Talk to the hand...
So it's been a few weeks since we were in Bratislava and beyond and if I don't write something about it now it will slowly start evaporating from my memory and that would be a pity.
Karl-Heinz (henceforth referred to as KH), Karen (henceforth referred to as O.K. for Old Karen although she is very YOUNG and VIBRANT), and I got to Vienna on Friday, yes the 13th of October on our way to TeresaandPeter's wedding. Kathy, the mother of the bride and Clara, the mother of the groom, were at the airport to pick us up. Bratislava is only about an hour from Vienna. KH and I opted to spend the day in Vienna and take the train to Bratislava later but Karen went with to check on her dad who had unfortunately been taken to the hospital the day before with a heart attack. The good news is that he is o.k. but is still in Bratislava waiting to get back to Minnesota. The bad news is he obviously missed the wedding.
Vienna was great except that on the subway I pulled some guy's hand out of my purse. Fortunately he hadn't gotten anything so I decided not to make an issue of it. Why pick a fight with criminals when you don't have to?
KH and I got to Bratislava pretty late and needed to take the bus to the hotel. Train staions and bus stops on Friday nights world-wide are pretty interesting places. Some gambling and drinking going on. We changed some money in the station and a woman at the bus stop said we probably needed a 10 minute bus ticket to get to the Hotel Tatras. Turns out in Bratislava, you buy bus tickets in time intervals. So we bought a Diet Coke at a stand to get change for the bus and of course missed the first bus. If you are wondering why we didn't just take a taxi, you have never traveled with us.
After we dumped our bags in the hotel we went looking for the restaurant where the bridal party was having dinner. Bratislava is a University town and it was really hopping on that beautiful Friday night. The old town has lots of small, winding streets and it took us quite some time to find the place since asking for directions in Slovakian wasn't happening but it was a nice walk. There was live music with some guy on stage teaching the spectators to line dance and I would have stayed to learn it if we weren't expected.
We finally found the restaurant and I ended up next to the groom's grandmother Veronica who turned to me and spoke in perfect and I mean better-than-most-Germans-speak German. She learned it in school several generations ago and hadn't forgotten ANYTHING. I was thinking I'm meeting some pretty bright people here as Clara, Peter the father of the groom (henceforth referred to as Peter the Major), Peter the groom (henceforth referred to as Peter the Minor) all switched between Slovakian, Hungarian, German and English. Well, at least I can roughly manage two of them. Peter the Major mentioned he has directed the choir of their church for the last 30 years or so.
The wedding was at Holy Trinity Church the next day. This church was the perfect setting for a wedding; lushly gilded, beautifully painted, sparkling chandeliers but not so big as to dwarf the wedding. It is an absolutely gorgeous church. So the wedding starts and turns out since Peter the Minor when to a Catholic boarding school a whole bunch of the priests from there are up on the altar. I think there were five or six guys participating. Quite impressive in this stunning church. Then the choir starts. O.K. and I look at each other with our jaws dropping since this is no doubt the best church choir either of us has ever heard and in that setting it is just spectacular. Obviously, it is Peter the Major's choir. This was one of if not the most beautiful wedding I have ever attended.
The reception was at the Hotel Tatras where we were staying and went on for about 10 hours (I am not kidding). We had TWO different served dinners, a buffet, wonderful cake and LOTS to drink. I found a willing dance partner in Uncle Fred who likes to trip the light fantastic about as much as I do.
Sunday KH and I investigated Bratislava and we all (Kathy, Michelle, O.K., Uncle Fred, KH, TeresaandPeter, Peter the Major, Clara, and I) ate wedding leftovers at TeresaandPeter's apartment. Monday a bunch of us went up to the bridge tower and waved at Veronica while looking at her apartment through a telescope up there after Peter the Minor called her on his cell phone to tell her to come to the window and wave.
KH and Uncle Fred had to leave later on Monday. Those of us remaining decided to move to cheaper hotels but the Hotel Ibis only had one room for Kathy and Michelle so O.K. and I ended up moving to the Botel Gracias, an old cruise ship docked on the Danube which now rents out the cabins. After Karen and I checked in, we enjoyed the Botel terrace over the Danube and Michelle ordered nachos on a boat in Slovakia. Go figure, we all shared them and they were actually pretty good.
Karen and I thought we might want to catch a train to Budapest the next day. Peter the Minor informed us it is about a three hour trip and if we wanted to make it back in a day we'd have to take the seven something train. Seven is really early when you are on vacation. Tuesday morning we mumbled back and forth about whether we actually wanted to do it when I finally decided I probably wouldn't get the chance to go to Budapest again anytime soon and got up which shamed O.K. into doing the same. It was so early, we actually took a taxi to the station. Peter the Minor had said that Budapest had boulevards like Paris. A lot of it reminded me of Paris. O.K. and I spent nine hours or so walking all over the place. It is also on the Danube but is HUGE compared to Bratislava. The Parliament is a wonderful building and the architecture in general (with the exception of some ugly socialist stuff) lovely. Very impressive city. But the highlight was St. Stephan's Basilica. St. Stephan is the founder and patron saint of Hungary. The Basilica is lovely. But as we walked to the side we saw a sign with "Chapelle of the Hand" written on it. Be still my heart. Could it be a holy body part? It is the hand of St. Stephan himself, severed at the wrist and preserved in mummified form in what looks like a gilded doll house. For 100 Forint, the lights go on and you can inspect the hand, albeit from a bit of a distance. What a find! Apparently it has been a traveling hand having been here and there according to the information provided.
The Forint prices in Hungary are all abbreviated as ft so to me it looked like you were paying for everything in feet. No so odd when you think about it since everything in England is in pounds. O.K. and I never quite made the mental transfer to Slovakian and even less to Hungarian money so basically never had any idea what we were paying for anything. Upon our return to Bratislava late that night I asked a taxi driver how much it would be to our Botel and he said 400. I said it was too much. O.K. asked me how much that would be and I had to admit I had no idea but knew it was more than we had paid earlier. So it was back to the time interval buses. This time I got a beer (Golden Pheasant was becoming my local brand) for the change and O.K. figured out the schedule since my suggestion to take ANY bus was pretty lame. I fit right in drinking my beer at the bus station. We got 10 minute tickets for 14 each.
Wednesday we went to see Peter the Minor's school. I was expecting a regular old boarding school. Ha! You can see it up on the hill for miles around. Turns out his "school" is a roughly 1000 year old monastary that also happens to be a World Heritage Site. It has a visitor's center and tour guides. It's called Pannonhalma and is such a cherished institution in Hungary that it remained open throughout the socialist regime as closing it would have been pushing the populace past its limit, according to Peter the Minor.
This is long and I am tired so am stopping even though there is more. Bratislava and Budapest are definitely worth seeing. And if you get to Budapest before Hungary adopts the Euro, you could not only get to talk to the hand, but pay for it in feet. (Sorry, couldn't resist.)
Karl-Heinz (henceforth referred to as KH), Karen (henceforth referred to as O.K. for Old Karen although she is very YOUNG and VIBRANT), and I got to Vienna on Friday, yes the 13th of October on our way to TeresaandPeter's wedding. Kathy, the mother of the bride and Clara, the mother of the groom, were at the airport to pick us up. Bratislava is only about an hour from Vienna. KH and I opted to spend the day in Vienna and take the train to Bratislava later but Karen went with to check on her dad who had unfortunately been taken to the hospital the day before with a heart attack. The good news is that he is o.k. but is still in Bratislava waiting to get back to Minnesota. The bad news is he obviously missed the wedding.
Vienna was great except that on the subway I pulled some guy's hand out of my purse. Fortunately he hadn't gotten anything so I decided not to make an issue of it. Why pick a fight with criminals when you don't have to?
KH and I got to Bratislava pretty late and needed to take the bus to the hotel. Train staions and bus stops on Friday nights world-wide are pretty interesting places. Some gambling and drinking going on. We changed some money in the station and a woman at the bus stop said we probably needed a 10 minute bus ticket to get to the Hotel Tatras. Turns out in Bratislava, you buy bus tickets in time intervals. So we bought a Diet Coke at a stand to get change for the bus and of course missed the first bus. If you are wondering why we didn't just take a taxi, you have never traveled with us.
After we dumped our bags in the hotel we went looking for the restaurant where the bridal party was having dinner. Bratislava is a University town and it was really hopping on that beautiful Friday night. The old town has lots of small, winding streets and it took us quite some time to find the place since asking for directions in Slovakian wasn't happening but it was a nice walk. There was live music with some guy on stage teaching the spectators to line dance and I would have stayed to learn it if we weren't expected.
We finally found the restaurant and I ended up next to the groom's grandmother Veronica who turned to me and spoke in perfect and I mean better-than-most-Germans-speak German. She learned it in school several generations ago and hadn't forgotten ANYTHING. I was thinking I'm meeting some pretty bright people here as Clara, Peter the father of the groom (henceforth referred to as Peter the Major), Peter the groom (henceforth referred to as Peter the Minor) all switched between Slovakian, Hungarian, German and English. Well, at least I can roughly manage two of them. Peter the Major mentioned he has directed the choir of their church for the last 30 years or so.
The wedding was at Holy Trinity Church the next day. This church was the perfect setting for a wedding; lushly gilded, beautifully painted, sparkling chandeliers but not so big as to dwarf the wedding. It is an absolutely gorgeous church. So the wedding starts and turns out since Peter the Minor when to a Catholic boarding school a whole bunch of the priests from there are up on the altar. I think there were five or six guys participating. Quite impressive in this stunning church. Then the choir starts. O.K. and I look at each other with our jaws dropping since this is no doubt the best church choir either of us has ever heard and in that setting it is just spectacular. Obviously, it is Peter the Major's choir. This was one of if not the most beautiful wedding I have ever attended.
The reception was at the Hotel Tatras where we were staying and went on for about 10 hours (I am not kidding). We had TWO different served dinners, a buffet, wonderful cake and LOTS to drink. I found a willing dance partner in Uncle Fred who likes to trip the light fantastic about as much as I do.
Sunday KH and I investigated Bratislava and we all (Kathy, Michelle, O.K., Uncle Fred, KH, TeresaandPeter, Peter the Major, Clara, and I) ate wedding leftovers at TeresaandPeter's apartment. Monday a bunch of us went up to the bridge tower and waved at Veronica while looking at her apartment through a telescope up there after Peter the Minor called her on his cell phone to tell her to come to the window and wave.
KH and Uncle Fred had to leave later on Monday. Those of us remaining decided to move to cheaper hotels but the Hotel Ibis only had one room for Kathy and Michelle so O.K. and I ended up moving to the Botel Gracias, an old cruise ship docked on the Danube which now rents out the cabins. After Karen and I checked in, we enjoyed the Botel terrace over the Danube and Michelle ordered nachos on a boat in Slovakia. Go figure, we all shared them and they were actually pretty good.
Karen and I thought we might want to catch a train to Budapest the next day. Peter the Minor informed us it is about a three hour trip and if we wanted to make it back in a day we'd have to take the seven something train. Seven is really early when you are on vacation. Tuesday morning we mumbled back and forth about whether we actually wanted to do it when I finally decided I probably wouldn't get the chance to go to Budapest again anytime soon and got up which shamed O.K. into doing the same. It was so early, we actually took a taxi to the station. Peter the Minor had said that Budapest had boulevards like Paris. A lot of it reminded me of Paris. O.K. and I spent nine hours or so walking all over the place. It is also on the Danube but is HUGE compared to Bratislava. The Parliament is a wonderful building and the architecture in general (with the exception of some ugly socialist stuff) lovely. Very impressive city. But the highlight was St. Stephan's Basilica. St. Stephan is the founder and patron saint of Hungary. The Basilica is lovely. But as we walked to the side we saw a sign with "Chapelle of the Hand" written on it. Be still my heart. Could it be a holy body part? It is the hand of St. Stephan himself, severed at the wrist and preserved in mummified form in what looks like a gilded doll house. For 100 Forint, the lights go on and you can inspect the hand, albeit from a bit of a distance. What a find! Apparently it has been a traveling hand having been here and there according to the information provided.
The Forint prices in Hungary are all abbreviated as ft so to me it looked like you were paying for everything in feet. No so odd when you think about it since everything in England is in pounds. O.K. and I never quite made the mental transfer to Slovakian and even less to Hungarian money so basically never had any idea what we were paying for anything. Upon our return to Bratislava late that night I asked a taxi driver how much it would be to our Botel and he said 400. I said it was too much. O.K. asked me how much that would be and I had to admit I had no idea but knew it was more than we had paid earlier. So it was back to the time interval buses. This time I got a beer (Golden Pheasant was becoming my local brand) for the change and O.K. figured out the schedule since my suggestion to take ANY bus was pretty lame. I fit right in drinking my beer at the bus station. We got 10 minute tickets for 14 each.
Wednesday we went to see Peter the Minor's school. I was expecting a regular old boarding school. Ha! You can see it up on the hill for miles around. Turns out his "school" is a roughly 1000 year old monastary that also happens to be a World Heritage Site. It has a visitor's center and tour guides. It's called Pannonhalma and is such a cherished institution in Hungary that it remained open throughout the socialist regime as closing it would have been pushing the populace past its limit, according to Peter the Minor.
This is long and I am tired so am stopping even though there is more. Bratislava and Budapest are definitely worth seeing. And if you get to Budapest before Hungary adopts the Euro, you could not only get to talk to the hand, but pay for it in feet. (Sorry, couldn't resist.)
posted by Terry at 12:47 PM
<< Home