Breakfast in Bosnia, Lunch in Austria and Dinner in the Czech Republic

My trip to Prague began with one of those days that has turned me into a travel addict.

To get to Prague I had to fly through Vienna and to get a cheap flight on Austrian Airlines I had to accept a nine-hour layover there. What might have been unbearable turned into a great day thanks to my friend Patti, a freelance writer, artist and journalism trainer, who lives 25 miles away from Vienna in Hainburg. She met me at the airport and we drove to her beautiful adopted home.

It sits on the Danube between Austria and Bratislava, and Patti lives in a little house at the base of a hill capped with the 13th Century castle of Bohemian King Ottokar. The town was at that time surrounded by a thick wall with gates and towers -- still there -- designed to dissuade the Turks from attacking again. The wall did little against another foe -- the plague.

Patti drove us upward from the town center to Braunsberg which offered these sweeping panoramics of the Danube and the flowery countrysides of two nations. We went to the Cafe Eckerl -- Corner Cafe -- where Gertrude the owner whipped us up an asparagus and ham quiche and then had beer at a cafe on the river before she had to drive me back to the airport and the hour-long flight to Prague.

Cesky Krumlov from its Internet promotions

Cesky Krumlov

 Ann took this photo of the beautiful tower of the Cesky Krumlov castle... we never did find out what exactly what the tower was for, but it sits atop a rocky bluff over the Vltava River overlooking this medieval fortified village. Japanese tourists with cameras threatened to collapse a small wooden bridge at the base of the tower.  

This gorgeous town and the castle -- the second biggest in Europe after Prague Castle -- is on the UNESCO list of World Heritage sites. It feels like the late 13th century walking around in the town, which is what you have to do if you can find one of the periphery parking lots that ring the old town. Cesky Krumlov was a site on trade routes in Bohemia.

The Nazis held it as part of the Sudentenland and during Communism it was badly neglected, but a full restoration has made it a vacation destination again. A flood in 2002 was the last disaster, and clean up from that is still visible.

The Czechs have some experience with enduring hardship and then reemerging. They were sold out, remember, before World War II then spent the whole war occupied by Germans. At the end as it became clear the allies were going to prevail, Czech youth rose up to drive out the Nazis in the country. Thousands died in what, at base, was a symbolic gesture. Little wreaths are visible on buildings throughout Prague inscribed with the names of these young martyrs. Communism was another long period of occupation almost. The Czech rose up rebelliously several times -- to disaster. Then when the Iron Curtain finally came down they began cleaning, repainting and rebuilding. Czech writing, music and art are revered. You gotta admire the spirit of the place. 

Cesky Krumlov Castle was the setting for the move the Illusionists. It is set atop a rocky cliff -- at one point braces over cracks in the rock held support the huge structure. Outside the main castle grounds is a pit of bears.

Along the Bosphorus and inside a palace

Hundreds of paintings, tons of English crystal and acres of French furniture -- and you got a Turkish palace










Dolmabahce (Dol-mah-Bah-Chee) Palace, built at the turn of the last century as the Ottoman Empire was in decline and people in Turkey living in abject poverty, it has 285 rooms of which 43 are bathrooms, fussy French furniture, hundreds of dark paintings of seascapes and more English crystal chandeliers than I've ever imagined outside a chandelier factory. Actually, the boat ride past was more impressive than the tour we took later. You had to put pink plastic booties over your shoes but were still exhorted to stay off the stunning parquet floors and on the red rug. Our guide spoke seven languages, but all he mostly said was "No flashes please," and "Don't touch" in an endless round of English, Turkish, Spanish, German etc. The furnishings and paintings did not change enough to make many of those 285 rooms stand out with two exceptions...the dazzling reception hall where Kemal Ataturk's body lay in state and the last sultan tried his best to hide the crumbling state of his empire in front of foreign dignitaries and the hallway that ran just above this hall with special little mirrors so that women, forbidden from participating in public ceremonies, could peak down.

Missing the boat

So the highlight of the conference was the Saturday night dinner cruise on the Bosporus.

Be in the lobby at 6:45 sharp, the organizers told us. If they told us once, they told us 20 times. I was dressed, ready, doing emails to kill off some time before 6:45 when I looked up and the clock in my room said 6:45. I raced to the elevator where another conference attending was getting in. Simultaneously we both said, "Oh good, I'm not the last one."

We didn't see our group in the lobby. We didn't see them outside the hotel. We didn't see them in any of the buses up and down the street we checked. "Uh-oh," we said, again almost simultaneously. they had been serious about that "sharp" business. The door man didn't speak much English and the only word of Turkish I know is walnut (one of the women in the group has a bad allergy so she asked if there were walnuts in every dish that arrived at our tables. Somehow we managed to convey in pantomime our question -- where was the group going to the port? and Somehow he managed to convey back that they'd just left. He suggested we run up the hill from the hotel and try to intercept the bus which would have to make a long loop around the block because of one-way streets and would be passing by any second. Now, had he done better charades, or we'd been quicker on the uptake our run up the hill might not have been in vain.

We waited about 10 minutes, then ran back to the hotel where I'd left my cell phone and tried calling some of our colleagues who'd left us behind. The cell phone was making no connections. This was a conference about better cooperation between cops and journalists and we realized we could prove what could be done when practitioners of both fields just try. We estimated we had a 1 in 10 chance of success.

So we got the doorman to write out where the bus driver was headed and then got a hotel clerk with better English to explain how the tram system works, then ran up the hill again and asked passersby where to buy tokens for the tram and where to catch the right one. We got the wrong tram which was packed with sweaty people hanging onto overhead straps --for an aroma different from the Spice Bazaar -- but it was going the right way. We had passengers on the tram who knew English totally involved in our plight trying to show us where our cruise boat just had to be and how we could get there, and best of all, we got them to speak to the bus driver in Turkish over my cell phone. The bus was caught in traffic and we might make it after all.

We transferred trams and got to the BP station the hotel clerk told us was right near the dock and there -- miraculously -- the bus from the hotel with our friends was just pulling up to unload.

Religious ecstasy as tourist attraction

As you can tell by the video, watching dervishes makes me a little dizzy.

They are holy men who take a vow of poverty and they are really noble, but they have become famed for their whirling, which is not supposed to be entertainment, but is so entertaining that it's the main attraction (well, except for belly dancing) at the cafes and bazaars throughout old Istanbul. The whirling is a physical method they try to reach religious ecstasy -- like chanting a mantra or hitting your head on the floor. The music that accompanies the twirling is very beautiful and they hold their arms and hands out like ballerinas.

Turkish delight

We ate really well while in Istanbul. The bigger photo is from a table at a Cretan restaurant (that is Island of Crete cuisine, not a rude, stupid person's restaurant) called Giritli. And these are just the appetizers. The best was fried calamari with walnut sauce and eggplant and goat cheese and olives...well then came the fresh sardines wrapped in grape leaves. We spent 3 1/2 hours at this dinner.

Another night, the restaurant was Gelik, by the area, huge and packed, famed for its lamb roasted in a pit. It came on a plate -- see above -- practically unadorned and I felt like a carnivore for real.

One of those rare perfect days

The Blue Mosque stands over bazaar in Istanbul

Every so often, just when you are sure, life is just terminally depressing you get a day so perfect and wondrous, well, you want to keep on being alive. Wednesday (6/25/08) was one of them.

We got into the Istanbul airport Wednesday night just as Turkey scored a goal and evened the score with Germany, a football feat that had people in the airport cheering, pumping fists, and slapping each other on the back. Outside taxis and buses began honking and you could just about feel the blare of TVs across the city.

Unhappily Germany pulled out a last-minute third score and won, but that didn't spoil an auspicious beginning.

The trip to the President Best Western Hotel in the Sultanahmet section of the old city took about 40 minutes and I was nodding off at the end. We'd flown after a full day at the office. But when we got to the hotel at about midnight Drew proposed a "short walk." Four of us walked past the Blue Mosque, the Hagia Sofia, around the Hippodrome, the home of Ali Pasha, the old Forum, past the Grand Bazaar and carpet stores, shops and donor kabob shops. It was warm, but not stifling and the streets were practically empty except for a street repair crew, and some vendors. Drew who loves Istanbul and is a student of Byzantine history played Cicero; Dino and Darijo had never been here and so were as entranced as a reporter and cop can be and we are in one of the world's most beautiful cities.

Canal touring through urban Denmark and Sweden

Goteborg reflected

We toured three cities: Copenhagan in Denmark; Malmo and (shown in photos above and below) Goteborg, Sweden. These tours are inexpensive, multi-lingual, take about an hour and are the best way to see the architecture and layout of these seaside cities, even when, as in Goteborg the weather is cold and rainy. They just pass out plastic ponchos or blankets like this one Miranda is displaying. Each of the tours, we found, features gliding under bridges built so close to the water's surface passengers are required to hunch over in their seats or even sit on the floor. These low bridges all seemed to be called "Cheese Grater" or "Head banger."

Stupid Tourist Photos

I love taking pictures of tourists taking pictures of themselves. They are so silly and predictable and they are having fun and working hard at having fun. There are patterns, of course. If you are in Pisa you have to pose as if holding up the tower, in NYC you have to raise a hand aloft as if holding a lamp of liberty like the Statue of.

The Roman ruins of Tunisia inspire some classic poses as these shots from the Baths of Antonin in Carthage show and also some predictably silly shot like the last one Zied took in the garden of the Carthage Museum

Rugs, drums and bird cages for sale next door to Kairouan's Great Mosque.

Whereas Jesus famously chased the money lenders out of the church, mosques here are surrounded by and rise up out of souks and markets and stalls. They are surrounded by commerce. Both feed off the same crowds and this makes for colorful and spirited center cities. But this can be a test for tourists. I found the experience in Kairouan with a Tunisian guide along much different than in Tunis where I wandered into the souks around the mosque alone. Here's what happens.

You are lost. Of course, there are miles of winding, twisty narrow little roads filled with shops. A friendly persons says You are looking for the mosque? Yes, you say, grateful for help. Here, I'll show you. And you follow.

Mistake.

He takes you into carpet store where the clerks tell you helpfully that the terrace overlooking the mosque is open for free and very beautiful.

And it is. Take pictures, encourages the helpful man. And you snap away framing domes and tiles and plants and sunlight and you do not think that in order to get back to the street you must GO BACK INTO THE CARPET STORE.

And there they are waiting for you, sometimes with a lovely glass of mint tea and before you can stutter a word of protest you are watching "a short presentation," which is two salesman flinging rolls of carpets out in front of you, one after another, in a spray of color and patterns and they are urging you to touch to feel them and asking which one you like and what currency are you spending.

Wait, I finally say. I have 20 dinars with me, which is true, because I do not trust myself with hard sells. If you want to sell me something for that OK, if not, I want to go.

In Kairouan we went up to the terrace and got back down again with no presentation.


picture snapped atop the terrace of the carpet store in Kairouan overlooking the souk and Great Mosque.






Kairouan is a big carpet making center. This store bedecked in colorful Tunisian rugs appears in every photo album of every tourist to this city I believe.

Kairouan -- Holier than thou?

Zied, the student who seems to have become my personal tour guide to Tunisia, told me I should see Kairouan, a beautiful place near the coast that, like Dougga, is on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites. It is, he told me, the third holiest city in Islam after Mecca and Medina.

Now, who decides these things?

I ask because the same day (8/25/07) I took off for Kairouan a friend working for the BBC in Ethiopia told me she was traveling to Harrar, which she had been told was the fourth holiest city in Islam.

Wierd, eh? Like there's a panel someplace ranking cities after, I guess, Mecca and Medina. Where does Jerusalem fit in? Can you lose your ranking if Christians move in?

It is a mystery to me in case anyone wants to enlighten me. But at any rate we drove about two hours from Tunis to Kairouan which has some 50 mosques, including The Great Mosque or Okba Mosque -- shown above. According to Zied's French guide books, the magical light of this city and the grandeur of the architecture inspired painter Paul Klee and writer Guy DeMauppasant. All the guidebooks gush over this building and its austere, stark beauty. It is probably something poetical or imaginative lacking in me, but I didn't get it. It looked much like other mosques including the Zitouna or Olive Tree Mosque in Tunis. The same mystery panel of clerics and travel agents that rates the cities apparently also ranks mosques and these are the two most important in the country. The searingly brilliant tropical desert sun that has been turning me brown through 50-plus sunscreen for a week may also have been helped blind me to the wonder of this artifice. They were not welcoming visitors even in the courtyard and no non-Muslims are allowed inside.

I tried unsuccessfully to discern what was different about this "Arab Andalusian" architecture or to be wowed by the grace of the 414 columns in the courtyard -- taken from Roman ruins around the country or by the structure of the minaret -- shown here -- reputed to be the oldest in North Africa. But I failed. Really, I was longing for time at the beach.

It is possible I have tourist-fatigue. The lovely clerk in my hotel told me this morning that she be lives I have now seen more of her country than she has.

Hah.

I read on the Internet that there are 55 million olive trees in Tunisia, the third-largest producer of olive oil in the world after Spain and Italy.

I have two thoughts about this. First, I may possibly have seen each of those trees in recent driving tours and second: Who decides this things?

Who was the person who counted those trees and how did he/she do it, driving around the country or looking at aerial photos? How often is the olive tree census updated to account for new plantings and lightening strikes? It seems this could be one of those numbers that my father was forever pulling out of the air to buttress some point he was making. "The Pentagon spends $5 million dollars an hour on jet fuel."
"Dad, how do you possibly know that number?"
"I read it."

And he didn't even have the Internet.

I am finding that sometimes it is more interesting to read about a place than to visit it. For example, Kairouan is famous for something else besides holiness -- Hollywood.

It stood in for Cairo in the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark. Now I have to review the film.

I seem to have stumbled on a bargain

Well, there is no better bargain than being here waiting for a visa on a free trip but MSNBC has identified Tunisia as one of the 10 great unknown travel bargains in the world. Here's what they say: Tunisia: Move over, Morocco

Morocco used to be North Africa's hub for backpackers, but prices are now on the rise as wealthy Europeans snap up vacation properties. Today it's Tunisia that beckons with fabulous bargains. It's a modern and secular society, where travel is surprisingly convenient.

Tunisia is a land of ornate mosques and Lawrence of Arabia desert landscapes. Bustling markets tout rugs, pottery and colorful crafts—yours for a song. Archaeological wonders await, too, from the ancient city of Carthage to glorious Roman ruins. After you explore the culture, relax on a gorgeous Mediterranean beach where basic rooms and hostel bunks go for less than $15. If you can swing $50 a day, you'll sleep comfortably and eat well.

Hannabal is rolling over in his grave

OK,, This was by far my favorite place in Tunisia to date. Carthage Land.

Disney forces take on the Punic Wars. It was just too good. Entrepreneurs have constructed a history-based huge shopping/hotel complex with Las Vegas like glamour. The shopping center is guarded by a phalanx of war elephants as they may have looking being marched over the Alps. Carthage's mythic navy is grounded in the complex's concert/dining court and even the trash receptacles are lower-caste Carthaginian servants. Tourists pose with elephants or on the mini-golf course-like entrance way with waterfalls and plantings. The sign CARTHAGE LAND, note, is in English not Arabic or French, because, just who is who has the money, not to mention the bad taste, to love this place.

Scenes from Hammamet

Hammamet on the Golf of Hammamet is made for tourists, with restaurants, shops and pretty beaches. It made me homesick for Florida. We had ice cream at a seaside cafe, posed near the mermaid statue and in front of the 15th Century fort (shades of St. Augustine) and I swam in the sea -- or rather was pounded by the waves -- for hours. Nicest day I've had in Tunisia.

Nabeul

Nabeul is famous for its lovely and inexpensive pottery. The medina was filled with decorative and dining ware. Unfortunately I was paralyzed by sensory-overload and couldn't find a thing I wanted to buy. I kept thinking I was letting down my sister Jo-Ann who adores this stuff.

Tunisia and the Movies

Remember the scene in Cairo in Raiders of the Lost Ark where a gun man squares off against Indiana Jones and his whip? That was actually Kairouan, Tunisia.

And the desert planet where Luke Skywalker lived with his Uncle until Obi Wan came to get him? That's Tunisia too. George Lucas actually took the name of the actual city in the Sahara where he shot those early scenes from Star Wars: Tataouine. Well, he called his planet Tatooine -- which is how Tunisians pronounce that oddly spelled city. He used actual landscape and some architecture of the area, although the two suns are not real. Lucas returned to Tunisia for the scenes of Anakin's early life in the last three episodes of the saga. His Virgin Mary like mother dies in Tunisia.

While it's far too hot now in August to go visit the Sahara, Star Wars did make this something of a tourist lure. some murals and set dressing from the movie are in the Sidi Driss Hotel and the exterior of the famous cantina in Mos Eisley where Han Solo is introduced is still visible as is this mosque that became the entrance to the mean little spaceport.

Tunisia's own history is about to become movie fodder. Apparently I am not the only one newly excited to discover the Punic Wars, the first genocide in history. Two versions of the story are being made. And in one of them Denzel Washington is taking the role of Hannibal. That is a movie I'll go see.

Price not all included

As I walked into a gallery I saw a guard sitting slumped in a corner filled with grating, tiles and etched glass. His shoes were off and I was thinking how pretty a picture it would make, when he suddenly jumped off and pantomimed taking my picture with my camera. No no, I said, but he insisted, so he took the picture. Then he motioned to go stand near Venus and after that mean a cabinet of gold earrings and broaches. He's shooting off snaps with the flash, despite signs in about six languages all over the museum saying NO FLASH. So I finally got it before he rubbed his fingers together. Money. Later, walking around another little guard came up to me and asked in French if I liked tiles. Sure, I said in English. With that he pulled aside a barrier and let me into a gallery shut for a new installation. It was filled with gorgeous tiles from Greece, Turkey, Andalusia, Holland. He tip-toed, held his finger to his lips for silence, glanced dramatically right and left as we walked around and in general acted the role of a guy doing me a tremendous big favor. You know that cost me, but the theater of it all was worth it. In total the guards extorted double the price of admission I paid. Even then it cost about the same as any American art museum I've visited.

As at the ruins, the museum was mostly deserted, leaving me alone with the tiles, masks and steles.

Bardo Museum

This is why I am sick of ruins: all the good stuff has been stripped out and put into museums. The Bardo Museum, a long 4 Dinar taxi ride from the center of town, is stuffed with Roman mosaics and statuary and the building itself is a former palace for a bey with stucco ceilings and tiles that makes it a work of art too. I spent the day here, including mint tea in the cafe and shopping among artisans selling pottery and jewelry.

Le Grand Blu

There's a hotel along the Mediterranean outside Tunis called The Big Blue. Fitting. As we drove along this spectacular coast I kept counting how many different shades of blue I could see in the water and sky and mountains. I am not a good enough photographer to capture this. Tunis has marketed itself as a beach destination with big success lately, but it's not really the beaches -- I remain partial to Florida's white sand beaches -- it's the stunning coastline.