Archive for the ‘Europe’ Category
The Day Santa Died
By Cecil Scaglione
Mature Life Features
‘Twas the day before Christmas.
We got to the butcher and picked up our gallantine for Christmas Eve and lasagna for Christmas dinner. Gallantine is a tradition here. A chicken is de-boned and stuffed with everything from prosciutto to pistachios and hard-boiled eggs to eggplant, then pressed and cooked, sliced and eaten cold. Got chores done while we were out – cash from the bank ATM, started the car, and checked out our last-minute grocery list — as a humid sirocco-like wind swooped in and made the town almost summery. Lou dropped by for a grappa and headed home for a shower. Riccardo dropped by about midday and said he’d skip tonight because he won’t be able to find a parking space because of midnight Mass at the church.
Then he told us. “Bobbie died,” he said
Bobbie was ambushed by a deadly heart attack on his early-morning walk with his dog. He had been looking forward to playing Santa: “A true Santa Claus from the North,” he told me several days earlier. He was proud of the fact that he was the first non-native offered the role. He even let his beard grow to match his thick head of white hair. He had been a technical-magazine editor in Sweden before chucking it and moving to Panicale, where he augmented whatever pension and other funds he had by managing rental properties, organizing travel tours, and dabbling in real estate.
I skidded down to the piazza to scout out the facts. Lou was right behind me. We ran into Simone’s wife (Aldo’s daughter-in-law who owns and works with her husband at the osteria they opened in the apartment Bev and I rented on our first trip). Lou got our foto and she told us “Babbo Natale e morta.” I asked if they found an alternate. She nodded her head: “Qualqu’ uno” (somebody).
I asked if her osteria’s Christmas Eve dinner (30 euros per person) was full. She shook her head “no,” and explained they didn’t start planning/advertising early enough. I said they’ll start earlier next year. She nodded “si.”
Then she added that Santa was due to land in the piazza at 3:30 p.m. We returned to the apartment and sipped a few until it was time to check the piazza. It was still warm and humid but it started to drizzle on the couple of dozen kids and their parents scattered around the 550-year-old fountain. So they trooped into below-street-level club room across the alley from the osteria. Guillermo said the club room was made available after it started to rain. Santa and his jingling bells were greeted about 4:20 by applauding parents and wide-eyed youngsters. Everyone got something. Even the adults — each received a little package of candy that was handed out by the children.
But no one seemed to miss Bobbie.
(A few days later, a hearse squeezed up through the steep archway and a clutch of mourners followed the casket into the church for Mass. When the service ended and the remains rolled back into the vehicle, no one followed but everyone applauded Bobbie’s passing as the long car slipped down into the piazza and out the Umberto 1 gate.)
Mature Life Features, Copyright 2011
Rome Gets Ready
By Cecil Scaglione
Mature Life Features
A Christmas carnival in Piazza Navona is just that – a carnival, complete with carousel, carney games (“A Win Every Time”), knick-knack booths, balloons dancing with the wind, hot and cold food, classes of kids corralled by clusters of nuns, litters of tourists marshaled around by guys and gals waving them on with numbered signs, and dueling guitarists. All this counterpointing the ageless statues and churches that give substance to this celebrated canyon a couple of blocks from the Pantheon in The Eternal City.
I quickly snagged a cimballi calde (hot doughnut) to hold me until lunch. A cimballi is a Roman doughnut about the size of a small pizza and can be eaten plain, sprinkled with sugar or covered with Nutella (a chocolate-hazelnut butter spread popular here). I hadn’t had one since one of the officers aboard our freighter cooked a batch one morning. The dough is much tastier than the U.S. donut, it’s deep-fried but as flat as a pizza, has a less fatty texture and doesn’t curl up into gut-busting balls to play havoc with your digestive processes and system.
We went to Rome after the high season opened Dec. 8. It closes Jan. 6. Both days are national holidays here. The first is the Feast of the Immaculate Conception; the closing date is Epiphany, also known as Little Christmas in many quarters.
For our first stop, we arrived at my favorite optometric shop on Via Nazionale just as the owner was unlocking his exterior display boxes and I bought a couple of pairs of sunglasses. They’re about one-fifth the price of expensive ones sold under such American trade names as RayBan,Foster Grant, etc., which are made by these same Italians. Bev got an eyeglass frame to take home.
After strolling into and by the ritzy boutiques stretching from the Spanish steps to the Trevi Fountain — and picking up a gelato across from the fountain at one of the finest gelateria in the universe – we went into the Pantheon for the first time. It’s now a basilica with Mass offered every Saturday and Sunday, although it’s closed Christmas Day. The sun was bouncing off Roman roofs so we didn’t have to worry about rain falling in through the hole in the massive copula that also lets light pour into the building, the only one to survive two millennia in its entirety since Roman times.
After lunch at my favorite eating spot – Melo’s, a Sicilian ristorante on the steps leading down from the bottom of Via Nazionale to il Vittoriano and the Forum – we decided to take an earlier train back home instead of hanging around into the evening. We were tired.
The sun was rising as our train pulled out of Chiusi and it was setting as we rolled out of Roma Termini.
Mature Life Features, Copyright 2010
Follow Noble Nobel Footsteps
By Marlene Fanta Shyer
Mature Life Features
STOCKHOLM —- You walk up the same marble stairs that Nobel Prize winners have climbed every Dec 10, the anniversary of the death of the prize’s namesake, since 1901. You’re in the City Hall in Stockholm and gazing up at the granite pillars and exposed brick walls that stretch 75 feet from floor to ceiling in the Blue Hall.
There’s not a spot of blue anywhere. It was designed by Ragnar Östberg, a Swedish architect inspired by Italian design who envisioned a soaring ceiling-free space with a view of an azure sky. However, the climate demanded a roof be added, but it’s been stuck with the misnomer for more than a century.
Each year some 1,300 carefully chosen citizens from around the world will witness the five-allotted-minutes of winners’ speeches and the bestowing of the big checks. They will dine on menus prepared by dozens of the best chefs in Sweden, and be served by hundreds of waiters dressed in black and white. Then they proceed to the aptly named Golden Room, with its leaded windows and walls of Byzantine gold mosaic tile. This is where, under crystal chandeliers, they will dance away the night.
As you stand on the spot where the most coveted award in the world is celebrated annually, Stockholm comes very much alive, but it’s just part of reason to visit the city. Built on 14 islands and called everything from “image-conscious” to “trend- hungry” to “tech-friendly,” it is richly historical as well, with its Old Town of narrow cobblestone streets and clutter of shops, Royal Palace, and National Museum.
A Viking ship that sank in the Baltic about three miles from the city in 1628 was discovered some 40 years ago. It was pulled out of the deep complete with 27 bodies, casks of spirits, the bones of meat intended to feed the passengers, and personal items, such as toys. After being salvaged and restored, it has become a whopper of an attraction, drawing 800,000 visitors to the museum every year.
Other landmarks can be found at the Storkyrkan, the cathedral famous for its statue of the city’s patron saint, George, or at one of Stockholm’s many parks. These are everywhere, the most popular being Djurgarden, the vast former royal hunting ground, now quiet and scenic. Skansen, an amusement park/zoo well known for its exhibit of Sweden’s 19th-century rural roots, complete with old farmhouses, reindeer, and craftsmen’s shops, offers a livelier experience.
Wherever you head in Stockholm, water views are always close by, as are some of the finest restaurants in Europe. The Operakälleren, for example, offers a choice of casual dining at reasonable prices in one room or, as one diner put it, going into “a food coma” in the lush ambience of red brocade and Victorian oil portraits in adjoining quarters. Folks feast here on such dishes as “Baked Bass with vanilla flavoured sauce and vegetable ragout wrapped in chard” or “saddle of rabbit with olive sauce and a zucchini flowers stuffed with anchovies.”
Mature Life Features, Copyright 2003
Legends Thrive off Italian Coast
By Igor Lobanov
Mature Life Features
VALLETTA, Malta ‑‑‑‑ Long popular with vacationing royalty and artists from across Europe, this rock‑bound bastion 50 miles south of Sicily remains an enigma to many North Americans.
A balmy year‑round climate bathes a land whose legacy is rooted in temples a thousand years older than Egypt’s Pyramids at Giza and branches through classical Greece and Rome to the palaces of a patrician unit of Christian crusaders.
The Apostle Paul was shipwrecked here. Arabs occupied the outcropping in 879, followed by the Normans. Napoleon dropped by for six days and his troops hung around for a couple of years until sent packing by the English. Britain’s Royal Navy operated out of the island’s superb natural harbors for a century and a half before the Maltese finally attained their independence in 1964. But it was the Sovereign Military Hospitaler Order of St. John of Jerusalem, better known as the Knights of Malta, whose influence is most heavily felt.
Our cruise ship arrived after dark and we made sure we were on deck as the harbor pilot led the vessel to the quay. As we nosed past the breakwater into the island capital’s narrow harbor entrance, we were confronted by the massive spotlighted star‑shaped Fort St. Elmo to the right and the spear‑like walls of Fort San Angelo to the left whose towering ramparts take on a creamy yellowish glow.
The Knights of St. John, ousted from the Holy Land by the Ottoman Turks and then from the island of Rhodes by Suleiman I (The Magnificent), were invited here in the mid‑16th century by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V who saw Malta as the pivotal bulwark to blunt a Moslem invasion of Southern Europe. The newcomers fortified the island and withstood a brutal four‑month Turkish siege in 1565. Over the next 2 1/2 centuries, they created a place that Scottish novelist Sir Walter Scott called “a city built by gentlemen for gentlemen.”
The Renaissance grid of narrow streets holds palaces, municipal buildings, and churches, many still honeycombed with secret passages. The soaring Co‑Cathedral of St. John, with its high‑baroque ornamentation, has a marble floor quilt‑pattern of mosaics that covers the tombs of some 350 knights. A museum houses treasures “liberated” from all over the Mediterranean by the far‑ranging cavaliers. On a wall of the Oratory is Italian Renaissance painter Caravaggio’s chilling masterpiece, “The Beheading of St. John the Baptist.”
Perched on a mountain spur 160 miles away high above the Ionian Sea on the northeast coast of Sicily is Taormina (see map). Medieval stone buildings hug cobblestone streets and unexpected portals reveal views past flowering gardens to the deep blue waters where Homer set his tales of Neptune, Ulysses, and the Cyclops.
A favored residence of wealthy Roman patricians for centuries, its quixotic Piazza IX Aprile overlooking the sea is its social center where folks gather in coffee, gelato and marzipan or participate in the lassiggato, the traditional Latin evening stroll.
The piazza is framed by a couple of churches and a clock tower dating from the Middle Ages that serves as a gateway to the medieval sector. Narrow lanes lead to views of the villa‑strewn hillside above and the sea below. A few small squares with bars and other meeting places are interspersed with shops catering to the chic crowd.
Carved into a hillside on the northeastern fringe of town is the town’s treasured Greco‑Roman theater that dates back to the 3rd century BC. The Greeks built it for classical plays and musical events and the Imperial‑age Romans transformed it into an amphitheater for gladiator contests, hunting spectaculars, and even naval battles on a flooded stage.
Today”s audiences at summer concerts and other events still have a grandstand view past the stage to the sea and the largest active volcano in Europe: Sicily’s Mt. Etna.
Mature Life Features, Copyright 2003
Mature Life Features Writer Wins Top Travel-Story Award
San Diego, Oct. 26 — “The Naples Nobody Knows,” a story included in the August 2010 Mature Life Features package, has won a first-place plaque in the 38th annual San Diego Press Club Excellence in Journalism Awards.
Written by Mature Life Features editor Cecil Scaglione, the story as it appeared in Toronto-based Forever Young News (www.foreveryoungnews.com) was judged the best among entries in the Non-Daily Newspapers-Travel category.
Award presentations were made Tuesday, Oct. 25, at a dinner attended by 350 political and community leaders, radio personalities, and newspaper and television writers and photographers from throughout Southern California.
Mature Life Features previous award in the same category in this annual competition was in 2008 for a travel story written by Scaglione and entitled “Take a Free Ride in Las Vegas” as it appeared in the Seattle area’s The Senior Source.
Flexibility Key to Freighter Cruising
| www.freightercruuses.com/GrimaldiPassengerStories
November 2007 |
Reprinted with permission |
“Weather had sealed our 51,000-ton roll on-roll off freighter, the Grimaldi Line’s Grande Ellade, in port overnight. We were behind schedule and uncertain what our next stop would be. We were never sure of what, when and how long any stop would be during our 10,000-mile roundtrip voyage out of southern England’s bustling port of Southampton. |
| When we boarded the vessel to begin our five-week journey, we learned that our first stop, Rome, was cancelled. We were told the next morning that our first landfall would be Valencia, on Spain’s Costa Blanca. That drove home the primary rule of our freighter trip: Be flexible. We spent several hours in each of the 16 cities and towns where temperatures varied from 100° Fahrenheit (38° C) to below freezing. Our first test on our second day out. The ship and its cargo of some 4,500 vehicles, a couple of dozen officers and crewman, and eight passengers bounced around the edge of an Atlantic tempest as we crossed the Bay of Biscay. ‘We hit bottom several times’ complained my wife, Bev. ‘I didn’t know there were so many potholes in the sea.’ |
| The Ellade’s cruising speed of 20 knots/hour got us to Valencia on our fourth day out of England. Several crewmen gave the Spanish city, home to what is believed to be the chalice Jesus and the Apostles used at the Last Supper, their highest praise: ‘Nice City.’ We split up into two parties. Lou and Jean, my brother and his wife from Toronto, joined us in one cab. Jack and Sally Beaton and Bob and Lynne Blount, all from Canada, took another. We agreed to meet our drivers at a prearranged place and time, a practice we pursued in most ports, to return to the ship. After a quick tour of the sights, smells and sounds around the main plaza dominated by the cathedral’s octagonal bell tower, we relaxed over brunch in a small cafe nestled in a nearby market. |
| Our confidence soared at our next stop when we walked from the docks into Salerno, the largest city on the Amalfi coast. With a second visit scheduled for this city, once a major Allied stepping stone during the World War II invasion of Europe, and reservations at a seaside restaurant cell-phoned by the ship’s cook, Salvatore Punzo, we made notes over lunch of what we intended to do when we return in 10 days. |
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| That evening, we sipped espresso on the Ellade’s bridge with the master, Captain Michele Siniscalchi, as we skimmed atop the silky sea into the two-mile wide mouth of the Strait of Messina separating Sicily from Italy’s mainland. It took the better part of the next day to slip through the 400 Greek Islands – actually, 100 of them are Turkish – before docking at the Athenian port of Piraeus. |
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We walked to a nearby bus stop, got directions to the central agora (marketplace) and clambered aboard a bus headed that way. After our cameras captured some of the local customs and culture, we took a taxi for 3.5 euros – cabs are very inexpensive in Greece – to the Athen’s abutting Microlimano neighborhood. We climbed a small hill for a panoramic view of the Acropolis and Parthenon before picking out a waterfront bistro for lunch. |
| Conversation centered on the benefits of this boat trip. The low cost – our fare for five weeks was 1,551 euros each – topped the list. The facilities ranked almost as highly. Fellow passenger, British Columbian Bob, said: ‘This is the biggest cabin we have ever had, and that includes several cruise ships.’ Next was the ease of getting off and on the ship in each port without having to battle passels of other passengers. The following day we were in Izmir, near Turkey’s ancient archeological city of Ephesus. We opted to look and loiter around the modern center of the town. |
| With only a few hours in Alexandria, we climbed into two taxis for a quick tour of some sites we never got to see because the two drivers extemporised and took us to other sites. The hair-raising drive itself was worth the money for even the most avid carnival-ride junky. The white lines on the roads seem to be for decorative purposes only. Our visit to Limasol on the Greek’s south coast of Cyprus was an acute contrast. We hopped a bus for an 80-cent, 15-minute ride into town and had all day to meander around the market, mosque and medieval museum in the Byzantine castle where, according to tradition, Richard the Lionheart married Berengaria of Navarre and crowned her Queen of England in 1191. We were awakened the following morning by the rumbling anchor chain and spent the day rolling gently among a dozen or so other ships awaiting the Israeli port of Ashdod to reopen at sundown. We arrived on the Sabbath, when the whole country shuts down. ‘It’s just like Sunday in Italy’, said chief engineer Antonino Esposito. It gave us the day to do laundry, trim hair, manicure hands and/or feet, and lounge in the sun on deck chairs. Other shipboard pastimes included writing Christmas cards or knitting afghans while listening to the music from CDs, watching movies or checking the Milky Way and counting the shooting stars. And we raided the kitchen for tidbits and sipped libations purchased from the cook. Wine was served with lunch and dinner. Meals were served at 7:30am, 11am and 6pm. Those hours and the periods in ports became the only important markers as time lost all meaning. |
| We arranged, through the Grimaldi agent, for a 10-passenger bus and guide to take all of us for a tour of Jerusalem. It was a bit difficult to feel the spirit in the Holy City because of our haste, the clamor and commercialism, and the packs of pilgrims pushing and prodding their way through the narrow streets and archways. A side trip to Bethlehem on a nearby hill was scrapped by the lack of time and the need to change vehicles, guide and driver because our Israeli team was not allowed into the West Bank city that is controlled by Christian Palestinians. Besides, dinner on board, prepared a la Napolitano by Salvatore, sounded just as appealing as any we would have found ashore. Pasta in all its modes, calamari, thinly sliced beef, assorted cheeses, gelato, roast chicken, fresh fish and pizza were only a few of entrees. Steward Milen Slavov capped every meal with a steaming espresso or cappuccino. |
| With all day in Salerno the second time, we got to see more of the town, including the cathedral that houses the bones of St. Matthew and the Norman castle straddling a rocky outcropping 900 feet atop the town. Amalfi coast offers some of the most beautiful village and ocean views in all of Europe, but the views from the town of Ravello – perched above the gulf of Salerno – feel like a shortcut to paradise. We sailed by the candy-like lights of the Amalfi coast that mellow Mediterranean evening before pointing north to Savona. It was late afternoon when we slid into an Italian Riviera town to berth overnight. |
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| Two days after coasting by the French Riviera, we sailed by the Pillars of Hercules (Gibraltar) and on to Setubal, our last warm-weather stop. We strolled along tailored terra streets in this Portuguese town and picked up some pharmacy needs for Salvatore. Mr. Jack got a haircut. Lou tracked down an automated teller machine for more funds. And we had a beer in a MacDonald’s with third officer Antonio Auceli and cadet Michele Cesaro. |
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The next night we squeezed our way through the lock that protects the British port of Bristol from one of the highest tides in the world, second only to the Bay of Fundy. The lock is 18 meters high to seal off the harbor from the 14-meter tide. Alan, our cab driver, said a local activity involves ‘surfing the Severn’. Youngsters head to the nearby Severn River to catch the tidal bore that rolls upriver when the sea surges. A little-known historical attraction is a replica of the Matthew, the square-rigged caravel John Cabot sailed to Newfoundland in 1497. There is also a life-size bronze statue downtown of Cary Grant, who was named Archie Leech when he was born here. |
| It was a brief overnight trip from Cork in southern Ireland, where Bev remarked ‘The Emerald Isle is really emerald.’ Our driver John Carroll explained it’s because ‘we get rain seven days a week.’ The Ellade’s foghorn awakened us the next day, which was when we learned the North Sea deserves the bad rap everyone gives it. We bounced around like a chip on its shoulder as force-10 winds, killer waves and freezing temperatures trampled the region. We zigzagged and circled for two days awaiting the storm’s departure and, while we accepted weather as our dictator, time was becoming our nemesis. The delays were pushing some of us critically close to our flight departures. The seas softened and temperatures tumbled as we cleared the northern tip of Denmark. The only warmth we ran into in Stenungsund, a 30-minute drive from the port of Wallhamn, was the people’s friendliness. We walked into the Danish town of Esbjerg the next morning, where shore leave was from 9am to 1pm, and spent most of it in a computer café rearranging our flights. Our next night was a six-hour run through a sci-fi Marscape as we glided through the massive industrial complex surrounding Antwerp. Lighted towers lining both sides of the inlet marched off endlessly in all directions. Lou and Jean left us in the morning and took trains to Brussels and then through the Chunnel to London to catch their Toronto flight the following day. The rest of us passed on the hour-long trip into town, and another hour back, because our scheduled stay was only a few hours as the Ellade loaded 1,400 cubic meters of fuel before returning to Southampton and starting the five-week tour all over again. We opted to pack and prepare for our airport runs and flights home two days away. We wound up spending more than 12 hours tied up because United Nations divers closed the only exit lock to inspect it for security breaches. Reminding us to the end: Be flexible.” |
Helsinki’s “Finnatical” About Quirks
By James Gaffney
Mature Life Features
Helsinki’s domed government building overlooks an 1894 bronze statue of Czar Alexander II in Senate Square.
HELSINKI, Finland —- Wherever you travel, it’s a good idea not to step on the toes of the hostess while tripping the light fantastic. Especially when she’s teaching you to dance. Fear of such a faux pas swept through my mind as, with clasped hands outstretched and cheek to cheek with a former Finnair flight attendant, we tangoed across the ballroom floor.
“You’re really not doing that badly,” reassured Riitta Kiiveri, who along with her husband, Pertii, was a competition tango dancer. The couple, who met while living in Southern California and returned to Helsinki, then took to the floor. They were poetry in motion as well as a paradox in this introverted Scandinavian country better known as the home of composer Jean Sibelius and Father Christmas. It seemed so out of the ordinary for a dance as dramatic as the tango to be fashionable among poker-faced Finns.
Riitta explained how the tango, born in the brothels of Buenos Aires, was introduced here in 1916, a year before Finland gained independence from a century of czarist Russian rule. It has grown into an obsession that can be measured by the sheer number of tango dance halls in Helsinki and the annual Tango Festival that lures 150,000 fans.
The tango is by no means the only way this quirky country dances to the beat of a different drum. For starters, various festivals are held throughout the year so men can carry their wives, pretend to play guitar to rock music, and compete to see who can sit naked atop an anthill the longest.
All of which seems to pale next to the annual Sleepyhead Day on July 27 when the laziest person in the towns of Naantali and Hanko is thrown into the sea.
Quirkiness aside, Finland has had a quietly significant influence on modern-day life. In 1967, Finnish designer Olof Backstrom invented those Fiskars scissors with orange plastic handles that finally cut our fingers some slack. Unlike what many Americans think, Nokia is not a Japanese company. It’s Finnish.
Finland also gave the world two Miss Universes and has trained U.S. Special Forces in snow-covered terrain.
Helsinki’s post-World War II architectural showpiece is arguably the performance center, Finlandia Hall, a sweeping homage to modernism by the world-renowned Finnish architect Alvar Aalto.
However, Finns will attest the best buildings of all are those created for this country’s sweaty No. 1 pastime: sauna. Numbers provide the proof. There are 1.6 million saunas for a population of 5 million.
Locals view sauna (pronounced SOW-nah, if you want to sound like an English-speaking Finn) as more than an agreeable way to unwind while beating yourself ever so gently with a bundle of birch branches to stimulate circulation.
To be invited to sauna is an honor.
“If I invite you to sauna, it’s a great pleasure to have you as a sauna friend.”Matti Kivinen said as he led his guest into one of the six saunas at the Finnish Sauna Society’s complex in Lauttasaari just outside Helsinki. He is the society’s president and, like most Finns, can debate at the drop of a towel the relative merits of traditional Finnish smoke and wood-burning saunas. Yet few have much good to say for the oft-ridiculed electric sauna, seen as a soulless intrusion on a centuries-old tradition held in near-religious reverence.
Mature Life Features, Copyright 2003
Time-Travel Czech List
Vltava River hugs Bohemian village of Cesky Krumlov
By James Gaffney
Mature Life Features
CESKY KRUMLOV, Czech Republic – The Australian flag waving from the window of the Moldau Hilton youth hostel seemed a little out of place in this medieval Bohemian village. The owner, a chain-smoking 50-something woman with a raucous, Phyllis Diller-like laugh, put everyone on the inside track.
“It’s the 52 pubs here,” said Jana Perina. “That’s why this place is so popular with Aussies.”
One of her Australian guests was a young artist who gave the accommodation its unofficial moniker when he painted the mural above the entrance. The mural depicts a trio of cherubs holding aloft a banner emblazoned with the words, “Moldau Hilton.” The name pays tribute to the hostel’s location on the banks of the meandering Vltava, known as Moldau in German, the river immortalized by the 19th-century Czech composer Bedrick Smetana.
Nowadays, when people in this country advise foreign travelers to get away from overcrowded Prague to experience the real Czech Republic, they’re probably referring to Cesky Krumlov. New life was breathed into this town of 15,000 nestled 100 miles south of Prague and 30 miles from the Austrian border when it was designated a World Heritage Site. Before the fall of communism in 1989, the community had deteriorated into a drab slum, according to locals.
The town now insinuates a hundred fairy tales with its renovated Renaissance and baroque gables, tapered roofs, old stone stairways, balconies and oriel windows. This is especially true during late afternoons when shadows half-darken mysterious lanes filled with centuries-old facades adorned with sgrafitto, artistic designs etched into the outer layer of plaster revealing the different-colored underlying layer.
Dating to 1253, Cesky Krumlov is a medieval time-capsule of winding streets squeezed into a tight S-bend of the Vltava. The historical center, a jumble of colorful stone houses, is an island- like pedestrian area linked to land and the main castle — the second largest in the Republic – by three bridges, creating a sequence of mini-waterfronts dotted with wooden walking paths, outdoor cares, touristy boutiques, and small, affordable pensions. It’s easy to explore the entire town on foot in a day.
By dusk, the day trippers and tour buses have disappeared and chatter from inside the town’s dimly lighted riverside taverns echoes in the cobblestone alleys. Couples fill cozy sidewalk café tables bathed in the soft glow of candlelight.
There is no question this is a place that takes visitors back in time. A hilltop path that leads around the tree-shaded perimeter of its medieval castle presents a bird’s-eye perspective of the town’s red-riled roofs rolling down to the calm Vltava. Nothing in this panorama reveals its Internet cafes, ethnic restaurants, or souvenir shops with traditional Czech marionettes hanging in the doorway.
Mature Life Features, Copyright 2003
Spoons Dish Out Welsh Soul
By Sandy Katz
Mature Life Features
- Cardiff Castle (British Travel Authority)
To be born Welsh is to be born privileged.
Not with a silver spoon in your mouth,
But music in your blood,
And poetry in your soul.
–Wilfred Wilson
CARDIFF, Wales — In the heart of this Welsh capital, I dropped into the Castle Welsh Crafts shop to learn more about Wales’ soul by poring over spoons made out of wood rather than silver. These utensils with variously designed handles are known as love spoons and date back to the 17th century, when a young man would carve one to present to the young lady he wished to woo.
The symbols carved on the spoon have particular meaning. For example, a heart signifies love; a wheel, work, and a shield, protection. They’re still given out as a lasting token of affection.
Most of the Welsh are descended from people who began settling in these western reaches of Great Britain thousands of years ago. The earliest were the Iberians followed by invasions of Celts, Romans, Anglo-Saxons, Normans, and English. Struggles against these marauders and efforts to earn a living from the harsh, rugged land helped shape the strong, independent Welsh character. Their eloquence, warmth, and imagination have been attributed to their Celtic forebears.
Wherever you roam in Wales, you’ll encounter the Red Dragon. This symbol of bravery and victory over countless invaders has been emblazoned on shields and standards since the Middle Ages as the emblem of the Welsh people.
Pubs play an important role in social life here, but Welshmen proudly maintain close family ties and are deeply religious. They love to sing and are famous for their excellent choirs and glee clubs. It’s not surprising that they turned out to be quite a theatrical and poetic bunch. Consider such well-known actors as Sir Anthony Hopkins and Richard Burton, singer Tom Jones, and, of course, poet Dylan Thomas.
Cardiff sprang from the wealth fueled by the region’s thriving 19th-century coal empire. In the city’s center stands the 1,900-year-old Cardiff Castle. Restored in the 1800s by Victorian architect William Burges, the citadel is an extravaganza of color and exquisitely detailed craftsmanship. East of the castle stands the aristocratic structure called the National Museum of Wales. Amidst its art, natural history, and science displays is a spectacular exhibition on the evolution of Wales, complete with animated Ice Age creatures and a simulated Big Bang. The fourth-floor gallery houses paintings by such Impressionist masters as Degas, Manet, and Pissaro.
To learn more about the Celts, we headed for Celtica, a recently restored mansion in the village of Machynlleth just south of the mountainous Snowdonia National Park. Exhibits illustrate Celtic beliefs and culture, as well as their poetic, inventive, and heroic nature.
Anyone who dotes on browsing in musty bookshops will find nirvana in Hay-On-Wye on the Welsh-English. The tiny settlement proclaims itself as the second-hand-book capital of the world. Virtually all the shops, including the town’s former theater, offer books on every conceivable subject. The village’s reputation for beguiling bibliophiles owes a fair amount to the somewhat eccentric bookseller Richard Booth who, among other things, once declared himself the King of Hay and that his minute realm was to be independent from England.
To the west, beyond Camarthen in the village of Laugharne, Dylan Thomas devotees will find his Boathouse where he wrote his most famous work, “Under Milk Wood.” Built into the hillside a 15-minute walk from the town, “The Shack,” as he called it, is a shrine to the poet that houses photos, manuscripts, and recordings.
Local legend says Merlin the Magician was born in Carmarthen and raised by his mother and nuns in the Church of St. Peter. His mother was said to be the daughter of the King of South Wales and his father was described as a spirit who lived between the moon and earth. Merlin was thought to have spent most of his adult life in the area of Caerleon advising King Arthur.
Copyright 2003
Sci-Fi Suburb in Austria
By James Gaffney
Mature Life Features
VIENNA – Facing the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, I raised the baton and with breezy optimism began conducting one of the world’s premiere music ensembles in Johann Strauss’ “Blue Danube Waltz.”
The moment was magic — until I butchered the tempo. The orchestra played too fast, then too slow. Finally the musicians ceased playing all together. A tuxedo-clad violinist stood up and shouted something in German to this wannabe maestro. The orchestra chuckled. An Austrian boy standing nearby with his giggling classmates translated: “The man said, ‘Have you even heard this piece before?'”
It all started with a retired Australian couple I met on the four-hour train trip from Prague to Vienna. They unfolded a map and “palace, palace, palace … cathedral, cathedral … palace, cathedral ” the man rattled off amicably before rolling his eyes.
In all fairness, Vienna is still regarded as the embodiment of a grand European capital. Just stand in the shadows of the 1,441-room Schonbrunn Palace or any of the baroque or neoclassical refuges left by the Hapsburg dynasty that ruled half of Europe from 1278 to 1918. And don’t forget the Vienna Boys Choir and Spanish Riding School’s prancing Lippizaners, cultural icons reflecting this city’s unabashed devotion to artistic precision.
But even locals admit the city has rested for too long on its cultural laurels. “A lot of people think of Vienna as only this,” said resident Christiane Haustein as she played an invisible violin to make her point. An exclamation point to her statement can be seen in the hip MuseumsQuartier, a tour de force of 10 art museums housed ironically enough in the Hapsburgs’ royal riding stables.
The several hundred exhibits gallop the gamut from modern art and experimental architecture to avant-garde multimedia demonstrations amidst an interactive children’s museum, theater, cafes, restaurants, and library. The icing on this cultural cake is the Leopold Museum, home of the world’s largest heretofore private collection of Expressionist masterworks by Austria’s Egon Schiele. Adjacent rooms feature the highly stylized works of Schiele’s mentor Gustav Klimt. He was the turn-of-the-century Viennese artist behind those arte nouveau paintings of femme fatales casting their Victorian cares to the Freudian wind.
The cobblestone boulevards of this city of 1.6 million people are still swept clean, making it still a delight to sip espresso at the Black Kameel. This 385-year-old sidewalk café is where a peckish Beethoven often sent his manservant for take-out schnitzel and beer.
Nearby, the sweeping central bay of the Hofburg Winter Palace is where Hitler made his conciliatory speech to the Austrians in 1938. That was shortly before the German army rolled into town, destroying nearly a third of the city, during World War II.
Gentler times are reflected in the eye-catching art-nouveau facades that flatter the pleasant, upscale shopping corridors of Kohlmart, Graben, and Rotentum. The same curvaceous style also left its signature inside the city’s legendary, turn-of-the-century coffeehouses. One evening we tumbled into the oldest — the smoke-filled, bohemian Hewelka. There we drank in the cross-section of Viennese society over a late-night Turkischer, or Turkish coffee.
It was clear no one was going to mistake this buzzing, theatrical java den for an American Starbucks. First of all, the waiters all wore tuxedos — a tradition requiring three years’ formal training as prescribed by Austrian law. Second, nobody at Hewelka sat quietly alone with noses buried in a laptop computer.
“A coffeehouse is Vienna – it’s life,” said Diane Naar, an English-born writer who has called this city home for some three decades. “It’s where Viennese come for dinner, meet friends, have intellectual conversations. Look around. People are actually talking to one another, people who have only just met while sharing a table.”
Next morning it became clear why the Gasometer, or G-town, has been turning the heads of urban planners and architects since it opened early this century. It’s worth the 15-minute U-Bahn, or subway, ride from Stephansplatz downtown for anyone who wants a glimpse into the weird and wonderful future of suburbs as science-fiction writer Ray Bradbury might have designed them.
Envision a quartet of round natural-gas storage structures, or gasometers, from the turn of the 20th century sitting side by side. Each is about half the size of a domed stadium. They’re connected by glass walkways. The lower levels comprise the uber-mall of four brick mega-structures complete with florists, cinemas, nightclubs, banks, grocery stores, rental car agencies, you name it. Rising above the glass-domed ceilings of the uber-mall are residential communities of apartments and condos. A second glass dome tops each gasometer’s residential section allowing for year-round, weather-proof outdoor living.
But even the futuristic G-town seems almost plain compared to the hallucinogenic vision called Hundertwasser Haus. Designed in the 1980s by Vienna’s late artist-turned-architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser, this Gaudi-meets-Crayolas apartment building dominates nearly a city block with sinuous multicolored walls, leaning columns of colorful broken tiles, and multi-tiered roof forests.
The man standing at the curb snapping photographs shook his head. “Have you ever seen anything so ridiculous?” he asked. Actually, yes. Me conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra.
But that’s not the fault of the software-driven “Virtual Conductor,” the popular interactive exhibit at the House of Music. Opened in 2000, the high-tech $55 million complex is a six-story showcase of enjoyable cutting-edge multimedia exhibits celebrating Vienna’s A-team of composers — Hayden, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, the Strausses, and Mahler. With “Virtual Conductor,” an infrared beam from a baton aimed at a super-sized screen “conducts” an interactive Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra that responds to the maestro’s tempo and rhythm.
Raising the baton for a second try, I led the orchestra through Strauss’ most famous waltz, successfully this time. And this time the orchestra applauded.
Mature Life Features Copyright 2002
Mature Life Features 