Michael Shelby's blog

European Vacation 2011

European Vacation 2011 blog is complete, see below near bottom of first page, after the Aussie Open items.  For the pictures shown below and many more, visit my picture website - European Vacation 2011 link

2012 Australian Open - Day 5

Last day in Australia, it’s gone by so quickly.  I was back out along the river doing my daily run then back to the hotel for shower, breakfast, a little work on the computer, then off to tennis.  The day wasn’t too great, overcast and kind of cool.  The weather here is so weird.  It was 95+ on Wednesday and then just 70 or so on Friday.  This kind of huge swings in temperature doesn’t happen in Atlanta.  We go from upper 80s to 100 once summer hits, we never see a high of 70 here in July or August.  Here's me in front of Rod Laver Arena where I sat for 5 days straight.

So here is who I saw:

Rafael Nadal v Lukas Lacko – Lacko is a qualifier who beat some good people on the way to the third round, including the American Donald Young.  And Nadal has a lot of major titles.  Lacko looked good for the first few games but then Nadal took over and beat him up in less than two hours. 

Roger Federer v Ivo Karlovic – Karlovic is the tallest guy on tour at 6’10”.  That means he had a really good serve, but he didn’t have much else.  Bad backhand, bad forehand.  At the end of the first set Ivo had a set point and hit a really nice drop shot right in front of the net.  Roger ran up and flipped it straight up in the air, heading over Ivos’ head.  Ivo threw his racket up and it grazed the top of the racket but landed behind him.  Somehow Roger had gotten it over this huge dude on set point and came back to win that game and the set.  He then went on to win the match in three sets with Ivo hitting lots winners on his serve along with lots of bad ground strokes.

Alexandr Dogolpolov v Bernard Tomic – This was the match of the day.  People are going crazy for this 19 year old Tomic and the stands were packed.  Alexandr is the 13^th ranked guy at the tourney and Tomic is unranked.  Alexandr plays a crazy game – runs around, hits every shot hard, his serve is a quick toss and hit, and it seems like he is always trying to hit a winner.  This should be an interesting match with Tomic’s painfully boring strategy of hitting soft, low slices to the opponents backhand.  I call watching his tennis the worst thing since unsliced bread.  I want to poke my eyes out when I see him get in a long rally.  So the match starts and Tomic was doing his boring kiddie slices and AD was trying to hit winners off these dinks and dunks.  AD won the first set but then it was really evenly matched the next two sets with Tomic winning the next two in tiebreakers.  AD picked up his game in the fourth set and won it 6-2.  Tomic picked up his game in the fifth and won it with a break in the 8^th game.  The crowd went nuts and he was on to the next round to play Federer on Sunday night.  Craziness will ensue.

Anabel Medina Garrigues v Li Na – Since we had to leave the next day and had to get up at 4am we skipped this last match.  And it was good we got out of there.  AMG twisted her ankle in the 5^th game and couldn’t go on.  Match day 5 over. 

And that was it for Australia.  I went to sleep, got up at 415am and headed to the airport.  Got home 33 hours after I left the airport.  See you next time, land that has summer in January!

2012 Australian Open - Day 4

Morning - 4.5 mile run down the Yarra, breakfast with no celebreties nearby, and on to tennis.  We hoped to have a better set of tennis today after yesterdays string of blowouts.  I understand blowouts in the first round but if you make it to the second round I assume you should be good.  I shouldn't assume. 

Maria Sharapova v Jamie Hampton - Hampton is American, our future in tennis.  And if that is true we are in trouble.  Maria lost one game, her second straight 6-0, 6-1 victory.  Hampton was slow, didn't have any winners, and Maria killed her.  Maria did look good in her new Nike dress and she grunted every time she hit the ball.  Zzzzzz.  But here's what the match looked like!

Serena Willams v Barbora Zahlavova Strycova  - Serena is a giant, she could kick my ass.  And she did that to Barbora in the first set.  Then somehow Barbora got some winners in the second set while Serena was hitting balls all over the court.  She even had trouble serving on one side of the court because of the sun and was resigned to tossing the ball really low and hitting slice serves every time.  But quality shines through I guess and she made enough shots to win. 

Beer Break!  As I have tended to do this week, I left before the end of this match to grab a beer and spend some time out in the sun.  It was so beautiful this week and sitting in the tennis center in our covered seats didn't give me a great feel for the summertime weather.  I walked out of the arena, grabbed a beer at the Corporate snack booth (no wait!  unlike every other vending station on the grounds) and headed out to Court 13.  On the way I walked thru the lawn where they have a big screen tv, a fountain you can cool off in and tables everywhere.  Here's me and that lawn:

Court 13 is on the backside of the gounds with small crowds and a nice court with a good view of the sun and the city.  I stood there for ~30 minutes watching a doubles match with every guy's favorite Juliana Goerges, felt a little sunburn coming on and headed back inside. 

Novak Djokovic v Santiago Giraldo - I was still on my beer break for the first five games of this set but they were a competitive five games.  Then I got there and Novak made the right adjustments to only lose 6 games the rest of the set.  Giraldo could go toe to toe for a bit but as is common among the lower ranked players he was forced into errors or into hitting shots that Novak turned into winners. 

Marion Bartoli v Jelena Dokic - Dokic is a strange case.  She was born in Yugoslavia but moved to Australia to escape the civil war and started on the pro tour in 1998 as Australian.  Then in 2001 switched to Yugoslavian then when her life kind of fell apart she went back to being Australian again.  And she appears to be very angry all the time, she has a sour looking face.  We saw her here in 2009 when she made it to the quarterfinals but she was not very impressive then and was still not now.  Bartoli was consistent and could run balls down.  Dokic sprays the ball all over the place and gets down on herself at every oppotunity.  6-3, 6-2 and we were out of Australian women in the 2012 Open. 

Lleyton Hewitt v Andy Roddick - the last match of the night was between two old warriors.  That are past their prime.  Hewitt is annoying to watch - he plays to the crowd, says "C'Mon!!!" all the time when he wins a point and looks at his coaches box after every point.  Roddick is a tool but he doesn't make you hate him during points.  I like watching Andy play, hard serve, whipping forehand, and he's American.  The first set was pretty good, back and forth with good serves by Andy, Lleyton returning everything with a few errors into the net, but Andy broke him and won the first set 6-3.  Then early in the second Andy had to switch directions and appeared to hurt something.  I thought it was an ankle, turns out it was his hamstring.  That happens when you get old.  For the next two sets Andy was pretty hobbled, Lleyon was moving him around the court, and Andy was slapping at balls with no power to avoid tweaking his hamstring.  One good thing - Lleyton knew he was hurt so he completely stopped celebrating after points, including no more "C'mon!"s.  But after Lleyton won sets 2 and 3 Andy realized he couldn't go on and conceded.  Match over, only one more American left - John Isner. 

Walked back to the hotel and watched some replays of matches from earlier in the day and then went to sleep.  Only one day left to go.  Noooooooooo.

 

2012 Australian Open - Day 3

Today started off similar to the others -- up at 6:45, breakfast in the hotel, work until about 10:15, then head to tennis by 10:30.  But one thing was different about today -- this guy ate breakfast right next to me!

John Cleese is performing all around Australia the first three months of 2012 and was in Melbourne for some shows this week.  I am glad I didn't ask him to take a picture with me (which I wanted to do) because he was on tv later that day saying he hated it when people asked to get their picture taken with him. 

What matches did I see today?

Na Li v Olivia Rogowska - Na was a finalist here last year and won the French Open.  She is a hard hitter and moves around pretty well, two things Olivia did not do.  In under an hour Na won 6-2, 6-2 and it was on to the next match. 

Kim Clijsters v Stephanie Foretz Gacon - did you know Clijsters used to be engaged to Lleyton Hewitt and they still love her and call her Aussie Kim?  It's true.  And in the time you read that Kim won her match 6-0, 6-1.  The first two matches took around two hours to play.  Unless Rafa plays for five hours this day is going to be over way early. 

Rafael Nadal v Tommy Haas - Haas is about 50 years old, a wily veteran.  He played Rafa pretty well after falling behind 4-0 in the first set.  He almost pushed him to 5-5 but Nadal won 6-4 then won a hard fought next two sets to win in three.  Here's Rafa playing tennis!

It was nice to get one competitive match today after two stinkers.  With these three matches over we headed back to the hotel but had plenty of time to kill before heading back for the night session. 

Beer Break!  It was a beautiful day, sunny, no clouds, so I stopped at a bar on the river and had a brew.  It was nice and hot, the beer was cold, and there were lots of people to look at as they walked by.  Here is the view from my seat at the restaurant. 

Behind my beer is the Yarra River and downtown Melbourne.

Beer done, I headed back to the room to shower and change and headed back for the night session. 

Bernard Tomic v Sam Querrey - Tomic is an Aussie, Sam is an American.  I hate Tomic, he plays a boring game of rope-a-dope and is kind of a butt dart.  He has been good since he was really little so is really cocky.  Anywho, Querrey started off hot, hitting lots of aces and winner and won the first set.  Then Bernard changed tactics and Sam started missing his first serves and making a lot of errors.  The crowd was going crazy as Tomic chipped away winning sets and finally won.  Ugh, I am glad we are leaving and only have to watch him one more time on Friday night.

Victoria Azarenka v Casey Dellacqua - Azarenka is the #3 ranked player in the world.  Dellacqua is #181.  She won a few tournaments in 2011, winning five matches in doing so.  How much did she win for those victories?  $2,980.  For making it to the second round here she got $30,000.  What a tough life it is scuffling around on those low circuits making no money and hoping to get back on the main tour.  Know how much Djokovic made in 2011?  $12 million.  So Casey is really short and doesn't hit very hard and is bad on the run and makes a lot of errors.  This one was tough to watch.  Casey had no chance and only won one game off of Victoria.  The crowd cheered her on and when she left the court but she left, ready to go back to small Australian towns and small tournaments to beat small players for small purses. 

That was it for day 3.  Two competitive matches, three uncompetitive ones.  We walked back to the hotel and went to sleep, hoping for a better day 4. 

2012 Australian Open - Day 2

Guess how I started my morning?  With a run down the Yarra and breakfast at the hotel.  Then it was down the Yarra for the one mile walk to the tennis center.  You could tell it was going to be a hot one today, we were sweating like crazy on the walk over.  It ended up close to 100 degrees but the breeze made it not feel like a 100 degree day in Atlanta. 

Who did I see today?

Petra Kvitova v Vera Dushevina - Kvitova is the two seed and had little trouble in this match.   She won Wimbledon last year(?) and looks like she could overtake Wozniacki for the one seed this year.  She is powerful, can chase balls down, and has an arsenal of winners she can hit.  Which most women don't have.  The women's game consists mostly of girls who can get the ball back to the other side of the net.  This will win matches when you play girls that make errors but if your opponent can return the ball and hit winners, you are in trouble. 

Novak Djokovic v Paolo Lorenzi - Competitive start to this match ended with Djokovic winning the last 15 or so games to win 2, 0, and 0.  Kind of like what happens when I beat my brother on the court. 

Sorana Cirstea v Samantha Stosur - Stosur won the last major of 2011, the US Open, and is from Australia.  A crowd favorite, a hope to win the Aussie Open by a native.  And she played terribly.  Sam is built like a brick hithouse with muscles that would make Albert Pujols proud.  But she made ~300 unforced errors and Cirstea was hitting winners all over the court.  Sam lost in straight sets and the crowd was deflated. 

Lleyton Hewitt v Cedric-Marcel Stebe - Hewitt has played every one of his singles matches on Rod Laver Arena for years and it was no different this year despite being ranked #181 in the world.   Stebe put up a good fight and had a chance to take it to the fifth set when he got to 5-2 but he froze up and couldn't put Lleyton away.  And Lleyton put on his normal show of "C'mon!"s and fist pumps and looking at his hot wife in the player's box after every point.  And the crowd loved it.  I wish the US had an over the hill, annoying former champion that everyone loved.  Oh wait, hi Andy Roddick!

Serena Williams v Tamira Paszek - Serena was about 100 lbs heavier than Tamira and steamrolled her.  Serena was making errors but her powerful serve and ability to defend and hit winners was too much for Tamira. 

We actually left during the second set and caught the last game or two back in the hotel room sometime around 12:30am.  And then it was bedtime, the Yarra run is only a few hours away!

2012 Australian Open - Day 1

Good first day at the Open.  The weather was great.  I did my normal start to the day - out the door at about 6:4am to run ~4.5 miles down the Yarra River before heading to the business center to eat breakfast and go through emails until we head to the tennis at 10:15am. 

We head out for the one mile walk to the tennis center and it is sunny, no clouds, and a nice breeze.  But you can tell it's going to be hot today - we were sweating on the walk and it was still early and we heard it was going to be around 90 degrees today. 

Victoria Azarenka [3] vs Heather Watson - this was the first match we watched.  Heather actually looked pretty good, put up a good fight.  And when I checked the scoreboard before typing this I was shocked to see it was 6-0, 6-1.  That's not a very good fight.

Bernard Tomic v Fernando Verdasco [22] - Tomic is Australian and only 18.  Verdasco is a favorite of a friend of mine back in Atlanta, Bianca, both for his ability and looks.  These guys picked the wrong day to play a 5 setter.  Verdasco won the first set then Tomic came back and won the next three, but man it was bad tennis.  The crowd was bored.  I was bored.  So after the third set I went out onto the grounds, bought a Heineken, and just wandered the courts on the outer edges of the center.   It was beautiful out - sunny, warm, breezy, and I had a beer in my hand.  I watched some of the Flavia Pennetta match on court 13 because there was room for me to stand and look while catching some rays at the same time.  After about 45 minutes of being gone from our seats I was back in Rod Laver Arena watching Tomic come back against Verdasco.  He ended up winning but it was not good tennis - Verdasco had 83 unforced errors and Tomic is just plain boring to watch.  I hope he doesn't get into the top 10. 

Kim Clijsters [11] v Maria Joao Koehler - this one started out bad for Kim, she was making a bunch of unforced errors but eventually won the first set 7-5.  As we have seen 100 times in the last few years, after a tough first set the better player normally figures out the lower seeded player and runs through the rest of the match.  Kim won the second set 6-1 in a blink of the eye. 

Because the Tomic match took 4+ hrs we had to bail early from the Clijsters match to get back to the hotel, shower, get back to the grounds for our dinner in the corporate tent and get back into Rod Laver Arena for the night session at 7.  You have to wear long pants in the Corporate tent at night so after sweating like crazy in our mile walk to the stadium and eating we got into our front row seats for Federer.  But for some reason before the session started they were kicking off the 2012 Open with a performance by Donald Braithwaite (who played on grounds last year and will again this year).  He's like 55 years old and not much of a rocker.  But he sang a song and left, then Don Newcombe declared the tournament on and we started with the night session.   Here's our view of Mr Braithwaite:

Roger Federer [3] v Alexander Kudryavtsev - Roger had issues in the first set with this 26 year old Russian who had never played at a major.  He hit a really heavy ball and had a number of winners. But Roger got a break late in the first set and won 7-5.  The next two sets saw AK make a few more errors and Roger won going away in three.   Here's proof that I watched:

Carolina Wozniacki [1] v Anastasia Rodionova - the last match of the day featured the #1 woman in the world. Things I learned during this match - Woz is 21, dates Rory McIlroy the golfer, has made almost $12M in her career despite never winning a major, and has been #1 for 66 weeks.  Did you know since they started tracking ranking in 1975 that only 20 women have been #1?  Can you name them?  Shows the domination that only a few ladies have had over the sport in the last 36+ years.   That's all you need to know about this match, Woz won 6-2, 6-1. 

And that's it.  On to day two tomorrow1

Day 17 - Last full day in Munich

What did I do today?

Hitler's Munich.  Walking tour of sights around the city with links to Hitler and the Nazis

The Residenz.  family palace of the Wittelsbachs, royal family of Bavaria for 700 years. 

Neue Pinakothek.  Houses the Wittelsbachs paintings from 1800-1920s.  Monet, Renoit, Van Gogh, lots of German painters. 

Bavarian Food and Beer.  FAIL!  Showed up for tour under the glockenspiel, tour was not meeting for some reason. 

Woke up, had a little breakfast then walked out into a brisk morning.  Overcast (shocking!) and windy, cold, wet ground.  I did a quick walk through a part of the old town that i hadn't been yet then went to meet up for a tour of Hitler's Munich.  Showed up at the scheduled time under the glockenspiel.  Saw several tour guides holding up signs but none for the one I wanted.  I walked up and asked one guy if I could take his city tour, that would be a safe second.  But then I asked if there was also a Hitler tour.  He pointed 15 yards away and said "that one started 15 minutes ago, just go join in.".  So I did!!!

Hitler's Munich.  This was led by a really knowledgeable guy named Eric.  He talked for two hours without any cheat sheets and really made everything come alive.  We walked from

The Residenz.  This huge palace is right in the middle of the old town.  The Wittelsbachs, built and then slowly added on to it over hundreds of years.  One problem - it was basically destroyed at the end of WWII by bombs.  So lots ofthe rooms said things like "original ceiling painted with the gods of the planets, now lost;". And in its place the castle had been rebuilt with a place for the painting but it was painted black.  That was a bummer.   

Neue Pinakothek.  This is one of three art museums.  The old one houses 1400-1800.  This one houses the Wittelsbachs paintings from 1800-1920s (Monet, Renoit, Van Gogh).  Then there was a modern art museum, which i had no interest in.  I debated between the other two but chose the 1800-1920s because I wanted to see impressionist paintings instead of paintings of Mary and Jesus.  Too many German painters, not enough impressionists. It was ok, lots of paintings, but no one I really heard of until I got to the last 4 or 5 rooms. 

Bavaria food and beer.  This tour is advertised in Rick Steves book.  I even checked on their website.  Tues/Thurs/Sat in the winter at 6pm under the Glockenspiel.  I was there but the tour guide was not.  I stood there in the cold from like 5:55 until 6:10 then gave up.  This was a 2.5 hour tour with German food, several beer tastings, and you end up in the Hofbrauhaus.  In place of that I went to a little place right across the street from the Hofbrauhaus where I could sit at the bar.  I never actually got a beer at the Hofbrauhaus. It's a madhouse in there.  I wandered through then went to bars across the street on back to back nights.  Much less hassle. Next time I will go there. 

 

 

Day 16 - Munich - Duchau Concentration Camp

The first concentration camp in the Nazi regime.  Hitler was elected in January 1933, this camp was built in March 1933.  They put their extermination plan in effect immediately. 

The only gas chamber on German soil. 

Two incinerators.  One was built in 1940.  It's like a little bungalo with two furnaces.  The second was built in 1944 and was huge.  By this time the burning of bodies had turned into a factory process.  Prisoners come in on one end, take clothes off in the next, wait in the next, take a "shower" in the next, piled up in the next, and incinerated in the next. 

It is said that no one was gassed here, at least not in huge numbers.  A single person or small group would go through the gas chambers but for the mass killings records show that people were sent to other camps to be killed.  The 30,000+ people that died here, out of 200,000 total kept here, died of natural causes or from starvation, beatings, etc. as opposed to the mass killings done at Auschwitz, for instance, where 2,000,000+ were killed. 

Checking out the barracks was pretty unreal.  Built for about 200 people each in 1933, they started out having nicely separated bunks with tables and benches for eating.  As war came and the camp population exploded the rooms became full of racks of bunks with up to 2,000 people in each barrack. 

OK, enough buzzkill. 

 

Day 15 - Vienna and departure

OK, after my longwinded entry yesterday I am going to start off with a quick summary of what I did today then go into the narrative.  Hope this is more exciting!

Breakfast at same place I had lunch yesterday.  That’s two out of three meals in the same bakery.

Kunsthistoriches museum.  National museum with art (Rafael, Monet, Van Eck, etc.) and Egyptian antiquities.

Vienna history museum.  Kind of boring place with artifacts of Vienna throughout the years. Lots of exhibits without English descriptions made this a quick walk

Got a 4 more hours sleep last night than the night before, so I was off to a good start.  Was out the door by 9 and stopped at a little bakery in the mall attached to the train station that I came in on.  This is 2 of my 3 meals in Vienna that I have eaten  at the same place.  I had a big cinnamon roll and a Coke, the breakfast of Champions.  For the two times I have stood at this restaurant eating I was watching people come to the bakery and order.  Almost every person that walked up would order several pieces or loaves of bread.  Lots of people ordering the same thing.  These people aren’t fat and aren’t on the carb free diet. Everything you order has bread, every meal has sandwiches.  It gets kind of old after a while, cold, dry bread served with cold cuts and cold cheese with warm beverages.  I am looking forward to some sausage and eggs and a cold OJ and a huge cold Coke from Taco Mac.  But I digress. 

I finished eating my breakfast and headed for my first site.  But wait. THE SUN WAS SHINING!!!!  This is pretty rare in Europe in December based on my four or five trips the last few years.  It’s always cloudy or raining or about to rain.  And the sun never gets very far above the horizon.  At noon my shadow was probably 8 feet tall.  I am surprised more of these people don’t commit suicide or die from lack of Vitamin D.  Which I saw was being pushed in Ireland – a kid’s mom died recently and they blamed it on lack of Vitamin D.  He was going out telling people to be out in the sun more to get more Vitamin D so they don’t die.   Ugh. 

Anywho, my first sight was the Kunsthistoriches museum.  Kind  of a long line to get in, checked my coat, and I was heading to see the sights.  This statue greets you as you climb the steps to the exhibits.

The museum opened in the early 1900s to showcase the Habsburg art collection.  Everything in this city was built by that ruling family.  Some people alive today were bambinos when that family of emperors was still ruling, they were small but still alive.  Weird that we were that close to this kind of opulent rulers.  And inbred.  There are paintings in this museum of kids late in the dynasty and it mentions how some were handicapped, physically or mentally.  I hear the Austrians don’t marry their cousins anymore.

So after this statue it was up into the art section.  There was a special exhibit about winter in art.  I hadn’t thought about it but if you look at paintings up into the late 1800s almost no paintings depicted winter scenes.  The first painting were just Mary, Jesus, some saints with little attention paid to background with the exception of perhaps an idyllic garden scene.  But it tended to be lush scenes, not the harshness of fall or winter.  So this exhibit was 5 or 6 rooms of paintings depicting a background of snow covered ground or the subject was a snow covered scene.  There was even a Van Gogh in here from right before he stabbed himself.  The winter of his discontent, I guess. 

I wandered through this floor of art guided by Mr Rick Steves book.  I then went down to the next exhibit – Egyptian antiquities.  This floor was not labeled as well as the art exhibit.  Basically no English signs.  I weaved through the entire exhibit, taking it all in when I decided I would buy the audioguide.  So I did!  And it was mediocre, but at least I heard about the stuff I was seeing.  Nothing spectacular – lots of friezes, busts, sarcophaguses, jewelry, papyrus writings, etc. 

I finally got out of there about two and was back on the streets.  I needed to be on the 6:14 train to Munich so I only had 3 hours or so of sightseeing left.  I went to one of the few places in the guidebook that I hadn’t been – St Charles Church.  It was Euro6 to get in.  I read the book to see what he had to say and decided to make a U turn and go to the Vienna history museum.  Rick said it was underestimated and worth a trip.  After visiting, I would say it was properly estimated.  I should have known it was going to be trouble as I was looking at my first exhibit and I overheard the guy at the ticket counter tell a potential customer that there wasn’t many signs in English because “it is an old museum”.  D’oh, that was not in Rick’s book.  I walked through the three floors looking at models of the city, paintings of the city, artifacts found in the city, and signs found from back in the 16^th and 17^th centuries while making up my own stories about what their history since everything was in German. 

After a quick trip there I wanted to get back to some places that I hadn’t taken pictures of the day before.  I walked past the Natural History Museum, St Stephan’s Cathedral, Hofburg palace.  And with that I was back to the hotel for a beer, grabbed my bags and headed to the train station that was across the street.  I grabbed a bite to eat at the mall connected to the train station.  This time I made it all the way next door the bakery I had eaten at twice before for some stir fried noodles.  Authentic Viennese!  Then it was on to the train and on to Munich in a quick four hours. 

Absent Minded Traveler Alert: 20 minutes or so into the train ride the ticket taker came by.  I showed him my ticket and he starts talking a bunch of German to me.  I mention I don’t speak German.  He says I am on the wrong car, I have to go forward one car because once we hit Salzburg the front detaches from the back – the front goes to Munich, the back goes to Innsbruck.  Luckily there was no signage telling me that.  That would have sucked if I had ended up in Innsbruck.  So two hours in at one of the stops I got off, ran up to the car in front and got another seat.  Phew, on to Munich. 

It didn’t really seem like four hours.  You can move around, there’s a bar, a restaurant.  Very relaxed, much better than a four hour cross country flight on aeroplane. 

Phase 2 Starts - Off to Vienna

This is the start of the vacation that I had planned a few weeks ago.  As always I planned to leave on Christmas Day and return New Year's Eve.  But then this work thing came up that sent me over to Europe on the 12th and instead of flying back on the 23rd I just stayed over the weekend in Paris and then flew on to Vienna.  BTW, if you want to skip my description of how I got to Vienna go down a few paragraphs. 

After going to bed at about midnight and waking up a few times during the night I was up again at 4:10am to catch a 7:15am flight to Vienna.  I thought this was pretty early but I knew Paris traffic can be a mess and the airport is the worst run airport I have ever been in.  So I checked out at 430am and caught a cab right outside the hotel.  When we were pulling around the exit ramp into the airport at a little after 5am I figured I was in for a long day at the airport. 

I walk in and there are a good number of people milling around so maybe it isn’t so bad to arrive there this early.  I walk towards my gate – D53, and see that to check my bags I have to go through a gate with my boarding pass.  No signs said that but anyways I make a u turn and hit the check in kiosk that’s not too far away and I am through into the check in area at about 5:15.  The line for people to check their bags has made a U and there are probably 60 people in front of me.  One problem, there was no one checking people in.  So we stand there until 5:30 when finally the check in crew arrives.  By this time I bet there is over 200 people in line.  And some Air France flights leave at 7.  Brilliant!  The French are terrible at moving people through lines quickly, I saw that first hand at the French open back in 06/07.  By the time I finally get to check my bags, get through the super short security line, grab a quick bite to eat and get to the gate its probably 6:15, 30 minutes before my flight.  So maybe it wasn’t too terrible that I woke up at 4:10. 

So it’s a two hour flight to Vienna and my bag comes out pretty quickly.  Lots of signage for City Area Transit (CAT!) around the Terminal saying you can get to the city center in 16 minutes.  I decide to do that since it cost EURO45 to get to the Paris airport, savings here would be nice. EURO10 later I was in the city center.  But when I check my phone I am still like a 30 minute walk from my hotel, the same bag that broke a week ago so that the handle doesn’t come up, I have to drag it by the small handle on the bag, extremely uncomfortable on my back and the bag is prone to twisting around.  I decide to walk around the block bc it looks like there is a subway stop close by.  It’s a long walk around the block then up and down lots of steps.  And there are no maps of where the lines go.  I finally get the map up on my phone and see how to get to my subway stop.  Finally, probably two hours after I landed, I walk into my hotel across the street from the main train station and it is almost time to get to sightseeing!

Get set up in my hotel, grab a bite to eat at a place I walked by in the train station, and I was a man on the street.  While walking the 25 minutes to get to the City Walk described in my Rick Steves book I was able to check out the architecture of the buildings in the city.  It was kinda like Paris – 5/6 stories, iron gates on the balconies, white/beige buildings, neo-classical?  I don’t know what it’s called but it looks nice.  Along street level everything had turned into gyms, McDonalds, clothing stores, etc.  And there were newspapers hanging in plastic bags from metal posts with little metal containers where people could put money if they wanted a paper.  Crazy!  People in the US would just take the paper.  Or the money. 

After about 20 minutes I got down to the first piece of the tour – the Opera House.  (that was a long way to get to talking about the city!  Sorry for blabbing this long, I like hearing myself type).  This was supposed to be an awesome building – it was “Neo-Rennaisance” with arched windows, half columns, and a sloping copper roof.  To me it was pretty boring.  It was big but just not very aesthetically pleasing, I liked the Berlin Philharmoniker better and some of the buildings I saw in Paris this weekend. Maybe that was my problem – relatively speaking it didn’t measure up to what I have seen the passed couple of weeks on my European travels.  Standing outside the Opera, and many other places around the old city center, were guys in period costumes advertising a Mozart concert tonight but not at the Opera house, I don’t think.  I figured I was going to be tired so passed on it.   

After checking out the Opera house exterior I walked around this neighborhood checking out some of the things in the book – a café, a hotel, a little monument against facism (“I’m against all –isms”) – I came upon the first site I wanted to see. 

Kasiergruft Church is where a ton of the Habsburgs are buried.  The Habsburgs ruled Austria for like a long time.   It all came crashing down when Franz Ferdinand, part of the Austrian ruling family, started World War I by being assassinated.  It’s a strange crypt though.  No one is buried, it’s just ~40 coffins, all made out of copper or bronze or metal or something, sitting in several rooms.   They are in different stages of decoration.  Some of the lesser known family members are in just basic boxes. But the most famous couple, Maria Theresa (sister of Marie Antoinette!) and Josef II, have this huge coffin with lifesize statues of them built into the coffin.  They are reclined, looking at each other. The sides have elaborate etchings in them and on each corner are huge skulls with crowns on.  And it just goes on for a while, room after room of random coffins.  I spent maybe 10 minutes in here and got out.     

After some more wandering through the City Walk tour I came upon one of the most famous places in Vienna- St Stephens cathedral, the center of Vienna.   It’s quite a church, although not as great as a certain church in Paris or Cologne that I have seen in the last 8 days.  This huge church was built when there were just 20,000 residents in Vienna and ended up turning it into a powerhouse in Europe.  Once it was built it was given a bishop and turned into a cathedral, this made them pretty powerful.  And they had a famous member- Mozart.  He was married here, attended mass here, and baptized two of his children.  When he died his body was tossed in a mass grave (during the plague that was a common occurrence) so no one knows where his body is exactly.  Now they just have a plaque for him there in church.  Some other cool things in there – a 10,000 pipe organ (is that possible?), a huge black marble altar, a couple of great stained glass windows, and some not so great stained glass windows installed after a fire in the church during WWII blew out the windows.  Check out the black marble altar:

Picture from the church goes here. 

 Cool church.  I ducked out of there and wandered some more streets including some pedestrian only areas where there are lots of shops until I got to another big tourist site – Hofburg, the homeof the Habsburg emperors.  This was a mixed bag of things to see.  The first floor was the imperial porcelain and silver collection – it was a lot of the bowls, plates, glasses, cups, serving trays, place settings, etc that were used when the emperors were still in power.  I don’t have much interest in seeing bowls so I went walked through there quickly and up the stairs to the second floor to see the Hofburg Palace Imperial Apartments.  The first part of the exhibit was the Sisi Museum.  Sisi was the Princess Diana of her age, married to the Emperor of Austria, Franz Josef, when she was 16 in the 1850s and assassinated in Geneva in 1897.  She was a recluse and didn’t get along too well with Franz josef for a while at the end of her life, they slept separately.  They had stuff from her childhood, the wedding, formal dresses, black outfits she wore after her son was in murder suicide, and finally pictures of her funeral.  Then they take you through Franz josef’s rooms and then Sisi’s rooms.  Kinda interesting stuff but nothing compared to the English castles.  

I walked out of there into the cold at 4pm and needed one more place to check out before I called it a night.  I decided to check out the nearby Natural History Museum, I saw an interesting piece in the Rick Steves book about the 25,000 year old Venus of Willendorf.  It’s a chubby 4” stone statuette with ample bosoms, no face and no feet.  They don’t know what it was used for.  Pretty cool to see and it was in a big dark tent with dim lights shining on the statuette.  The rest of the museum was a bore other than one hallway with a few evolution exhibits.  I wasn’t too interested in the jewels and minerals rooms or the meteorite rooms.  I basically just checked out a few of the rooms, checked the map to see that I didn’t want to see much else and took off because I was hungry. 

I found an interesting authentic bar and restaurant nearby.  I sat at the bar (which is rare in Europe, go in if you find one with a bar and stools) and ordered a house beer.  I watched food coming out of the kitchen and decided I wanted something that looked like fish and chips.  The unfriendly bartender noted it was in fact wiener schnitzel and I could have pork or veal.  I told him I wanted veal and he suggested that I could try it stuffed with cheese and ham, cordon bleu style but I turned it down.  90 seconds later I told the bartender that I did want the cordon bleu schnitzel.  He said that’s what he’d ordered for me.  Perfect! 

I finished my meal, savoring the french fries and enjoying the schnitzel, and walked back to the hotel to type this.  Now I need to figure out where I am going tomorrow night (Munich?  Prague?) and book my hotel.  Good night all!

Day 7 - The Absent Minded Traveler strikes again!

Today was the third meeting of my four meeting trip - this was Monday, my last one is on Thursday.  I had a couple of days between meetings and thought I would try to go to another city for 48 hours and be back in LUX for the meetings on Thursday morning but I would figure that out after the meeting. 

The meetings went well and we were done around 1:30.  My plan was to do some more work, figure out where I was going, book my hotel room and head to the train station.  I finished my work in the meeting room then headed out to the bar to grab a bite to eat and figure out where I was going.  The plan was to go to Munich via train, all that was left was figure out where I was staying.  I ordered my standby meal at the Novotel, Spaghetti Bolognese, and got down to business of finding my hotel.  I found the perfect hotel - right by the train station, it was a Hilton so I would get points for the two night stay.  After I booked it through Hotels.com on a restricted fair -- it was non-refundable -- I hopped on the train's website to see when I could catch a train. 

Ummm, problem.  The trains I saw ranged from 9-12 hours.  No way!  So I went on my google maps to see the distance - over 500km.  D'oh!  Long story short, I didn't book a train to Munich, I'm staying in Luxembourg for my mid-week weekend!  I hope the Munich Hilton uses my dead money wisely. 

After sitting there calling myself stupid for not checking the train FIRST, I perused my Luxembourg Lonely Planet book on my iPad to get ready for tomorrow and called it a night. 

Fudge, I am stupid.  Absent Minded Traveler indeed.