.

The unintended consequence of my recurrent, determined, and frantic rejections of the most feared dental procedures was that my grandmother gave up (a precursor of things to come—a scythe came upon a stone, as in, she met her match when it comes to wills of iron), leaving me at the mercy of the school system. And so began the long march.

The clinic where my grandmother worked. The was not just dentistry here, but other tortures as well. To be continued…

I always think of that BBC commercial, “They say one’s cows are mad, they say one’s dentistry is diabolical” when I think of the dentists of my childhood. My grandfather did not work with children and was overwhelmingly busy with his relentless stream of patients, and my grandmother—well, I did not trust her. More specifically, I did not trust in her not taking care to not inflict pain. (Well, that was a lot of “nots”—also emblematic of my childhood).

That day, which my classmates and I anticipated with varying degree of fear but with unanimous distaste, was the source of much scheming. While most of them were fairly resigned to this grim fate, I had one accomplice whose fear of the dentist actually exceeded my own. His name was Max, and he was a freethinker. I am told he eventually became an alcoholic, a fate not only unsurprising but entirely predictable given both his environment and spirit (no pun intended). But when I knew him, ages seven to 12, he was a shrewd kid with a profound dislike of conformity and authority. He was non-confrontational but steadfast in his avoidance of anything extra. He was the epitome of “quiet quitting” decades ahead of its time. One of his catchphrases was “And the lesson is going on”, whispered to me whenever a teacher would get distracted and go off on a tangent, meaning that while time is getting wasted, no work gets done, and that is its own reward. Max never got any exemptions from attending mandatory events, and yet he never attended them. He just did not show up. He was reprimanded, chastised, shamed, and accused of being an “individualist”. He gave zero you-know-well-whats. He was, of course, a member of my Link. [https://oldladywriting.com/2023/11/11/scrap-metal-fiasco/]

Max and I conferred and confirmed that we were not going to the dentist, with the class or without. Ever. We did not have the audacity to just not show up to school that day—that seemed just too brazen, and we were not hooligans. We were conscientious objectors. And so, as the column of the condemned dragged itself along that familiar tree-lined alley, led by our fearsome homeroom teacher, the grammatically and socially challenged instructor of algebra and geometry, the two of us simply ducked into the labyrinth of yards off Lenin Avenue. Without any regard for consequences, we ran for our lives. We were not good friends, merely coconspirators. We quickly went our own way, but for one brief shiny moment, we were bound by the shared taste of complete and utter freedom.

Lenin Ave. We escaped between those yellow buildings on the left. Photo taken in January; alas, I have no autumnal images to share.

And all these many years later, in a dental surgery under the calming influence of gas, it all came back to me, the sepia colors and the smell of fall leaves, the voices of my young comrades, the distinct flavor of childhood of unlimited future and potential, and the feeling of my long ago and far away home deep in my bones. It never ceases to amaze me how memories can be summoned by the most unlikely agents and at the most unlikely times. And how joy can be found even in the middle of pain.

Papa Taught Hebrew in Harbin

My grandmother used to tell me stories about her childhood, in the 1920s, which were both exotic and relatable. She was only 45 when I was born, which seemed ancient to me, of course, but now I know that the half century mark is prime time for reflection and reminiscing. We are unreliable narrators of our own lives, and the charm of her mischievous and adventurous early years in the small provincial town on the Volga remains the biggest shared treasure of our fraught relationship.

Now that I am the age that she was when she was raising me, I realize how memory shifts as time goes by. In her telling, she was a spirited and inquisitive child that was frequently in trouble with her humorless but loving parents. The irony that these were the qualities she most deplored in me escaped me then. I also bought into this portrayal of her parents for the time being, while years later it came to me that perhaps the character trait she most chose to emulate—grim rigidity—was the least praiseworthy attribute of this couple. They never seemed quite real, just shadows of semi-forgotten ancestors, even though less time separated my childhood from them than from today.

I recently read “People Love Dead Jews” by Dara Horn. In this book, which had me both nodding in agreement and holding my breath, I came across a chapter about the Jewish community in Harbin in early 20^th century. I do not know if more is written about this place and time in history, but this was the first time I gasped in recognition: “Papa taught Hebrew in Harbin”. For among grandmother’s stories was always this nugget: her father spent several years in Harbin, teaching Hebrew to children while his brothers were running a business there. This has always been just a naked, stand-alone fact, and when I was a child, it always seemed like enough information. Great-grandfather, whom no one in my world besides grandma and her brother ever met, for he died before The War and before she left her hometown that neither my mom nor I ever even visited, was always described as a stern disciplinarian and seemed sufficiently boring to not merit additional investigation. But grandma’s own childhood memories of her father speaking Chinese to make the neighborhood kids laugh echoed my own delight when her brother, my beloved great uncle, would pretend to speak Chinese to me. I knew he was faking it, but he was so delightfully comical!

I finally learned that this interlude in great-grandfather’s life was not random, as I always assumed without additional thought. Fortunately for me and mine, his ultimate fate was arguably better than that of many of the people he would have known in Harbin—and that is saying a lot, considering that he returned to his hometown of Lyozna, Belarus [1] (at some point before getting engaged to my great-grandmother on June 12, 1919 in Vitebsk[2]), got married and had two children, lived through the darkest years of Stalinism, and died before he was 60 in 1940.

I have been an immigrant since I was a teenager. I have traveled. I spent two summers in Europe, and I have been to China on a work trip, to the beautiful and sophisticated Shanghai, which is actually nowhere near Harbin and has a completely different history. Every day of my professional life, I talk to people who have, at a minimum, spent several years in a foreign country. Until now, I have not thought of this remote, unknown man’s journey, his years (how many?) in a much colder climate, in a completely different world. I never imagined that he had his own “stranger in a strange land” journey.

As a child I did not know enough about the world to imagine China at the beginning of the 20^th century. I never gave a single thought to how great-grandfather traveled so far—and back—what kind of business these nameless brothers of his had, why and when did he return to Belarus, eventually making his way to and settling in Russia proper. My grandmother was not a person who did not talk about the past, but I do not know how much she knew about that period of her father’s life. Somewhere along the way, there was some falling out with these uncles that severed the family ties for all eternity (they were not welcome to attend their brother’s funeral). It might have been related to this business in China, but grandmother’s own mother never told her. In those days, people did not ask; children did not question their parents. It is nearly impossible for me to understand the respectful yet reserved, affectionate yet distant relationships of that bygone era. To the families of these great-uncles, whoever and wherever they are, my family is the missing link, the lost tribe. Do their descendants remember today that there was another brother, another uncle? Is this Harbin interlude a part of their family lore? Sometimes I lament the loss of family memories to family feuds on top of the already precarious and unreliable way history was treated in the Soviet Union. Other times, I concede that maybe it is only natural that the lives of ordinary people do not survive generational memories.

Dara Horn’s book gave me an unexpected glimpse into my great-grandfather’s unknowable life. There is a connection that survives time and space, and a memory that is a blessing.

זיכרונו לברכה אַבְרָהָם

[1] The birthplace of Moishe Shagal, aka Marc Chagall. I wonder if they knew each other? They would have been contemporaries.

[2] The only exact date in this narrative, because my great-grandparents’ engagement announcement somehow survived time and distance, and I treasure it.

Fortress By the Sea

A few years ago, I updated my Vacation Bucket List. I am not nearly as adventurous a traveler as people think I am. I like castles, cathedrals, and art museums. After I saw Raphael’s Sistine Madonna at the Dresden Gallery, a moment for which I was waiting almost my entire life, I was temporarily adrift. It was the apex of my dreams. I even had to ask spouse for suggestions on where we should go next, which is how we ended up at Oktoberfest (worth every crowded, beer-soaked minute, and a story for another time). I needed to brainstorm. Many of my travel ideas have been known to come from books, and I have followed the footsteps of some favorite characters. In my adult life, none touched my heart more than Uhtred of Bebbanburg, the imperfectly perfect hero of Bernard Cornwell’s Saxon Chronicles.

All his life Uhtred was pining for his fortress by the sea. I have been pining alongside him, from the first book which I read in 2009. He regained Bebbanburg in the 10^th book, and after that, the last three books were superfluous and I do not remember them (although that might be partially because my shorter term memory is declining with age). But really, much like “The Odyssey”, the quest was the story. All the other plotlines were just there to support this lifelong journey of Uhtred back home. From the beginning, I could identify with his longing. I always felt that I was essentially a female, modern-day version of Uhtred. There are some subtle differences, mainly related to the sword-wielding, but basically, I am Uhtred. His feeling of yearning for his lost ancestral home defined him and gave his life purpose, and I identified with that completely. I spent so much time listening to Uhtred wax nostalgic about his ancestral fortress by the sea, I had to see it for myself. I had to see the sight of the happy ending.

Bebbanburg, under its modern name of Bamburgh, is in the very north of England, in Northumberland, and is much closer to Edinburgh than London. Once that simple geographical equation became clear to me, the rest was easy. I planned a trip to Glasgow, because I have already been to Edinburgh once before, and Glasgow, from where all the rugged and rogue BBC policemen seem to come, was as yet unexplored and still a mere couple of hours from Bamburgh. (Yes, where I come from we measure distance in hours).

An honorable Bucketless mention goes to my valiant effort of driving from Glasgow to Bamburgh. Even in Europe, trains do not reach every corner of the continent, and one car ride is always simpler than two trains, a bus, and a cab. I will not lie, anxiety was high, and even as someone to whom driving is as natural as walking, I was by no means sure that either the car or its passengers will emerge unscathed from this trip.

And yet we did. I never, ever, not in any demented fantasy, pictured myself driving on the wrong side of the road. But once I did, I realized that the wrong side of the road is not the problem, you just move along (and the helpful “Drive on the left” sticker became a mantra I constantly whispered to myself). It’s sitting on the wrong side of the car, with all that unaccustomed space on the left where nothing but the door should be, that is the real issue. It is difficult to stay within the lines and not veer to the left. If I had a continental car, it would have been a piece of cake. In any case, no one got hurt, and I never want to do it again in this lifetime—even though I am quite inordinately proud of having done it. But seriously, it was not enjoyable at all.

Driving up to Bamburgh castle from the road, seeing it just suddenly come into view, imagining what those Vikings must have seen over a millennium ago as they approached this imposing stone bastion—well, all I could do was yell “Foto machen!”at the spouse, as I could not pull over for fear that I would lose my precarious driving momentum. Is it beautiful? Of course. The current owners—not Uhtred’s descendants, alas—do a good job of displaying the history of the area and showcasing the connection to “The Last Kindgom” (not the books, but the TV series, which I, expectedly, found to be a pale shadow of the books). The castle is majestic, and the views of the North Sea from the ramparts are stunning. The village at the foot of the fortress is charming and picturesque.

I have seen a lot of castles in my lifetime, including an exhausting obligatory field trip of the Loire Valley during my semester in France, at the end of which I could not imagine that a time would come when I would voluntarily seek out a chateau if I was not required to write an essay about it. Oh, the irony! Last year, I visited Mont St. Michel, another bucket list item, certainly more famous in the world, and arguably more magnificent, in the eye of any beholder. But, I have never read a book about Mont St. Michel, let alone an epic full of longing for home, a decades-long quest to regain one’s destiny, a story of homesickness and loss that echoed in my heart with every installment of Uhtred’s journey’s many setbacks and heartbreaks.

This is why Bebbanburg. It is not just a cool castle. And it is not even just a cool story. It’s THE story. Uhtred loses parents and parental figures, siblings, wives, children, and friends. He lives a life that is not his, a life that was thrust upon him by circumstances and the wills of others. He goes viking, serves and follows orders of people he hates and who hate him, fights in foreign wars, has adventures, achieves success, fame, and fortune, and makes friends for life. Yet through it all, he just wants to go home. Bebbanburg is the reality of his childhood, the dream of his adult life, and ultimately the recaptured reality of his old age. He went home again, and he stayed home. It was exhilarating to stand on those ramparts and imagine him there, his life’s goal achieved. We should all be so blessed to end our journey exactly where we belong.

Scrap Metal Fiasco

“Nothing that happens to us after we are twelve matters very much.” J.M. Barrie

I must preface the following with a disclaimer. I have told this story so often that I am pretty certain I have already written it, so if you have already heard or read it, please let me know (and like it anyway).

I was six years old when I cautioned myself to beware, for I was surrounded by people who were not smarter than me. It might have been a devastating realization to a child that young. Instead, it was an inspiration to rally and rely on myself—the old “trust but verify” (which is, in fact, a Russian proverb), minus the trust. I proceeded to have an eventful childhood full of hijinks, camaraderie, and a singular focus on defying authority. Almost half a century later, I stand by every shenanigan, and only wish I had made more mischief. “Forget regret or life is yours to miss”—Jonathan Larson was also right.

In some late years of the seemingly never-ending stagnation of Leonid Brezhnev’s rule, I was a Young Pioneer. Surrounded by like-minded and like-spirited delinquents-in-training, I vacillated between apathy and active defiance, usually settling on an attitude of passive aggression. My class of just under thirty pupils[1] was divided into three “links”, similar to a coed Cub Scout den without parents. In the most disorganized, wild, and irresponsible class, I predictably belonged to the laziest and most undisciplined link. There were eight of us, if memory serves, which included a core group of restless and adventurous girlfriends, and a couple of unpopular boys. To snatch defeat out of the jaws of any potential victory was almost a point of honor for me and my young comrades. To be fair, we usually started out doing what we were supposed to, and proceeded to fail in an epic manner. None illustrates this better than the one time we collected scrap metal. So unmitigated was this disaster that our entire school was banned from this time-honored activity for my remaining time back in the USSR.

The day of scrap metal collection, Link One and Three departed post haste in search thereof. We members of Link Two briefly lingered in class. Our Link Leader, an earnest, sweet girl who stood alone in our entire class as a follower of the prevailing ideology, made a short motivational speech along the lines of, do not attempt to evade your Young Pioneer duty. This motivated the rest of us to want to bail on the whole thing, but someone yelled “Construction”, and we rallied.

There used to be a small park next to my school with a couple of see-saws and slides. I used to come there on field trips with my daycare, and it was still there when I was in first grade. However, by the start of second grade, the little friendly playground was demolished and taken over by construction of the regional archives. Five years later, the site of the stalled construction was the school’s perpetual grim neighbor[2]. There was a crane which never seemed to move, and the more daring of us enjoyed crawling through the hole in the fence and all over what looked like the ruins of an old fortress[3].

And so of course construction (and we called it just that, as in “let’s go and find some metal at the construction”) became our first target. Several of us filed through the habitual hole in the fence, but were dismayed to find that the site was picked over. The better organized and more ideologically focused Links One and Three already raided it and carried off all the spare metal! As I say, my little gang was always a day late and a ruble short. We took a couple of abandoned hammers and managed to detach a piece of pipe we determined to be nonessential, but it was not nearly enough. (Surprisingly, no one thought to cut the fence down for scraps).

My school was located in a residential urban area, surrounded by apartment buildings. It was an older, more established area of the city, though not quite the prestigious historic center. Raiding the surrounding courtyards, we added a couple of unattended shovels and rakes to our bounty. It was a bit of a task to stop the boys from hitting each other with the shovels, but I do not recall any significant injuries during this escapade.

In one of the courtyards, we spotted a child playing with a toy metal wagon and attempted to negotiate surrender, but his vigilant grandma chased us off with a broom. We also kept losing link members with every encounter, kind of like when Three Musketeers started off for England in search of the queen’s diamonds. Getting distracted, losing interest, and entirely changing course was typical behavior for me and my friends during any school-sanctioned undertaking.

Still, five intrepid girls persevered, and fortune really smiled on us when we encountered a clearly abandoned metal bed frame in one of the courtyards—with wheels, and even a mattress to boot! Never questioning why a bed would be parked near an apartment building entrance, we immediately threw off the unnecessary ballast of a mattress, situated our rakes, shovels, and hammers on the springs, and proceeded to move the bed on out. It was a swift and stealthy getaway, several middle-schoolers in school uniforms[4] earnestly pushing a bed along a lively avenue. Some passers-by stared, some wondered, none dared to stop the purposeful Young Pioneers.

Not the image of that actual bed. It is surprising how a search for “metal bed with wheels” only comes up with images of hospital beds…

What should have been the long-sought success not just for our merry band of misfits but for the entire class went decidedly pear shaped, for the owners of the all this paraphernalia (neighbors in the process of moving, careless gardeners, construction supervisor) eventually found their way to our school and claimed their belongings. The worst part was that the bulk of our bounty, the bed and garden tools, was easily returned with apologies because—private property, so a “remnant of the past”, in the ideology of the times. It was the looting of the construction site—“plunder of state property”—that was the real offense, and our couple of hammers and the piece of nonessential pipe were the least of it. The more proactive students got there before us and in their zeal carried off everything that was not nailed down, and some things that were, including the nails themselves. I never got the opportunity to participate in collecting scrap metal again, but I will never forget our glorious entry into the school courtyard, riding on a bed, wielding a rake—Young Pioneer triumphant!

[1] In the Soviet Union, and I believe in today’s Russia as well, you moved from grade 1 to 8 with the same group of 30 or so students, took the same classes, and had the same teachers. In my school, there were 3 classes to a “parallel”. After grade 8, a third of the students who did not pass the high school entrance exams would go on to trade and vocational schools, and the rest were reshuffled into 2 classes. My school, which housed grades 1 to 10 (and later, the added 11^th grade), would graduate about 60 students from high school.

[2] First, not a uniquely Soviet issue. Second, when I visited in 2018, I saw the unimpressive final product. I did not even take a picture of it. (I found this on GoogleMaps)

[3] If this is not a classic example of “attractive nuisance”, I do not know what is. What we thought we were getting versus what we got (not actual photos).

[4] Brown woolen dresses with black aprons.

…and Bratislava

I always assumed that if I made it to Vienna, I would have to add a day for Bratislava. Fun fact: Vienna and Bratislava are two closest European capitals in terms of distance, so I understand that it is a common side trip, but that was never my reasoning. I generally do not like to “gallop through Europe”, as the saying goes. I learned to not overplan from experience (although my consequential plunge into underplanning has resulted in some unintended and occasionally hilarious jams—but that is another story for another time). I like to take in the sights and go at my own pace, and I dislike leaving a place without exploring it fully. So short story long, if I am going somewhere, I am not also going somewhere else. However, what led me to Bratislava was not its proximity to Vienna, but that Trip That Never Happened 42 years ago.

To be fair, Bratislava was never going to be more than a train connection on our original journey. We always knew that we were not going to see the town. It was an almost unimaginably different world back then. Europe was still divided into East and West, and getting from East to West was complicated even with a passport. A moot point, in any case, because we had no passports. We no longer had passports because we no longer had citizenship of any country, none at all. We were put on a train heading out of the USSR, and the first stop was Bratislava. Czechoslovakia was still united, and Bratislava was not a national capital of anything.

We disembarked in Bratislava and waited for the train to take us into the *real* West, to Vienna. On that cold and lonely platform in December of 1980, I do not remember any other passengers. It was just the four of us, my mom and grandparents and I, and we stood there with our two suitcases per person for what seemed like hours. This might be an invented memory, but I remember going into the train station itself and seeing chewing gum for sale (if you ever heard how prized it was in the Soviet Union—it’s all true!). Could we have just walked into the city? Were there any guards who would have stopped us? It is impossible to know now, because the only tangible goal was to get on that train heading to Vienna. These days, the hour-long trip between the two cities is almost akin to a suburban commuter ride. Back then, one travelled from the Eastern Block to the Capitalist West in a fancy sleeper compartment, and I remember it taking hours—probably because of border control. My mother remembers red velvet upholstery; I do not.

But there IS a vending machine selling dairy products

And so Bratislava remained something I never even pictured, just a footnote to a trip to Vienna. The only part of a this visit I could envision was arriving at that train station and walking past that kiosk selling gum and sundries out into an unimaginable town. Medieval? Baroque? Modern? The important part was the station, the kiosk, the sunlit town square. None of them turned out to be real in 2022.

My persistence in going to Bratislava in the face of my mother’s mild opposition; my brisk realization that in this century, trains to and from Vienna connect to Bratislava via a suburban station and not the main one, preventing the recreation of that long ago voyage; brief panic about having to also get on a bus to get to city center—none of these are worth recounting. Well, maybe the briefest of mentions—repeatedly seeing the words “Bratislava Petrzalka” instead of “Bratislava Central” or “Bratislava Hlavna” led this sophisticated traveler and polyglot to feverishly search the interwebs for a route into the city (get on the bus in this area, alarmingly advised the web, never take the taxi). Otherwise, we would be walking out of the train station into a somewhat grim peripheral disappointment and then right back to Vienna, as per tradition.

Ultimately, I feel like I gave Bratislava a short shrift. We walked around a bit, enjoyed the most lavish meat feast I could ever imagine (allegedly for two people, but there were six meat servings), encountered another Christmas market (again, mostly meat), saw some charming medieval sites, and hightailed it back to Vienna before dark. But I think Bratislava deserves more than just a couple of hours. It seemed like a lovely town I would like to get to know better. I would have liked to visit its castle high above the city, its churches and museums, taste the local wine at a very cool cellar by which I walked, and learn more about the effect the decoupling from Czechia had on Slovakia. I could have researched and planned prior to going, but I think the existence of this town was simply too fantastic to contemplate. Now that I know that it is real, we need to be properly introduced.

Vienna Waited for Me

***I simply could not allow the last entry for this year to be the one from February 12th. It is almost impossible to imagine now how different the world was then. And while #oldladywriting is not chronological, I do occasionally respond to current events. The trouble is, the events of the past ten months have altered my life in ways invisible but irrevocable, have killed my soul, and have not yet been processed to the point where I can write about them. At all. And yet, the pre-war post must not stand at the last one. So here we go. And for the record, we here at #oldladywriting are, and have always been, against wars of aggression.***

Almost 42 years to the day I was first supposed to come to Vienna, I finally did. I was trying to imagine what it would have been like to have seen it back then, but it could have been like my first encounter with Rome, chaotic and no-budget. https://oldladywriting.com/2021/01/18/roman-holiday/ Vienna was supposed to have been our first stop out of the Soviet Union, and it actually seemed more real than Rome, the planned second stop that ended up being the first. For me, the main reason was that shortly before our departure flight, I saw a segment on Vienna on the TV program, Cinema Travel Club. Why “cinema” travels? Because the vast majority of Soviet citizens had no realistic hope of seeing any of these sights in person. But I did. I knew we were going to Vienna. I think the program was careful not to show any capitalist sights as too enticing, so there were no videos of stores or restaurants. I glimpsed the famous statue of Johann Strauss in the city park, and that was enough. I held on to that image, exotic yet relatable, and the arch under which he elegantly held his violin was going to be my personal gateway to the West.

What happened instead in December of 1980 was the first of the many shocks and disappointments of the journey as long as life itself, because instead of allowing a handful of Soviet refugees to roam freely in its stadtpark and look at the gilded statues, the Austrian government preferred to hold us in a detention facility until we could be shipped off to become the Italian government’s problem. And thus, for the next four decades, my only memories of Vienna consisted of an empty train station platform, a terrifying nighttime bus ride to we knew not where, and a crane that was visible beyond the tall brick wall surrounding the courtyard where we could promenade.

Coincidentally, once I got out of a cab at my hotel when I was finally let loose on Vienna, the first thing I saw was a crane on the other bank of the Danube. Surprise—it did not trigger anything. Too much time has passed, and too much has changed. I was mentally and emotionally ready. It was my fifth and finally successful attempt.

Yes, incredibly, I was foiled more than once! The second time was when I was spending my summer in Paris, and after crisscrossing Europe for a month, I planned to swing by Vienna as my final stop. Exhaustion prevailed. I literally got on the train in Amersfoort, realized that I could not face another night on the train, disembarked at the next stop, and returned to my Dutch family for a couple of weeks of playing board games and going to bars. It was what I needed.

The third time was when my son went to Austria as an exchange student, and my mom and I figured we could meet him there. I went so far as to buy a Lonely Planet guide, which I ended up finally using this month. Then my beloved grandfather was diagnosed with cancer and given just weeks to live. All plans for the immediate future were cancelled. He lived another year; no regrets about any missed trips, just gratitude for the time we had. My son brought me back a statuette of Strauss, and I still treasure it.

Finally last year, I came the closest, buying airplane, opera, and Spanische Hofreitshule tickets, and reserving a hotel for a week in Vienna with mom, to celebrate her half-milestone birthday and enjoy the grandest Christmas markets in Europe (and I am nothing if not a lover of Christmas markets). Just days before the trip, the plague closed down Vienna, and the refunds for everything I bought and reserved trickled in.

And so we tried again, a year later. And we succeeded. And ultimately, who knows if me at twelve, with my first Western European encounter, or me at nineteen, with my last backpacking-through-Europe adventure, or me at closing in on forty, with enough to spare but still focused on the career that was in the ascendant, would have enjoyed this city as much? On the flip side, would it have touched me in some more remarkable way than it did now, after decades of semi-luxury travel?

As one gets older, sees more, experiences more, those thunderbolts out of the sky experiences are fewer and far between. Vienna is a lovely city, but it is just another beautiful European capital. Its museums are grand, but I have been to the Louvre, Prado, and Zwinger—not because I am so fancy, but because I am now so old. The food is delicious, but eating in an expensive restaurant is not the event of the decade that it would have been, well, decades ago. At that detention facility, I was impressed with the miniature butters (being fully aware of the fact that these were not, in fact, holdovers from the Olympics, but were how people in the West ate every day) and Manner wafers. OK, so I still bought several bags of those, but that’s because they were the seasonal kind. I grab everything that’s labeled “seasonal” or “limited edition”.

It was still a gorgeous trip, because, well, look at these museums, palaces, restaurants! For a Euro-centric traveler that I am unashamed to be, there are no complaints here. And the piece of the proverbial resistance—Christmas markets! As much as my allegiance will always rest with the one in Paris, Viennese merchants have pitched tents in literally every open square and alley, so one could basically engage in a punsch and sausage tasting as a progressive walk through the city. As shocked as I was to finally make a trip to a location colder than the one where I live, this experience was absolutely worth it.

And since I am not a travel writer of even the humblest kind, I can only conclude with a brief record of what impressed me the most in the City of Music:

Statue of Strauss – pure nostalgia for me, but in any case, you cannot miss The Waltz King if you come to his town.
The food – everywhere, but especially at the Twelve Apostles, which was recommended by a friend and serves delicious black currant wine. I do not know what a vegetarian, let alone a vegan, would do in Austria, however.
Kunsthistorisches Museum – on par with any great art museum in the world. I was ever so pleased to run into my childhood “friend”, Infanta Margarita.
The Jewish Museum – if you are Jewish, it will confirm your worst suspicions. If you are not, hopefully it will open your eyes.
The Vienna Opera – we saw “Tosca”. I thought “The Magic Flute” would have been more appropriate, but it was my mother’s birthday, and she is the opera connoisseur. I loved it; she less so. I maintain that a live experience is always greater than the televised one, so we agreed to disagree.
The Belvedere Palace – we came for the Klimt, but left completely mesmerized by this 15^th century carved relief altarpiece. How come it is not more famous? (Or is it, and we just don’t know?)
Oh, we also went to Salzburg, which is exactly what you would imagine—quaint, cute, picturesque, and full of Mozart. Definitely worth a side trip.
And Bratislava – to be continued.