Croatia, Budapest, Vienna, and Home to Stuttgart

I had never ventured into the Eastern Block except for a quick trip to Prague in 1986, and our Middle Europe trip seemed my last chance to do so for a while.  Italian Switzerland nearly touches Croatia, and Hungarian Budapest lies just to the east.  Tia and Sasha were enthusiastic when they heard that Budapest’s is renowned for its thermal baths, so we planned to cross northern Croatia and the Plitvice Lakes area on our way to spa heaven.

Feeding the birds at our Venice stopover on the way to Croatia

As we drove through Italy towards the Adriatic, Venice appeared on the coast.  Venice!  Who could drive by and not be tempted to stop?  So we spent the afternoon walking the narrow streets to Piazza San Marco, enchanted yet again by this beautiful city.

Evening in Venice

Italian glory

We arrived at our hotel on the Adriatic in the coastal city of Lovran.  We had just the morning to indulge in a swim in its turquoise waters.

Overlooking the blue, blue Adriatic in 

I’d promised the girls lots more swimming at what looked like an enchanting teal-tinged series of lakes in northern Croatia, but alas, the Plitvice lakes environment is so fragile and the tourist hoards so vast that no swimming was allowed (even though a naughty Swedish family jumped in as we walked by, making us all jealous). 

Enticing waters just out of reach

We slogged through the over-the-top crowded trail after waiting in line for more than an hour to pay the entrance fee.  The waterfalls were beautiful, but hard to enjoy when packed in like sardines.  Not recommended, at least in August!

Oh, the crowds, the crowds!  Like a Croatian Nature Disneyland.

Then for three luxurious nights in Budapest.  I’d not told the girls that we were staying in a five-star hotel—our one big splurge on this vacation—and they pulled me away from the door of the Corinthia, sure that this could NEVER be something I’d booked!  But it was, and I did.  We lounged in fancy bathrobes and jacuzzied and indulged in the fancy teas. 

Royal Budapest Parliament

We splurged: the girls got chocolate massages, I got a honey massage and wrap, and Todd got something called a Java massage.  He looked wide-eyed and shell-shocked when I returned to the sitting room after my massage.  “Have you ever gotten a Java Massage?” he asked in an ominous whisper.  Turns out a Java massage is not for the faint-of-heart, involving multiple contortions and excruciating muscle-to-bone contact—not what Todd had expected.  “Why didn’t you tell her it hurt?” the girls asked Todd.  Selber Schuld (German for “own fault!”)—Todd didn’t want to seem the wimp.

What Todd imagined

What Todd got

Budapest is simply a gorgeous city.  An amalgam of two towns, Buda and Pest, on either side of the river Danube and connected by the world-famous Chain Bridge, the city is both old and fresh, quaint and young, picturesque and hip.   

The famous Chain Bridge connecting Buda and Pest

We walked the city for three days after going for our morning spa, then returned to our fancy hotel to hop in the Jacuzzi again before retiring to our plush rooms.  We found the best ice cream ever: salted carmel and a salted pistachio with nutella.  Needless to say, we went back three days in a row.

Scrumptious

From Budapest we traveled on to meet Helene Von Dam in Vienna.  Helene is a longtime friend of my aunt Heide, and was Reagan’s personal secretary in both California and Washington, D.C., before returning to her native Austria as ambassador. 

Helene writes about being Ronald Reagan's personal secretary and assistant

Just as poised, gracious and elegant...she's amazing.

She took us on a whirlwind tour of the exquisite and grand downtown, depositing us at the Kursalon for a concert that included a little opera, a little ballet, a little symphony, and a little comedy in a small but gorgeous 19^th-century gilded concert hall. 

Viennese entertainment

We returned to dinner on her rooftop deck, and after breakfast the next morning we visited the House of Music (everything you would want to know about Vienna’s famous classical musicians) and walked to the Hundertwasser house (a disappointing tourist trap), followed by dinner at the open-air film festival in front of Vienna’s town hall—a monster screen showing Swan Lake. 

Warm summer Viennese evening

Our time in Vienna was far too short, but Stuttgart called—my “home” town, where I’d lived nearly two years and home to my Kral family.  We passed through Bernau and visited my grandmother’s grave, and stopped for dinner in Augsburg with Renate and Rudi, my mother’s cousins, Augsburg being my mother’s birthplace.

Renate and Rudi took us to dinner at the Fuggerei, a unique community in the heart of Augsburg

In Stuttgart we had tea with Valerie, my “German” mother (even though she is English!) in Erdbeerweg 4, where I’d lived as a 16-year-old, and reconnected with Rainer (my German dad) and his wife Siggi.  

My German English Mama

Erdbeerweg 4 will always be home

We reminisced over old stories involving both my family and theirs.  And we squeezed in a brief visit with Rebecca and her family in Gundelsheim on the way back to Frankfurt airport.  (Rebecca lived with us for a week during feria.)

New friends

Goodbye, Stuttgart, goodbye Germany, goodbye Europe.  A fitting end to our time here!   Now back to Spain to pack and head off to our American adventure!

Saying goodbye to Europe

Italian Switzerland and my German brother Thomas Oliver

Fancy Switzerland

Oliver was a perky, inquisitive 10-year-old when I came to live with the Kral family almost 40 years ago.   I’d always longed for a younger brother—my sisters seemed less fun than my friend’s younger brothers, and I loved to run around and play with them.   Oliver helped me learn German, pointing out my errors and correcting me as I read to him at night.  He also laughed himself silly when I said I had to wash my Haar—“What, you only have one hair?  Hahahahahahaha!”  (in German you wash your hairs).

Then he told me I looked like a “Brummer” in my blue-and-yellow snow suit.  When I asked what a “Brummer” was, he laughed and said in his sweet English-German accent, “A Bum-Bel-Bee!”  The image of myself as a big fat fuzzy blue-yellow insect made me cry, and my German mom Valerie scolded him thoroughly.   

Not exactly what I wanted to look like

But for the most part we got along famously, chasing each other through the house until Valerie yelled at us, playing epic ping-pong matches, helping with pear-picking and klettering with ropes up the Swabian cliffsides under father Rainer’s tutelage.  And when I was in Tübingen six years later, Todd and I went to Eichendorf and sailed on the Starnberger See with Oliver and his then-girlfriend.

Sailing on Starnberger See

Now Thomas Oliver, better known by his adult name, Thomas, is pushing 50 and lives in the Italian part of Switzerland, a nurse by profession.  He came to Tegna to attend a famous acting and performance school, then switched to nursing when his first daughter was on the way.  We’d long been talking about visiting him, going skiing in the Dolomites or coming up from Italy.  This was our last chance to see him before we left Europe, and so we planned three days in Tegna, a tiny village outside of the fancy Swiss resort of Locarno. 

Oli (or rather Thomas) looks a lot like I remember him at 10!

We left Colmar in the morning and stopped through Freiburg to visit my aunt Andrea, my mother’s sister and a medically-trained naturopathic doctor, and toured her house/office complex in this beautiful little city.  Then on to Switzerland, where we stopped for a coffee in a café overlooking the River Aare with our friend Flori, granddaughter of Elizabeth “Mamu” Kronseder, an artist and long-time friend of our family.  (Flori inherited Mamu’s house in Bavaria, my first introduction to Europe when I was 16.) 

The river Arn in Bern

I had planned a beautiful day-long drive through the peaks of the Alps on our way to Tegna, but alas!  It was our ONE rainy day that week, and the clouds obscured the jagged passes as we wound our way through the quaint Swiss chalet villages.  We arrived in Tegna having seen no snowy mountaintops, no herds of goats or yodelers, no fields of edelweiss or maids in dierndels.  Rats. 

What we missed

We arrived in Tegna late that night since Thomas didn’t finish his shift at the hospital until 11 pm.  We wove up the tiny streets, marveling at the stone houses and searching in vain for streetsigns, our GPS only getting us to the approximate location of Thomas’s apartment.  Suddenly a motorcycle parked next to us—Thomas!  We’d come to the right place.

The beautiful stone houses of Tegna

The next day Thomas took us for a quick swim before breakfast—to the most beautiful alpine-granite lake-stream I’ve ever seen.  Our granite-strewn creeks in the Sierra Nevada are beautiful, but don’t hold a candle to the amazing locations just short walks from Thomas’s apartment.  

A calmer part of the river

First we swam in this amazing pool of so-fresh-you-can-drink-it water, with an enormous waterfall cascading down one side.  That afternoon we went upstream to meet Thomas’s eldest daughter Johanna at a calm, boulder-strewn little lake with flat sandy spots to nap.  Then Thomas’s partner Andrea came in from Zürich, and we all went to a fine Italian Swiss dinner just around the corner from his apartment.

Secret swimming holes

But the following morning was the coup de grace: After hiking up to the little church behind Thomas’s house and enjoying the views, we went with Thomas’s other daughter Caroline to the Schlucht, or gorge.  My eyes popped wide.  

What a place to swim

Rising some 70 feet above the silken-black water, the gorge’s ancient granite walls were washed as smooth as glacier ice into swirls and caverns and undulating forms.  We swam upstream for fifteen minutes, slipping through the chilly but not unpleasant, deliciously fresh water.   Above us towered these massive cliffs, soft and whitened from eons of raging floodwaters, sometimes coming so close together above us that it looked as if you could jump from one side to the other.

Ancient stone-wash

Just watch out for the dangers...

We ended our visit at the “grotte” or cave-restaurant where Johanna worked, where we had polenta, fresh cheese, lasagna, pesto, and ribs.  We invited everyone—Johanna, Caroline, Andrea, Thomas, and his son Jonathan, who was traveling around on Interrail at the time, to visit us in California.  We would love to reciprocate by sharing with them our little Sierra Nevada paradise! 

Typical Swiss valley

The French Countryside...and Dutch Cousins!

Still on a cousin kick, I could not resist the opportunity to visit my mother’s cousin Ole Langerhorst.  Ole is a Dutch sculptor, son of my German great Aunt Jule who married a Dutch man, Henni, after WWII.  Ole came to live with us for a year back in the 1980s to utilize the large amount of free wood in various family members’ back yards, so I already knew him and his wife Alize. 

Ole's woodworking tools

Ole and Alize had bought a farm deep in the French countryside.  We had been meaning to visit since we’d arrived in Europe, and this was our last chance.  So we made Ole’s farm near Vichy our first stop on a whirlwind last-round tour of Middle Europe. 

French countryside near Vichy

We landed in Frankfurt and drove right to Wiesbaden to see cousin/daughter Sophie, who had lived with us in Imperial Beach for a year right before we came to Spain.  Sophie took us to the Mainz Schwimmbad, and we had a great dinner with Paige and Hans, my aunt and uncle, along with Melinda, Hans’s sister (and my aunt) and my uncle Mohsen and cousin Elina.  Then off to France!

Welcome to the French countryside

We arrived in Vieure after a leisurely drive through Germany and France, arriving for dinner at the Dutch family reunion that had already been going on for a few days.  Ole in the meantime had switched from sculpting to farming, and has beautiful organic fields of vegetables—onions, garlic, kale, chard, lettuces of all sorts, tomatoes, zucchini, squash, and herbs—surrounding his modest farmhouse.  

Another view of Ole's workshop in context

Over 30 people had shown up for the reunion, and it was cousins galore!  I didn’t know I had cousins in Upper Austria, or in Portugal!  They’d all converged on Ole for this biennial reunion.  Most were children or related in some way to Jule and Henni, but some (us) were related to Jule’s sister Hilde, and some (Toeja and Wyck, who in the end couldn’t make it) were related to sister Gusse. 

Hurray for new cousins!!

The weather held, with only light rain at times, and we hiked to a beautiful tiny church on the hill behind the village.

Vieure's little church

A spectacular bed-and-breakfast next to the church

Making wishes with Alize

The next day went into picturesque Souveny for the medieval fair.  Tia and Sasha dressed up as fairytale princesses, and their third cousin Veronica could have been their sister!

With third-cousins Leah (center) and Veronica (left)

Medieval beauties

We played guitar and sang, with cousin Leah dancing up a storm.  My cousin Annette got out the sheet music for the German canon rounds they had learned from their mother as children, and I was astonished that I, too, knew some of them! 

That's a lot of cousins--and this is just the Jule branch of the family!

Our Dutch cousins in Souvigny

Three days was much too short, but we had reservations in Colmar, site of the Isenheimer Altar that I’d visited on a class field trip when I was  16, and I wanted to share it with Tia and Sasha.    

Tia takes it all in

Sasha liked the Ascension

 Colmar is an exquisite little town situated on the -__ river, its only drawback being its overwhelming success with tourists.  We stayed right in the Centre Vieure (old town) and walked to the Isenheimer Altar, gawking at the ancient crossbeamed fifteen-century houses still standing.

Colmar beauties

Beautiful houses in Strasbourg, too

Friend Arzu came down to visit overnight!

Strasbourg is right up the river from Colmar, so we took a day trip there to see the seat of the European Parliament and gaze upwards to the awe-inspiring carved red stone blocks of the Strasbourg Cathedral.  Even though I’ve now seen hundreds of gorgeous old churchs and cathedrals, I still marvel every time at the amazing human ingenuity that managed to construct such immense beauty without the aid of modern machines or technology. 

How did they build them so tall in medieval times???  Amazing

The European Parliament

France, land of beauty and good things to eat—we really spent far too little time here in our European adventure.  We shall return!

Sasha's idea of a perfect house