How I Went to Europe and Retuned without Clothes: Winter Christmas Markets and Mulled Wine will do that to anyone
I wasn’t
exactly sure why we were going where we were going. But, I knew enough to show up at Tyler Pounds
Field at the right time (whose idea was 5 a.m. flights anyway?). I love Tyler’s airport and having been in
airports, airstrips, and flat pastures with an airport sign in it and a
cow-clearing flyover before landing— I certainly wish all airports were as
traveler friendly as what we have in Tyler.
Apparently,
a group of travel friends who I met last year during a once in a lifetime Nile
cruise wanted to go to the Christmas Markets across Germany, Austria, Czech
Republic and Hungary. I had never heard
of such a thing but heard that everyone was given warm mulled spiced wine and
you walked around in the snow in ancient city plazas and some palaces with
booths all about Christmas crafts, decorations and gifts.
Some of that
idea sounded enticing—warm wine served by the Lions Club International at every
little town in four countries; beautiful architecture and I was told, “You
haven’t seen Europe until you have visited Vienna.”
I was hoping
more for the Budapest “Shop Around the Corner”—a big time old --movie buff and
wanted to see Jimmy Stewart in a Budapest shop that sold everything anyone
would want.
But, we were
here to see the Christmas Markets—these huge outdoor markets with hundreds of
booths with Christmas-themed items.
According to
a colleague in Dallas and someone with three degrees in German, Lea Anne
DeVega, told me, “ The history of Christmas markets goes back to the Late
Middle Ages in the German speaking part of Europe. The Dresden Christmas
market, first held in 1434, is one of the oldest Christmas markets. The Bautzen
Christmas market was even older..., first being mentioned in records in 1384.
The Vienna "December market" was a kind of forerunner of the
Christmas market and dates back to 1294. The biggest one now is in Nurnberg.”
“In many
towns in Germany and Austria, Advent is usually ushered in with the opening of
the Christmas market or "Weihnachtsmarkt". In southern Germany and
Austria it is sometimes called a "Christkind(e)l(s)markt" (German
language, literally meaning "Christ child market"). Generally held in
the town square and adjacent pedestrian zones, the market sells food, drink,
and seasonal items from open-air stalls, accompanied by traditional singing and
dancing. On opening nights (and in some towns more often) onlookers welcome the
"Christkind", or boy Jesus, acted out by a local child.” The good buys are garnets, woodwork, crystal,
and puppets. (I haven’t found a big
demand for puppets.) Also, wooden bowls,
anything with an owl on it, and potpourri.
Every town’s
Lions Club had a hot, mulled wine booth.
Seems that they did great business and they wanted pictures of me for
their newsletter. I kept telling them I
was in Rotary but they told me that was ‘close enough my friend.”
Since I knew
I would most like purchase everyone’s Christmas gift on this trip during
Thanksgiving week, I packed only clothes that I would leave in the hotel room.
I love to throw away clothes on trips so that my luggage is brought home with
no dirty clothes: just newly purchased souviners nad gifts. And traveling overses during the Thanksgiving
week has become an annual trek for me; the day of getting out of the United
States calls for Job-like patincne and the return day(s) to get back into the
United States are even more threatening to one’s religion. But, overseas, Thanksgiving is a perfect time
to travel. It is usually the last group tour offered in the season for various
tour companies so great pricing is available—the tour guides are exhausted and
just ready to “git ‘er done”, so there isn’t a lot of all that history nonsense. I mean we forget all those dates and names by
the time you get back to the bus.
Flying from
Tyler to Munich is a long day and I was told I would have a driver holding a
placard with my name on it when I arrived.
With that American tourist I-am-better-than-you attitude and my Louis
Vitton carry on luggage, I sauntered through the gauntlet of drivers—all with
placards; none with “Goddard”, “Gooderd”, Gotter, or anything in the
neighborhood of my name’s spelling. The
worst, most humiliating activity? Going
BACK through the gauntlet one more time,
no pride at all---just a crazed look in my eye and a desperate hope for
a ride. I’m in Munich. I don’t speak the language. I don’t even like the Germans! I’ve been here before and absolutely hated
this country.
I called the
limo company—a call which probably cost about $300—and the lady in charge of
disposition of drivers, looked over her list and in that corny German speaking
English accent said, “YOU do not exist!”.
Well, in YOUR opinion perhaps.
So I dragged
an overstuffed luggage piece with all throwaway clothes in the snow and somehow
sign language to find a cabbie who was totally angry that he would lose his
place in the taxi line in the airport to take me about two blocks to the
airport hotel. I mean he said something
about a shuttle and some bad things about my parentage but I get so much in
other countries by playing ignorant, “I dun’t no what ter do!?” with kind of a
cross eyed stare and swining my arms—works great in all circumstances.
Hotel—found
friends—back to airport—the taxi driver called us something like Pirates and of
course we confronted him (safety in numbers and there were 13 from our Egypt
group. We still are confused about why
he would call us ‘pirates’ and did not tip him at all.
We were on a
mission to see the Old City’s Glockenspeil—the time clock with mechanized
dancers who come out twice a day—11 a.m. and 12 noon. It’s cold.
There is no warm wine. We had
time to climb the tower first and then abrubtlyl climbed back down and
immediately hit the knit cap, scarf, and glove store. Heck it was in the 70’s in Tyler and now we
were in the 2’s—2 degrees everywhere we went and I have no idea if that was
Farhenheit or Celius and I used to know the formula. Celcius times five minus 32 degrees? Is that it?
Well, I went 13 days and was never sure of the temperature.
The tour
stared the next day and we found out that we had 45 passengers for a 46 seat
bus; that there were 13 countries of tourists in our group; that not everyone spoke
English; that our tourguide Tunde was the most beautiful Eastern European Uber
Hottie Model with an education equivalanet to our doctorate in History. And the girl has some guns for biceps—she
could pick up all our big fat American luggage with one hand and took off to
load in the bus. I got in the habit of
meeting her early and helping load the luggage with her and our Italian drive
Maurio from Milano—Italian bus drivers are the best in the world—just do not look
down when rounding mountrian curves or screeching in between traffic. But they are good and safe and skilled.
We loaded to
see Nuremburg, which meant to me that movie, LONG, LONG movie about war crimes
trial. I remember Montgomery Clift, my all time favorite actor should have won
an Academy Award for his performance of a simple man in the concentration camp
and Judy Garland—a really fat Judy Garland and seems she was a German woman and
maybe she was bad then good, but her acting was blind blowing—how could a
talent like her NOT have an Oscar and Blah Actors like Sean Penn who is always
Sean Penn playing a crime boss, or Sean Penn playing Sean Pean as a dutiful
cop—have an Oscar. Ok, back to
Nuremberg.
No, you
cannot tour the courtroom of the war crimes trials. We think there was a room in the courthouse
that continuously showed a documentary but I’ll just rent the movie when I get
home. We did some shopping in Nuremburg
but the Christmas booths were just slowly beginning to open up, so my shopping
was a continual hunt for John Grisham’s “The Confession” which I left on the
airplane from DFW. I wanted to read it
so badly because it is set in the Tyler area and I swear I can tell you who
that defense attorney and even that pastor are in real life. (Make it to page 16 and your are hooked on
the book and I felt completely lost with NO English versions.) A friend said, “Larry, look a six story
bookstore—but everyone is meeting here in 3 minutes—I told him I could make
it. No elevators, escalators---I
screamed at the clerk “DO YOU HAVE BOOKS IN ENGLISH??”
“Fifth
Floor”…she replied.
Of course,
fifth floor; crowded with shoppers and all I could do was a juke and jive
running back pathway up to the fifth floor and occasionally said ‘pardon me’
over and over. They quit asking me early
on “Speaken de Deutchs?” when I said multiple sylabblic words like “PAR-de-ON
ME-eah PLUH-le-us”….run with my bum leg and ankle up five flights of
stairs….panting….English….pant…pant..English books….pant…puhaleeze….”
“Right over
there,:” said the efficient German vixen with the pixie hair cut and pointed to
a small section on HOW TO SPEAK ENGLISH—and yes, there were several copies of
English for Dummies. No Fiction. No night time reading to calm me down. I was so crazed and wet and cold at this
point that I just shuddered and began the marathon back to where my friends
were congregating. I hate to be last to
make the group and have horribile anxiety about that, so I briefly stopped to
take a Xanax before I got to my group, standing outside a store called “WormWorld”. I told them my story, we all had a laugh and
then we randomly asked this guy in the crowd to take our photo in front of the
Wormland Store sign, and he was my doppelganger….is that what that is? Your twin you’ve never met? Well, mine is a guy who walks in front of
WormWorld and the sixth floor bookstore with the tiny section of “How to Speak
English”. No John Grisham books, just
English for Dummies books.
We were
warned about the Czech Republic being unfriendly. We were told to see a smile in Czech
Republic, you must try speaking their language and we took a brief
conversational language course. The only
thing I could remember that “Cheers” when you are drinking, sounds like “Eggs
Shake ‘N Bake”. I could remember that
and used it often and saw many smiles. The trouble with the Czech is that they
wanted freedom, not communism. But
someone forgot to tell them that with communism, you are guaranteed a place to
live and a job. In a democracy, nothing
is guaranteed except hard work will get you a place to live and a job. Prague
is OK. The architecture looks like is a
1000 years old, but in actuality it is only about 150 years old.
But, Czech
folks are depressing. And obviously
depressed. They wanted freedom but at
the cost of security.
In Prague, tourists
must purchase an excessive amount of life and accident insurance and register
with the police department. Here is
Prague by the numbers:
· Over 100 television stations. 0 number of good ones.
· $13 Euro for a hamburger basket with
a dirty martini.
· 4 years—average age of automobiles on
the road—democratic free market system must be working for some.
·
Salzburg
(named for its Salt Mines—who knew?) was a great place—with the “Sound of
Music” tour of sites in the film and the best Christmas Market of any of the
MANY we toured.
Vienna must
be on the top five list of most beautiful cities in the world. Hearing music at
the Opera House was a life experience, seeing the palace where Marie Antoniette
was born (2,000 rooms!) cannot be describe in words, and again, the buildings
are beautiful, shopping wonderful (lots of Christmas Markets) and the friendly
people were everywhere.
Hungary is a
party place. Lots of good food, liquor
shots, beer, dancing, and beer are abundant.
Budapest is actually two cities, separate by the Danube. I saw no red
poisonous sludge that CNN kept warning us would kill us. It is an old city—there was a settlement here
2000 years before Christ. Sixty five
percent of the buildings in Budapest were destroyed during World War II and the
Marshall Plan rebuilt in the period of the buildings’ origins. I kept hearing Roccco and sometimes Gothic ;
so I learned nothing about the period of style.
We heard
many stories of the Ghetto in Budapest for the Jewish encampment and I just cannot
repeat; so atroctious. Can man be that
cruel to mankind?
Return home proved my theory of first
day/last day of every trip are the horrendeous days and you have to just be
patient or medicated for anxiety. Here
are some of my notes from the trip:
·
Perhaps summer or
spring would have been weather friendlier.
·
Always carry
Pepto, mild antibiotics and sore throat losenges.
·
Never leave hotel
without a business card or EXACT address of hotel.
·
Do not leave good
books in English on airplane seat. I did find the Grisham book in Vienna
in English.
·
Waterproof
galoshes are under rated.
·
Forget carb free
diet for travel.
·
Be thankful for
what we have in United States. No fussing, no petty fights, no
vindictiveness allowed. We got it good so hush about anything
negative. Be glad you are surrounded by good positive people who care
about others. Never raise your voice unless someone is about to have
physical harm...
·
There are too many
depressing sights and places in the world to lose one precious moment of our
blessings.
·
Do not use a
University toilet. Yzou will be escorted to exite. Makes sense,
securitzy wise thinking back.
·
Platz is Street.
·
They think they
invented Christmas here.
·
When in doubt wear
thermal underwear. Zou can take it off in restroom stall if too hot.
·
Smiling goes a
long way in anzy countrzzy.
·
Donát check work
emails from overseas.ű
·
Madgar is
Hungaryás real name.ű
·
Slyvester Stallone
owns a casino in Budapest.
·
Wear clothes that
you were going to Goodwill—shirt with a bleach stain, pants with frayed pant
legs, and throw away all the clothes along the way. You make room for souvenirs and gifts; you
sort of tip the housekeeper with old Levi’s which are priceless in some
countries.
·
I purchased a
letter jacket with Jose’s name on it at Goodwill. (I love that store so much I call it
‘Greatwill’ and they donate to our school district’s foundation after the tax
free weekend—every business should!) The
letter jacket was a target of ridicule from the folks on the bus; but was
admired by the Europeans. It seems
American letter jackets have a high fashion element in Europe. So I traded by Goodwill purchased letter
jacket for a great employee discount in Vienna for a new suit, tie, coat, and
scarf. The clerk was going to give the
letter jacket to her boyfriend for Christmas; I think it cost me $3.99.
·
Why would a cab
driver call us a ‘bunch of pirates”?
Mystery unsolved.
·
A friend who knows
German kept sending me this message on Facebook which was translating into
“Your dog is missing”. We were
perplexed, mainly because I don’t have a dog; and why would be dog be
gone. One translator told me, “This
message means your dog is leaving you and moving to California.” I think the friend was telling me to have a
‘doggone’ good time in Europe and the message was lost in translastion!
·
The Autobahn is
the highway in Germany with no speed limit.
But the day we drove on it, it was icy and snowy, so the fastest we
could go was about 20 km. an hour.
·
Germany borders
nine countries.
·
Marshall Plan paid
to rebuild bombed bulldings in their original style, which in some cases was
the 1500’s.
·
There is an old
city in Nuremburg which the Marshall Plan
generously rebuilt in 1500 style, but they did not rebuild the
moat. I am thinking the Marshall Plan
was overly generous, but the locals sure do point out the lack of a moat
frequently.
·
Nuremburg. Before World War II, there were 8,000 Jewish
citizens. After World War II, less than
100 Jewish citizens.
·
We saw a small
cemetery that holds the bodies of over 200,000 Jewish souls. I mean this little patch of land, not even a
city block, has at least 200,000 bodies buried.
I wish I had not seen it. Haunts
me to this day.
·
Carrot oil
lotion—great for dry ashy skin. Yes,
carrot oil lotion but it doesn’t turn you orange like a juicer with lots of
carrots might.
·
The rediscovered jewels of Imperial Europe are the
focus of this popular vacation, starting and ending in Munich. Visit Prague’s
Jewish Quarter, Charles Bridge, and the Bohemian atmosphere of Town Hall Square
with its world-famous Astronomical Clock; in Budapest, experience Fishermen’s
Bastion, the Royal Castle, and a romantic promenade along the banks of the
Danube. Add the sights, sounds, and tastes of Vienna—maybe sit in a café with a
piece of scrumptious Sachertorte while listening to a legendary waltz. Other
highlights are stops in medieval Nuremberg and Mozart’s Salzburg, and
enchanting natural scenery including the Alps and Danube River Valley—amazing
features of a marvelous vacation.Special Departures:Mar 28th Departure - Easter
WeekDec 5th & Dec 12th Departures include visits to Nuremberg, Prague,
Vienna, Budapest and Salzburg Christmas marketsDec 20th Departure - Christmas
lunch in Budapest
|
Day 1: Sun. BOARD YOUR OVERNIGHT TRANSATLANTIC FLIGHT.
Day 2: Mon. ARRIVE IN MUNICH AREA, GERMANY. Check into your hotel. The rest of the day is free. Tonight, meet your Tour Director and fellow travelers. Day 3: Tue. MUNICH AREA–NUREMBERG–PRAGUE, CZECH REPUBLIC. Drive this morning on the Autobahn directly to Nuremberg for a visit. Next, east across the border into the Czech Republic. Evening arrival in Prague. (B) Day 4: Wed. PRAGUE. The wealth of gothic and baroque architecture perhaps inspired Dvorak and Smetana, both Prague composers. The included guided sightseeing features landmarks such as the the Jewish Quarter, Wenceslas Square, Charles Bridge, and the Old Town Square with the Astronomical Clock. (B,D) Day 5: Thu. PRAGUE–VIENNA, AUSTRIA. This morning, motor from Bohemia into Moravia and continue southeast for a few more miles before crossing into Austria. Arrive in Vienna to enjoy an afternoon of optional sightseeing. Start with a tour featuring the State Opera, Parliament, and the Town Hall. Stop for a stroll in Heroes’ Square to view the Hofburg. Finally, an inside visit of St. Stephen’s Cathedral. Reserve some energy for an exciting evening optional excursion. (B) Day 6: Fri. VIENNA–BUDAPEST, HUNGARY. A morning to see some unexplored corner of this intriguing capital or maybe just to do some shopping down the Kärntnerstrasse. In the afternoon, head for the Hungarian border and, by way of Györ, you’ll reach Budapest for two overnights. (B) Day 7: Sat. BUDAPEST. Buda Castle dominates the twin cities of Buda and Pest, separated by the broad ribbon of the Danube. Heroes’ Square typifies the modern capital, while along the riverbank you find the old inns and wine cellars. Included sightseeing takes in the Parliament building, Margaret Island, Fishermen’s Bastion, the Royal Castle, and Matthias Coronation Church. (B) Day 8: Sun. BUDAPEST–SALZBURG AREA, AUSTRIA. Mid-morning departure from Budapest. Travel westwards across the border into Austria to enjoy more Alpine scenery before heading towards the Danube and finally to the Salzburg area for an overnight. (B,D) Day 9: Mon. SALZBURG AREA–MUNICH AREA, GERMANY. Morning at leisure in Salzburg or optional city tour. A comfortable and relatively short drive past Lake Chiemsee to the Munich area for an overnight. (B) Day 10: Tue. YOUR HOMEBOUND FLIGHT ARRIVES THE SAME DAY. (B) |
The hot
mulled wine is called Gluehwein. I even have a fabulous recipe, too!!! Want me
to send it to you
Lessons Learned on Eastern European November 2ö1ö Tour
·
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