Can you have too much Vienna? I doubt it somehow, although you can certainly push your luck with its patisserie.
Today we went to the Kunsthistoriches Museum, which was amazing. In addition to the priceless works of art, it had an awesome cafe, where we had lunch and coffee.
Lunch at the museum
More artwork was then looked-at, followed by hot chocolate and cake at the Cafe Museum on the way back to our hotel. I got to try something on my “to eat” list – this little tortchen is a mini black forest gateau. The cafe itself was ok, if a little odd with large metal balls suspended along the ceiling.
We started the day with cakes from the hotel, then moved on to a proper buffet breakfast.
Suitably fuelled, we went to the Wiener Eistraum, which is German for “sausage pain”. We skated there for quite a long time, but were under no pressure to keep going at the ticket lasted all day and lockers were provided. There were snack stalls around the rinks, where we had these Berliners:
Doughnut with plum jam inside
These doughnuts are called “krapfen” in Austria, which is obviously hilarious.
I wrote “rinks” before, because there were several of them, all linked up with ice corridors and ramps. You could actually skate uphill to a big rink closer to the clock tower of the parliament building.
We got the tram to the train station from close to our hotel in Bratislava. The city’s main train station looks like it has been frozen in time to a great extent – the general feel is one of non-deliberate retro.
Bratislava’s old-school central train station
It took about an hour to get from there to Vienna’s central train station, which was extremely modern and well-appointed… worlds apart.
Vienna is one stunning building after another, with a ridiculous number of top-quality galleries and museums. We were there for four nights, didn’t go overboard with trying to see everything, and still managed to walk about 12km a day.
Today it was time to take in some more of the culture of Bratislava. First up was the castle. This was a properly odd state of affairs – in England it would probably be a pile of bricks with some English Heritage signage indicating what it might have looked like. Bratislava, on the other hand, decided to go big – it was an almost total ruin come the 1950s, and had been since the early 1800s, but they just went at it and made a massive chunk of it look like nothing bad had ever happened there.
Bratislava Castle
Anyway, it now contains a chunk of the Slovak National Museum, which is interesting enough to explore for a couple of hours. Fatigue had set in by the time we reached the underground exhibition, but it looked like a livelier mind would have enjoyed reading all the information about the Celts around that area. There were lots of artefacts on show and a really cool visualisation of the spread of the Celts using a projector pointing down from the ceiling onto a table with a completely-white surface (but with hills and stuff raised up on it):
Projector-led exhibition
Since it was a castle on the hill (don’t start singing), there were good views down onto the Danube:
View down from Bratislava Castle to the Danube
After all that culture, it was time to relax. We had kept walking past a crazy-looking cafe, so that was our next target. It should be noted that the Konditeri in question has a window display with lots of dolls in period costumes, some of which move about and do things every now and then. The interior decor is almost indescribable, which is a nuisance as they have a “no photos” policy. The ceilings are hand-painted with blue skies overlaid with constellations. The walls (again hand-painted, apparently over 6 years) show soldiers and various religious figures looking jaunty. Lights and fittings stick out at unusual angles, and the whole thing has the general appearance of someone having let their imagination run wild with little regard to subtlety or taste. Yet it somehow works.
Ok, look, I can’t describe it, but I obviously didn’t respect the “no photos” rule, so here we go:
Wall
Ceiling
Tea
Toilet
Urinal
The “deal” on offer was a hot drink and a slice of cake for €10 per person. That’s a bit on the pricey side of a cafe experience (even for a regular in Bettys like me). On the plus side, the range of cakes available was superb – we went for these:
Blueberry gateau
Caramel topping, chocolate layers beneath
Sorry not sorry.
Anyway, we then had to balance our gluttony with some more culture and walking around… this time, it was to the Galeria Nedbalka, which is a brilliantly-curated modern art gallery. We followed instructions to start at the top floor and work downwards, which worked perfectly as the ground floor held less interest for me, as it housed a temporary exhibition of 18 of Koloman Sokol’s pictures that didn’t really excite me (too horsey).
Skutezky’s and Mousson’s paintings really grabbed me and told lots of stories about the country.
Back out in time for sunset on the boulevard near the opera:
Sunset in street
The last part of the day was spent in the pub. This was a fairly unassuming one near to our hotel, as we wanted something more laid-back than a big tourist place. When we sat down, I noticed a large group of men sitting on two benches nearby, one of whom seemed pretty rowdy and and prone to singing snippets of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah (just the chorus, which is fair given that it’s one of the longest songs in the world ever).
We had a pilsner plate, which was a selection of cold meats and pickles. It was cheap and delicious.
Pilsner plate
While working our way through this, a couple of accordion players came into the pub and sat with the big group of guys. They proceeded to sing their hearts out to a good few Slovakian folk songs (I’m guessing), some of which involved most of the rest of the pub too.
We struggled with not knowing the words of course… can’t really attempt to bluff it when you’re obviously completely unaware of the lyrics. Unless you’re the despicable John Redwood trying to get through the Welsh national anthem, but that didn’t work out brilliantly for him.
An early start on Friday morning, flying out from Leeds Bradford to Bratislava. Quite a few budget airlines head to Bratislava rather than Vienna, as they aren’t a huge distance apart and Slovakia is generally much cheaper than Austria.
All the photos in this post were taken with my phone camera, so apologies for the lack of quality in places (although compared to phones from a couple of years back, they are a clear leap forward – long live computational photography).
The view was pretty stunning en route:
View from plane window approaching Bratislava
We landed around 09:30, and got the hotel taxi from the airport. Since it was so early, we weren’t able to check in, so we left our luggage, had a coffee and some biscuits in the reception area, then headed out to explore the city. It’s not massive (around 500,000 people), but it’s Slovakia’s capital so has plenty to see and do.
Marrol’s Boutique Hotel, Bratislava
Walking around the old town, there were numerous cafes, churches and other points of interest, including a sign showing the place of birth of former world wrestling champion David Unreich, which was quite unexpected, until I read more about him and his wartime experiences. He and his friend Imrich Lichtenfeld (founder of the Krav Maga martial art) organised a militia to resist the Nazis in 1938, before Unreich fled to the US. Tragically a lot of his family were murdered in Auschwitz towards the end of the war.
On a lighter note, wandering further out of the centre of the old town leads to a bridge over a busy road, with views to one of the more modern landmarks of the city: the UFO on the bridge:
View from bridge with UFO on horizon
Apparently it’s possible to get a lift up one of the UFO’s legs to an observation deck, but unfortunately that wasn’t possible within the limited time available (and an attack of claustrophobia even thinking about the lift).
Architecturally, I’d say Bratislava was a unique blend of Soviet era concrete, baroque era grandeur, gothic churches, rough-around-the-edges urban, and modern high-tech glass and metal.
Underpass
Saint Martin’s Cathedral
Funky building
National Opera
Sight-seeing makes for hunger, so the next step was to find an interesting place to eat. There are plenty of restaurants around, but we fancied trying somewhere properly Slovakian, so did a quick check on TripAdvisor then headed to Koliba Kamzik, which promised to deliver some authentic scran.
Koliba Kamzik restaurant, Bratislava
We had a beef broth soup to start, which was excellent (if a bit cooler than expected), containing small chunks of beef, root vegetables and some noodles.
Beef broth soup
The main courses we went for looked like they’d be typical fare… I can’t remember exactly what was in them, but it involved gnocci, fried onions and some pinkish-looking meat (well, mine did anyway). I’m probably better-off not knowing. Actually, I’ve just found it on their online menu: “Potato dumplings filled with smoked meat, served on stewed cabbage with fried bacon and onion”. It was very tasty, for sure.
The other main was “Home-made “bryndza” (soft sheep cheese) filled dumplings, served with sour cream, fried bacon and chives”, which I seem to remember was alright, though I preferred mine.
This was my second year of attending the weekend, and I had learnt a couple of important lessons from the initial visit.
Firstly, if a workshop looks like it won’t be useful / engaging enough for 3 hours, don’t stay until the end.
Secondly, drinking heavily on Saturday night makes for quite a dangerous cliff-top walk on Sunday morning.
I only had to make use of the latter learning this time – the workshops both had enough in them to keep my interest. Yes, I only made it to two this year, as the others either didn’t massively interest me or were for things that weren’t particularly relevant at the moment.
We arrived on Friday in time to attend the workshop “Finding Your Voice With The Short Story” by Anthony Glavin (not the one who died in 2006, but a cheery chap originally from Boston but with enough of an Irish accent to make me think he’d relocated some time ago). He’s written a couple of short story collections and books, so presumably knew what he was talking about. I ended up writing a few brief starts of stories based on his prompts.
After that, there was the drinks reception. Friday was fine for drinking, as I hadn’t booked any workshop on Saturday morning. The booze flowed freely for quite some time, then there were prizes and speeches and readings.
Little John Nee performed later on, which was a real treat and unlike anything I’ve seen before – a one-man show of story-telling through speech, song and various quirky instruments. I don’t know how much touring he does, but if you get the chance, he’s a gem.
Finally, a few quiet drinks in Fitz’s bar and some gentle dancing before bedtime.
Saturday morning I went for a stroll around Doolin to see the sights and clear my head. The air was fresh and dry when I set off, seducing me into leaving my coat back at the room. This proved to be a tad over-optimistic. It did give me the chance to get some photos of a rainbow, however, so not a complete wash-out.
Rainbow in Doolin
I bravely headed back to the hotel and had some coffee and a scone, happily meeting someone I knew and chatting for some time about books and stuff. All very civilised. After lunch, it was time for my next workshop: “White Ink” by Danielle McLaughlin.
It’s worth noting at this point that Irish writing is not renowned for being cheerful. In fact, the country’s writers are probably responsible for more miserable and depressing output than an Irish sausage factory.
Danielle’s workshop was named after the maxim that happiness always writes white. I remember reading a summary of what’s coming up in 2019 in The Guardian recently, and it had a very entertaining section on the forthcoming Adele album that was written when she was happy. We’ll see how that turns out, Adull.
Anyway, back to the workshop. Danielle made a lot of interesting points regarding the potential to infuse writing with happiness and hope, but I doubt anyone leaving the room would have changed their original course away from misery fiction. We did some good descriptive work exercises, but my story ended in yet another senseless murder, so think I failed to “get with the programme”.
It’s easy to infuse a story with hope if you’re planning to use that hope to upset the reader a bit later on when it gets whipped away by a passing psychopath, but less promising if you’re thinking readers won’t be feeling robbed if they get to the end of the story and the body count is a big fat zero. Maybe that says more about me than them, but look at the TV schedules and show me “cheery drama” with high viewing figures.
You’ll be staggered to learn that drinking followed the workshop… the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party is an opportunity to drink gin and eat doughnuts and small savoury items while listening to people reading from their books, etc. It was as you might imagine: excellent. More free-form drinking followed.
Before the locusts descended
Sunday morning 9am saw the highlight of the weekend for me: the Cliff Ginko with Kathy D’Arcy. The format was much the same as last year – show up, meditate, walk, meditate, write, walk, try not to fall off the cliff. The route was shorter than last year, and felt substantially safer.
The magic upwards-flowing waterfall (well, the wind blows some of it back up a bit)
In addition to the cliffs, the walk encompasses views up to the strikingly-cylindrical Doonagore Castle. Read the linked Wikipedia article for a heart-warming tale of mass execution. The farmer responsible for having organised the creation of the walking trail, Pat Sweeney, was particularly pleased with this view over the stone bridge up to the castle, and justifiably so, I think:
View up to Doonagore Castle from below the stone bridge
We got back in time for Mass, which was somewhat non-traditional, being led by high priestess Susan Tomaselli with able assistance from altar girl June Caldwell. There were readings by several authors, and a good time was had by all (assuming nobody there was actually staunchly religious).
Mini sausage butties, tarts, croissants, etc. were to be had in the bar area for brunch, and they were awesome. If the Catholic church ever worried about dwindling numbers and felt determined that letting moral relativism through the doors was a bridge too far, they could do a lot worse than look to fancy catering as a solution.
Job done – an excellent weekend. Some aspects were definitely better than the previous year’s event… having a new big barn to hold events made it hold together a lot better, and the catering stepped up several notches from an already solid effort.
Before making our way up to Doolin for the weekend, we had a couple of nights in our house on the bog.
It was great to see it again, especially since we’d left it all nice and tidy. We’d left plenty of turf inside, and it was perfectly dry thanks to the Lidl dehumidifier that continues to hold back the ravages of 99% external humidity on a regular basis.
We got the chance to catch up with the local farmer, and greet this year’s guest cows. They were quite scared of us, and demonstrated great athletic prowess in being able to run and jump on fairly saturated bogland. The secret to meeting them properly was to bring food, of course.
Once the farmer arrived, they recognised either him or his van’s engine, and suddenly became very keen to interact.
Glendalough is the site of an early medieval monastic settlement. Some of it is in excellent condition, and the setting itself is spectacular. There’s a really good walk around the lakes – we went on the “Green Road” which offered shelter from the sun.
We caught the heatwave in Ireland in the middle of June. There follows a series of posts covering what we saw and did during the week. Posts appear as if I’d written them at the time (again, lazy me).
We flew into Dublin and drove down the east coast, taking in Powerscourt, Bray, Greystones and Glendalough. We then headed west to our house, stopping in Roscrea en route for a break.
First up, Powerscourt. This is a house and gardens setup, except that the house part was closed (but most of the original contents were destroyed in a fire in the 1970s anyway). The gardens are pretty big (around 47 acres) and very well-maintained.
