Looking for Julie

A few weekends ago we borrowed a car and drove to Salzburg on a quest to feel some of that delicious "Sound of Music" vibe. We were not disappointed; Julie Andrews is still very much in the house (as was what's-his-name Amadeus).

In an effort to bring the von Klimasmith family's child count more in line with that of the von Trapps, we borrowed Ruben, the son of our German friends here. That turned out to be a great idea. On the ride down, the kids watched the movie on one of those portable DVD players so that when we first stepped into the Mirabell Gardens ("Do-Re-Mi") the kids immediately recognized it and were appropriately melodious.

To be fair, I think the real highlight of the trip was just having another kid along for Sophie; we could have been visiting the shooting location for a OSHA training film ("Workplace Safety Part I: Spine-Friendly Chair Adjustments") and Sophie and Ruben wouldn't have cared; they had a blast together. That said, unlike the sets of OSHA training films, Salzburg is extraordinarily kid-friendly. Sophie and Ruben were particularly thrilled with the playgrounds, one near our hotel where they played some kind of "villagers working for a lord" game and another, in the Mirabell gardens that had a extremely tall slide complete with piped-in music from Mozart's "Magic Flute." (Okay, that IS a little strange, but it was very cool).

Our favorite site was the "trick fountain" water garden at Schloss Hellbrunn, a bishop's palace we reached by taking a boat up the River Salzach for about 4 km. Some of the features utilized water power to animate little figurines. In others, the bishop surprised his guests by soaking them with water from hidden jets. Our tour guide was appropriately playful and we all got a taste of the bishop's wet sense of humor. Although the rest of the palace grounds were less aquatic, they were no less beautiful with yet another fantastic playground and the pavilion from the Sound of Music ("I am sixteen going on seventeen").

Going to Austria from the Czech Republic was a little like visiting the US from Mexico (minus the border patrol, tequila, and tasty burritos). Lunch in the Czech Republic costs about $3. In Salzburg, you had to be prepared to spend ~$10! Each! (We are so spoiled.) But you get a lot of aesthetic pleasure for your Euro: the aforementioned playgrounds, clean streets, beautiful parks, good coffee, graffiti-free buildings, etc. The evidence of the cost differential was most pronounced when we crossed the border back into the Czech Republic and ran a Tijuana-esque gauntlet of duty-free stores and brothels, both obviously designed to capture Euros from the nearby Viennese bargain-hunters.

Betsy and I also observed (or at least imagined) a pride in the Austrians . . . maybe even smugness . . . that is absolutely missing from the Czech neighbors who seem much more . . . what is it: angry? resentful? self-consciously wistful? And who could blame them? Before WWI the Czech lands were the industrial center of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. And although the new Czechoslovak republic was relatively prosperous between the wars, the export-oriented Czech economy never completely recovered from the great depression and WWII. So although both countries were similarly devastated by WWII, the Czech adoption of communism and rejection of the Marshall Plan severely handicapped the Czech economy. By the end of communism, the Czech Republic per capita GDP was something like 5% that of Austria! Even now, the GDP per capital is still much higher in Austria ($36,031) than the Czech Republic ($23,100). The Czechs I've spoken to about this feel a little frustrated. Although their economy is growing very quickly (6%!), they still don't have much purchasing power. With the fall of communism they expected bigger changes sooner. And meanwhile, the Austrians, who actually VOTED for Hitler, are still far ahead!

We got a further taste of this economic reality last weekend when we took advantage of the May Day four-day weekend to go to Hungary (GDP per capita $19, 995) with Ruben and the rest of his family. Though you could see pockets of investments, overall things seemed more run-down than the Czech Republic. But we had a great time. We stayed for two nights in Esztergom on the "Danube Bend." Esztergom has been the seat of Hungarian Catholicism for 1000 years and has a HUGE basilica which loomed above us even as we walked from the train station on the Slovakian side of the Danube and crossed into Hungary. Esztergom is also a great place for hiking. The Slovakian side of the river is relatively flat compared to the hills on the Hungarian side, which meant a great hike up to a castle that used to guard the Danube. But our favorite part of Esztergom was the afternoon we spent playing at their brand new bathing complex which has a "wellness center" and an amazing array of indoor and outdoor swimming pools, whirlpools, and water slides.

The theme of "great bathing" carried forward into Budapest. As is always the case when we venture away from Brno, we were a little overwhelmed by all the tourists (and the price increases that come with them!) . . . it might be a great city to come back to without kids. We didn't do much in the way of conventional sightseeing, but we did go on a child-run railroad, a legacy of the communist era Young Pioneers in which kids aged 10-14 did everything except drive the trains.

But back to bathing. Although it was probably not much fun to be occupied by the Turks, Budapest did get one great thing out of it: a great tradition in public baths. On May Day, we visited the Szechenyi Furdo (baths) in the middle of Varosliget, the huge public park. The park was in full festival spirit: packed with families, food stands, retro-Marxists, and music stages (my favorite sound: a Hungarian pop diva singing the "Flashdance" song. Vat a feilink!). The baths themselves were the epitome of 19th-century cool to the extreme: room after room of pools of different temperature and mineral compositions AND then a huge statue-strewn courtyard with three enormous swimming pools complete with men playing chess in the water and walrus-esque women draped on the steps and sunning themselves. We were there for two and a half hours! I'm either as clean as I'll ever be or I've contracted every known water-borne disease known to man.

Our life here in Brno is still as mellow as always, except we are aware that the clock is ticking (we leave in early July and then go to Croatia for a month before coming home). Sophie's Czech is starting to emerge and both Betsy and I finish teaching at the end of May. Seeing the economic contrasts between countries is a constant reminder of how lucky we are to be in the position to do this exploring. What else can I say? I can't tell you how thrilling it was to roll our suitcases over the Danube from Slovakia into Hungary! Of course, traveling with another family was also a bittersweet reminder of how much we will miss our friends here. But enough sentimentality for now; there will be at least two more blog postings before I sign off and return to my American life that offers NO time for this kind of namby-pamby reflective musing.