Train to Reims, Cathedral, meat locker!

Train to Reims was fine, cab to the Cathedral was fine too, and it was cold! Outside of the Cathedral is lovely, the inside is even lovelier, some of the most amazing stained glass I've ever seen, and there was some sunlight too, so things looked pretty good. The Cathedral is cold, in fact colder than the outside temperature, they could hang meat in there for aging! Here's a few pictures, we got back to Paris early, had some lunch, and just had some wine and cheese in the room before Moms wanting to hit the sack. Geneva for a couple of hours tomorrow, then back to the USA on Tuesday. PS the Chagall windows (the second ones above) are amazing! There's more to come too, including the windows that tell the story of the regions most famous export, champagne!

January 27th is also International Holocaust Rememberance Day...

...and since I've stood on cold train platforms this week with Mom complaining about cold weather, I feel like such a wimp compared to what these people went through:

http://www.scrapbookpages.com/AuschwitzScrapbook/History/Articles/index.html

No editorial comments required, read along and weep at man's inhumanity to man!

A Parisien Saturday!

A cold and spitty snow pellets one, but a good one, started last night upon our arrival, the driver even found us at the Gare du Nord and we schlepped bags forever to where he was parked, after arrival at the hotel where the staff greeted us literally with open arms off to an Italian place down the street for vino and some quick pasta, then to bed. Mom slept great, I tossed and turned for a bit in the narrow version of a twin bed (guess 25 years of sleeping in a Queen side bed has spoiled me), only tried to fall out three times!

Up in the morning to some sunshine and clouds, then to the American Catholic Church for 11AM Saturday Mass where one of the congregants was so proud to tell us that the presider was from Pennsylvania!

Did some shopping for Cokes and snacks and things down the street, back to the room, made a phone call or two and found Mom's beloved perfume, walked over there and got a lifetime supply, stopped at a most lovely chocolate shop for little 'surprises' for several at home, back to the hotel, then we started to get ideas for what to do on Sunday and Monday now that most of the 'shopping concerns' were accounted for.

Found when Sunday Mass in Rhiems at the Cathedral is, 11AM and tried to work with my older train sked to see when we could get out there and back, and by now the room Internet connection is getting all wonky, then wondered how far we could go to see mountains and snow on Monday before our return home on Tuesday. Call my buddy the Concierge at the hotel, he gives me a phone number for the SNCF (Societe National Chemin de Fer, French National Railway) and guess what, all the phone menus are in French! (Wanna feel like a duck out of water, try that!) Blow that idea off, figure we'll ask where to go between Geneva and Grenoble, both on the TGV mainline, they say Geneva, so we decide we'll do a round trip on Monday to Geneva, now to get booked for Rhiems and Geneva, figure the easiest way is just to go to Gare d'Est, so Taxi here we come!

Off to the Gare d'Est in the middle of the Saturday evening traffic, I'll say the drivers here are skilled at shoehorning cars into spots I'd never try! We get there, and there are two SNCF ticket offices, we try one and guess what, that's the closed one on Saturday! Trip on over to the other one, get in the line, find out that our preferred trip to Geneva is sold out but we can go and come back later, so that's fine, and we can get to Rheims and back, so we get the tickets and come back to the hotel, for cocktails and some snacks we bought earlier in the day!

Now we just have to make a departure from Paris Est station at 0857 to Rheims arriving 0942 and then a cab to the Cathedral for 11AM Mass and extended photo sessions, looks like the weather should be OK but I'll check in the morning again, I'd love to have some sun for the Cathedral windows and not have carry an umbrella! We'll grab some food in Rheims since we don't leave until 1619 and our previous experience of finding a cab was silly, went to a big hotel and had them call us one (works every time!) .

No pictures today, but there will be some tomorrow!

And one happy Mom splitting an entrecote at the Hippo with a huge pile of fries and great bearnaise sauce for lunch!

Blogging from a train!

We're on the high speed Thalys train from Koln to Paris right now, and its got Wi-Fi, and its pretty good and fast! I'm amazed!

Our train Thursday was well, slow, with an hour outside of Augsburg spent sitting waiting for a stuck train switch to open up. Finally got to Koln (we call it Cologne) and found our hotel to be great, a nice steak dinner before bed, nice room, Mom was very happy, and then we awoke on Friday morning to dark damp and drippy. That didn't keep us from the Cathedral, where we went to what was called 'Hi. Mass' in a side chapel in the Koln Dom, a little chapel with very hard wood pews and kneelers, a Mass where the priest faced the altar with his back to us, there was music and an organist, and all of Mass was in German, but that's OK.

We spend some time afterwards touring the Cathedral under less than optimum lighting conditions, raining and darkish so the stained glass windows only looked kinda ordinary. Pictures to follow.

Wait, I forgot to say that before we went out there was a great breakfast buffet and Mom pretty well....yay! Bacon and eggs and more British kinds of breakfast foods, must be the influence of the Channel Tunnel and more Brits coming over for business and fun.

After touring Cathedral back to hotel in the rain, then back to the Cathedral and the shopping that's right outside, and more fish for lunch at the local Nordsee (if you ever come to Germany the Nordsee for a chain is a real find, if you like fish that is!). Did some more bumming around in the rain before making it back to hotel to fetch the bags, then to the train station.

I can remember when all European train stations had legions of baggage carts and they were all free, then they started to charge for their use, but you got your money back if you brought the cart back. Koln, no baggage trolleys, and with two big bags and two smaller ones we needed one. Decided to 'check' the bags for 2 Euros a load in an automated baggage checker which really worked sweet, then went to the DB infopoint to ask if there were any baggage carts. Well, there were, and I had to surrender my passport to be able to use one of them, the person there told me they had many until two years ago when people who needed money were stealing the carts and having them melted down for the scrap metal value! Anyway, navigated the maze of the Koln station on a Friday afternoon and got on this train, Mom's had a piece of chocolate cake and a Diet Coke and I've had a mini-size beer and we're off to Paris!

Thursday morning, snowing and reflections

Wednesday as a music day was great, and not too bad for the other parts of the day too!

The morning concert was great, the young folks of the Kremeratica Baltica played well and with spirit and with grace beyond their years. Jonathan Biss as a piano soloist was superb, the audience loved him.

Interesting reflections about concert halls, here in Austria it is mandatory that your overcoats be checked before you enter the concert hall, and they charge you .70/.80 Euro for each coat. Also, there is a 3 Euro charge for a concert program. I guess its like paying to check a bag on a plane...please US orchestras don't get this idea! And you can't say its because the programs here don't have advertising, they do!

The Vienna Philharmonic in the evening, how to say this correctly, was coldly superb. All the notes were right, there was never a misstep, they were very loud (The Salzburg Opera House is big!), but I sensed they were just there to play for the evening and then go back home, not a lot of passion in the music (then again, it was Schubert and Mozart, so passion may not have been in the minds of those guys who cranked out work after work). I kinda got the feeling that the Vienna Philharmonic is like the New York Yankees or Manchester United, you know they are good, they know they are good, but there was just something missing, at least from this American's viewpoint.

Anyway, this morning its snowing again, bigger flakes than Tuesday, and I've got to finish packing up our stuff before we get a cab to the train station and then off to Cologne. The small amounts of weather forecasting I can obtain indicate that Salzburg is on the east portion of an area that get 10 inches of snow in the next two days, lucky that we're heading north. The train station might be fun too, its being renovated and when we arrived on Sunday night that meant lots of stairs and lots of outside. Got me to reflecting about the Americans with Disabilities Act and all that, but that's for another blog!

January 27th reason for being....

...for many in the Orchestral world, its Mozart, for me its Mom's Birthday, and in 2010 they intersect in Mozart's City. We might make it to what they call H. Mass at the Franciscan Church in the morning at 8, and then concert at 11, and then the evening concert at 7:30 with the Vienna Philharmonic. Please wish Mom another year full of grace and love.

BTW, we're listening to the concert pieces now and Mom looks heavenly!

Peace all!

The Panoply of Euros!

Here they are, 100, 50, 20, 10, 5, 2 metal, 1 metal, 50 metal, 20 metal, 10 metal, 1 metal, did I miss a five?

The Improvised Refrigerator!

I like Diet Coke, a lot better than water, probably not all that good for you, but I like it, and I'm not drinking 'real' Coke because of the calories.

Most of the hotels I've been in recently have a cooler/fridge/minibar in them and I've gone to the local corner store and laid in supplies of Diet Coke and kept them cool/cold.

This hotel in Salzburg has no such in room cooling device. Plus, it was a bit of a walk to find a place that would sell us Diet Coke. Now, how to keep it cool. Well, there's the double hung panels with a big air gap between them, so bingo, instant Coke cooling device, using naturally occurring cold air (back to snowing again) to turn the Coke 'Ice Cold'!

Pretty cute, eh?

The snow stopped....

...and Mom was finally up and out of bed, so it was time for lunch/supper. Nordsee is a chain for fish places that also packages fish for supermarkets and the like, they're all clean and busy and good, and they serve fish and chips, one of Mom's favorites. The one here in Salzburg is a take-away place with savories and fish sandwiches in the front of the store, further back is a quick service place where you can have more substantial meals and then carry your food to the back and eat it. The Fish and Chips were quite good, and we even had a glass of red wine to celebrate that the snow had stopped. Pic of the front is on the top now (dang Blogger isn't too intuitive), and I hadn't forgotten but didn't have much experience with walking in melting/salted snow and squish!

Monday and Tuesday, in pictures

The difference between Monday and Tuesday! Sidewalks are now clearer because of lots of salt I saw them throwing around early this AM.

Its days like today that make think about fighting wars in this kind of weather, must have been brutal, and what must have been even worse, being a prisoner!

What a difference a day makes!

This was the view from the room on Monday morning, nice!

This was the view from the room on Tuesday morning, not so nice. I think that frozen white stuff that falls from the sky is called snow. Mom and I were both awake at 3AM for some silly reason, flipped on the TV for noise, and I went to mailing and chatting and stuff, about 4AM looked out and it was snowing, and pretty hard, so out came the camera! Its now about 5:30 and besides attempting to chase some mail and Flash player plug ins I've been watching the salt and grit trucks out trying to get the bridge over the river passable for the morning, seems to have worked well but its still snowing and sticking hard. Think we'll be staying in the hotel until the rest of folks can clean up the worst of the mess for us.

The Altstadt could interesting since most of the streets are pavers, and old ones at that! Really hard to walk on if you don't have the right shoes, bought Mom a pair of Geox yesterday for the walking on the block and the grit that's everywhere. Good news is that we don't have to really go anywhere today and if the urge strikes us, its called 'Taxi'!

A Salzburg Monday

Aldstadt

Businesses and University Church

Fortress and Salzburger Dom (Cathedral)

What a City!

We're across the river from the Altstadt, the old City of Salzburg, and the room has a view of the river, the University Church from about 1620, the Salzburger Dom Cathedral last rebuilt in 1959 after being built in the 1640's, but there's been a church there since the 700s or so, and the big fortress overlooking the city of Salzburg, built by an Archbishop starting in the 1100's or so. Apparently in order to make supplying the fortress easier the Archbishop built a funicular type railway to the top which still operates today, making it the oldest functioning railway in the world.

I've sure picked up a lot about construction and styles of Cathedrals in the last years, apparently older Cathedrals were very dark places, because the techniques needed to build walls that were not solid had not been invented yet, things like flying buttresses to distribute the weight of the roof over a larger ground area. St. Peter's in Rome is a fairly modern old church but its still pretty dark, a church like the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem is really old and really dark. The Salzburg Cathedral is one of the first be built in the Baroque style and its pretty bright.

And the Altstadt is a sweet little street full of little shops!

Enjoy, more later, including the story of Mozart Kuglen, or Mozart Balls, or Mozart's Balls!

Oh Wow, Salzburg even in the dark is great!

so if there's a theme here, the French may be lovely people, but the German trains are better!

SNCF train, they tell you 20 minutes ahead which track the train is on, but you walk and walk to find the carriage you're on, which in our case was about 1/2 mile it seemed.

Get to Stuttgart, they even have little pictures of the trains and the carriages and the classes and signs to tell you where to board the train! Points to the Germans for organization, even if they do have lines painted for smoking areas on the train stands.

Get on the train again, the TGV was fast, but the DB train while older was almost more comfy, bigger car, almost like they want to put another deck on it!

Then we get to Salzburg, and the train station is being redone, which means lots of stairs, and Mom doesn't do stairs well, and we've got baggage on a trolley. But I'm a veteran of baggage and Mom's and trolleys, and we finally get to a Taxi and then to the hotel, and I meet Carol at the front desk whose English is great, we get a nice room and there will be pictures of 'Over the River and through the City to Mozart's Home we go'

Mom's settling after bouncing off walls earlier!

More later! And pics on Monday!

A damp Saturday!

Its been dripping most of the day, grey and cool and damp.

Breakfast buffets are interesting with Mom and her dementia. Mom's dementia is increasingly becoming focused on problems with ordering things, like the bra and panties go on before the stockings. A buffet is kinda like that too, in which case one could survey what's being offered, ponder the choices and your wants and your hunger, and pick appropriately. This, for Mom, is of course not possible, so my adaptation has been to tell Mom and then show her what's there, and then asking her what she might like to have to eat; this seems to work well, and I can tell by what she's had to eat what she's liked and if she'd like some more, like this morning with the four glasses of orange juice!

Found the American church in the rain, went to 11AM Mass and Mom was really peaceful and smiling, then went purse shopping at Galleries Lafayette (along with half of Paris, it seems) and found one that met Mom's criteria for looks and my criteria that it have a zippered/snapped compartment so that things don't fall out unbeknownst to Mom.

Did a bit more 'wandering' and stopped at La Maison du Chocolate and bought two eclairs for 'dessert' in the room tonight, this has to be the ritziest, most stylish, and expensive Chocolate shop I've ever seen. You can order their stuff from Williams-Sonoma. Pics are of the bag, the box, and the eclairs, and yes, on the eclairs is gold leaf! Had some ham and frites for a late lunch and on the way back to the hotel I found what I had not found, an actual supermarket! Bought some Coke Light (that's Diet Coke to us) and some snacks for on the trains Sunday, we're going from Paris to Salzburg with a change in Stuttgart. We'll also see what they have on the trains! By the time we get to Salzburg (2000 or so) we'll be off to the hotel and I'll try to see how I can the NFC/AFC Championship Games.

More Cathedral and travel!

and 11 hours of sleep never felt so good! Woke up this AM and barely made it to breakfast before they tore it down, Mom ate lots of fruit, I was more American and Bacon and Eggs, we both had tea, Mom had three glasses of Orange Juice!

Then we cabbed to Galleries Lafayette, amazing store, Mom was tempted with some articles that if you live in Paris would be great and 50% off, but Californians don't really need leather coats with more pockets than a bunch of Kagaroos! We didn't look at purses, Mom's repetitive rubbing has worn the suede off her favorite black purse, so we go back on Saturday (oh darn!).

Then on a whim we cabbed to the Gare de Est (there's like five train stations in Paris, tracks going in basic directions, North, East, towards Lyon, you get it) to get the TGV (that's Tres Grandes Vitesse) to Rheims, the cathedral where the Kings of France were crowned; and I think Joan of Arc got involved with something out there too). There's history of a Church there since the 400's, the current building was started in the 1280s or something and has been through its perils too, WW 1 hit the Champagne/Ardenne region very hard and lots of the Church had a toll extracted, they were going to finish the spires at one point but after WW 1 they said no way. It is still one of the largest church Naves in the world and since its built of thick stone it holds temperature well, I could see my breath in there today, it was appreciably cooler than the outside air.

Anyway, we got there and my still camera said that I let the memory card in Paris, so the iPod Nano videos and iPhone shots are all we got. There are two great sets of stained glass windows in the Cathedral, one set that illustrates highlights from the Old Testament, the New Testament, and the Kings of France was done by Marc Chagall in 1971 (the colorings in the glass are amazing) and another set shows planting, making, and consumption of the regions beverage, Champagne! The videos are not great but I'm going to try to put them up here, if it doesn't work here in the hotel room tonight I'll find another way to do it later!

Get back on the TGV into Paris, cab back to hotel, Mom and I have a simple dinner of tri-color fusilli ala Alfredo, Mom's tired, I'm planning on the fly, find out that there is an American Catholic Church here and its about a mile away at the most, they have Saturday Masses at 11 and 6:30, so we'll go, between then its purse shopping and probably lunch so we can come back and pack for the train trip to Salzburg via Stuttgart. The little train trip today was a good introduction to the train system since I had some ideas that were not really right, but after 2 embarkations and rides I've got it figured out now!

More later!

The Cathedral Tour Begins!

Went to Notre Dame and Sacre Coeur today, wish we had waited until the sun came out briefly this afternoon. Notre Dame is very impressing both outside and in, and Sacre Coeur is impressive, plus its on the highest spot in Paris so the views are stunning, might have to cab back there at night.

Went to Mass at Sacre Coeur which was also interesting. Of course, in French, so there was precious little Mom and I could understand. For an 11:15 AM Mass they had a choir of nuns accompanied by a nun playing what I think was a zither, the Sisters sounded great!

And I don't know if this is a normal thing or not, but the presider was a Monsignor who wore a white mitre and carried a crosier, and he was accompanied by a Deacon, several primary concelebrants, and about 50 priests who sat in the first rows of the church!

Finally in Paris!

Well, we made it to Paris on a rainy day! Here's the story:

Got to Chicago from SJC in fine shape after taking off in a driving rain. Had three hours in Chicago, talked with a few travellers, bounced around a terminal, got to the gate about 75 minutes before departure and noticed a couple of guys there with Rockwell/Collins shirts on, not a good sign since Rockwell/Collins makes Avionic gear. Plane comes in , unloads, crew changes, I look in cockpit and there's the Maintenance guys with the Reflective Vests on and I'm getting en even worse feeling, then fifteen minutes later the captain gets off the place with his Jeppsen cases. Announcement made that this place had been taken out of service for Mechanical matters, but they have two backup planes for us and they will let us know which gate we'll go to!

I had looked at the booking numbers and of 240 seats they only had 65 filled.

After 20 more minutes they announce that the flight has been cancelled and the options were either hotel and meals in Chicago and come back on Wednesday or take the 2 hour later flight to Frankfurt and fly to Paris on a Lufthansa connector, and they say they'll take of the baggage. I'm the first in line for rebooks (pays to have travelled a lot and know airports and how they work) so I pick the Frankfurt option and after they do all the stuff I notice we've got an hour and 10 minute connection in Frankfurt, I figure they must know what they are doing so I didn't ask anything else, then closer to departure time I notice a lot of the Paris people are on the Frankfurt flight.

Notice how the original flight was only booked to 65 or so? Got on the Frankfurt flight and even with a bunch of us Paris people on it, there was room in the back for people to have a whole row to sleep! Before boarding I found another Paris passenger and we came to the conclusion that is was more cost effective for American to cancel a flight and load us onto to a another one than to fly the flight empty; AA must have been lightly booked coming back from CDG on Wednesday on the return plane! Captain also said that half the people on the Frankfurt flight were really going to Paris, so I figured there's safety in numbers~

Flight was OK, crew was a little surly and loud with banging carts around all night so sleep was at a minimum, Mom was a bit more confused with all the hub-bub of changing flights and gates and stuff, then we get to Frankfurt and I'm presented with the Frankfurt Airport! Come into International Terminal at 1050 with a 1200 depart from gate A30. Have no idea where to go, how to get there, no helpful agents, its basically everyone for themselves, people in Chicago didn't tell me if we needed to reclaim baggage in Frankfurt before going to connectors, one nice French lady told me that AA in Chicago told her that the bags were checked through! Whew.

Then we only had to figure out how to get to A30 through the Frankfurt Airport! Firstly there's a Passport Control, a moving sidewalk (kinda hard for Mom but she did fine) then a lift downstairs to the shopping Mall part of most European Airports, then to a security point again where the wonderfully efficient Germans have this down to a fine science, Mom's getting tired now and wondering 'why do we have to do this' and I'm getting a little tired too 'just do what I say to do Mom' and I get another 'I love you!'. We get through all that, put the coats back on, the shoes back on, and now we're at gate A1 at 11:35.

Alas, a motorized cart! We commandeer that, and the driver tells us that the terminal is 2.5 KM long and walking it would kill Mom! He gets us there in 7 Minutes, now we have to deal with the lines of a full 737-500. Lucky for German efficiency that the head gate agent says she put all our reservations in the system before we all for there (about 35 of us Paris people she said and then said 'you and your mom were at the top of the list'), hands us boarding cards, the people on the plane accomodate us for seats by each other. We get off almost on time, get to Paris on time, and now comes the baggage situation!

DeGaulle Airport is weird, you go up from the arrival level to get to Baggage Claim on a rubber moving walkway inside a plastic tube, this kinda freaks Mom out a bit, then we have to find where the baggage claim really is, and after all that and the change of flights, our bags show up! Now Mom's getting really funny, she thinks we're back in California and that the neighbors are coming to get us, I finally find the way out of the baggage claim (thank goodness again for the Euro standard of free sturdy baggage carts) and find our driver who is transporting us to downtown Paris!

Mom's kinda out of it by the time we get to the hotel, she wants to open up the garage door and put the bags in the car, have to tell her over and over again we're in Paris and not in California, get up to the room, its small but fine, and with the drizzly weather its fine for Mom to put her nightie on and go to bed, I sort out the room Internet (its a room number and last name thing and with a last name like mine I should know they'd get it wrong, like most everyone does, so after a call to Warsaw I finally figure it out, must be tired myself).

Then have to re-acquaint Mom with the euro-toilet and the big button and little button (for big flush and little flush), its a weird system but it sure works!

So now Mom's been resting for a couple of hours and less confused, we're heading to bed shortly after 1800 to awaken in the morning for breakfast and then some touring around Paris, hope the weather is better!

Later and pictures from Paris!

The Europe Trip begins.....

on 19 January we are off to Paris, then to Salzburg....and then you'll have to follow the blog to find out where else!