“FROZEN FRITZ”, carbon-dated at 5,500 years old, had been found in perfect condition. After the time when he slipped and fell into a yawning Austrian glacier came the Celts, Romans, Teutons, Slavs, Huns, Goths, Turks and now those in quaint costumes who say “Grues Gott” , God be with you, with a smile when you pass them on the road. The Turks never quite captured Vienna, or its 1500 concubines, though they tried hard, even tunnelling under the walls. Today in the little village of Schwarzenberg, the sun is streaming in over red flowers, green socks and white undies fluttering in the breeze on our wooden balcony. I have not seen a man sharpening a scythe with a stone kept in the belt since I was playing cricket at the Queen’s College of British Guiana. Even more surprising is the scyther’s red BMW parked in his little meadow, but then, I read last week that the average European family pays 50 dollars a week to farmers over and above their normal profit margin. We take the cable-car to a mountain top from where para-gliders hover and Lake Constance shimmers, with both Switzerland and Germany far beyond. Somewhere over the horizon lies Prague, our next stop.
THE FANFARE OF TWO FRENCH HORNS from a balcony calls us into the wooden concert hall. Along with John and Margaret from Newcastle we have had our frankfurters and sauerkraut at Angelika’s cafe and we now join the glitterati from Vienna, Paris and Lichtenstein. The Beethoven string quartets, so I am told, are the pinnacle of Western music so I try hard. But then someone in row eight drops a huge score with a deafening crash and later, the lady in row 12 just in front of us is sick and rushes out (but our frankfurters seem OK). Peter Schreier is also sick (in Vienna, not in row 12) but his replacement, Christian Geherer, rise to the occasion and, by the sound of the applause, to fame. Next day we catch a bus to a village called Eigg, passing signs to Roteneigg, Ammeneigg and Scheldeigg. We are on our way to Zurich and to Prague.
BOHEMIA. At 7 a.m. when I blunder sleepily into Prague’s Old Town Square looking for bread rolls for our breakfast, the Tyn church, like a Walt Disney fairy castle, blows my mind. Prague is fascinating, and its architecture magical. Less magical are the services. Tram tickets, like phone cards, have to be bought at tobacconists, hard to find and not always open, while shop assistants do their utmost to discourage shoppers. Rachel Earls, who has been here three years, explains the ethic inherited from 50 years of communism: “If you don’t steal from your boss, then you are stealing from your family”. The boss, of course, has always stolen from the state, and now the state steals from the IMF which, last week, was looking for $10 billion gone missing. We punch our tram tickets, rattle up the hill, and get off at the castle. Then, the police herd us into the gutters and we are nearly run down by a high-speed motorcade encasing a flamboyant president of Namibia. The military band, in a riot of gold and red, strike up two national anthems and then, to our astonishment and delight , lurch into that crazy, drunken extravaganza in brass and percussion that Janacek called his Sinfonia. Heavily armed police then escort a somewhat confused and disoriented entourage through the gates of the largest fairy castle in the world in the best traditions of Gilbert and Sullivan. There is a concert on every night so we don’t stay home much in Mila Zelenka’s apartment. We even heard Neville Marriner conducting Mozart’s Prague symphony and three coronation anthems of Handel. The Prazinsky Philharmonic choir had obviously been well prepared, rendering “My Heart is Indicting” in frightfully English accents. Other attempts here at English are less successfu, informing us of a performance of “The Swan’s Lake”, of Devilish Sirloin, of Worcestrova sauce, and a pub sign warns us that “drinks are not to be consummated outside the premises”.
FEUDAL RENTS from 176,000 rich acres maintained the Schwarzenbergs in the style indicated by the huge golden carriage, parked in room 137 of their apartment at Cesky Krumlov, and drawn, in its day, by six black horses with silver horseshoes. I don’t know how they got the huge thing down from the castle and through the delightful little lanes of the medieval town. Mary and Ann had also recommended Kutna Hora for its beautiful little gothic chapel, with later art nouveau decoration, and the nearby church of bones. But I think our little tour group best enjoyed the visit to a cheerful beer garden nearby, especially after banging our heads on a chandelier made entirely of human bones. Now back in Prague and St. Vitus vast cathedral needs at least two visits. A silver casket contains the remains of St John of Nepomuk. Saints seem to earn their title the hard way, and John made the mistake of refusing to divulge to the king any details of the queen’s confession after mass. He was thrown into the river Moldau (easier to pronounce than VLTATA). There is a Czech proverb: “Never argue with the king or your wife”. This advice may be familiar to those who happen to be married to a Hogan. Royalty also, as John found out then and as we know today, is usually somewhat touchy on family matters. Practical advice to political reformers has always been: “If you kick a king, make sure you kill him”. But if you don’t manage to kill him they will tell you “We will give you a fair trial and then hang you in the morning”. At the Lobkovic Palace there is a lunch-time concert. The cellist has a 17th century hairdo and looks like Mozart. But I check the program and find his name is Dvorak. The guitarist plays my favourite Vivaldi concerto, almost as well as Madeleine does.
DOCTOR STUART’S BOTANNICUS is a huge medieval apothecary: floor to ceiling racks of herbs, medicines, spices, soaps, mustards and pickles, though I couldn’t find any dried bats wings or eyes of newts. It is patronised by the medically alternative, pale and undernourished, who we watch as we drink strong caffein in our favourite coffee shop across the cobbled square. We share the joke with the tiny people in the photo. Then, walking back to our apartment we pass through the huge Old Town Square where one can have coffee or beer. Most countries tax beer, but the Czech Republic actually subsidises the production of what is perhaps the best beer in the world. So a pint of beer is actually cheaper than a coffee or a coca cola. English-speaking tourists, when they ask for the bill, always seem to get served a second beer, possibly because NO in Czech means YES and it is too late by the time you remember to say NE.
DENTISTRY, we think, may be more reliable in Zurich so Joan puts her toothache on hold. Arriving at Zurich airport we ask about downtown surgeons. “Madam, the airport dental service is excellent” and it is. We often hit town on the opening day of a world convention of bee-keepers, or a non-ferrous metals trade fair, or some other invasion which soaks up all available accommodation. And so the clerk at the tourist bureau shakes her head sadly – but then the last room at the Hotel Splendid pops up on her screen and the wheels of our trolley bag clatter over Zurich’s cobbled streets. The Hotel Splendid is a dock-side dump where a jazz band plays in the bar until 2:30 a.m. and the trams and rubbish trolleys take over at 5:30 a.m. But, wherever we go, people are kind and helpful. The elderly hotel receptionists provide us with accounts of similar oral surgery they have had and, when we come back in the evening to go to bed, the jazz pianist stops to go and fetch the ice pack for Joan’s cheek from the bar fridge. The population of Zurich, like its architecture, looks dull, plain and conservative. So, when a gaudily-dressed African woman shouts while hopping like a kangaroo down the busy arcade, I am not surprised when everyone looks the other way with the impassiveness of merchant bankers.
AN EXCELLENT PERFORMANCE OF BORIS GUDENOV has cheered Joan up, and we catch the 8:30 to Milan next morning. Swiss trains depart and arrive with pathological punctuality but, when we burst out of the tunnel into Italian sunshine, time becomes elastic and punctuality is one of the seven deadly sins. Fortunately, our connection to Padua is also “in ritardo”. But there are other traps for the accidental tourist. Never get into a wagon which doesn’t have a number. It stays put while the numbered ones pull out. Never assume, for example, that the train pulling in at the right time at the right platform is the one you want for Venice. It may simply be the one for Trieste, running late. Never travel on Holy days or days of industrial dispute. Both occur frequently and without warning to the tourist.
NINE YEARS AGO we were too busy singing to see much of Padua, but the ten hotels we phone in Venice are fully booked and pretty soon we have to meet Madeleine and Chris, Marg and Jane, Ann and Jane, and Michael Hogan in St Mark’s Square in Venice. So we stay in Padua to explore contingency plans, the Basilica, the Duomo, and the Scrovegni Chapel. While tour groups in the Scrovegni are being harangued in Italian and German, an American couple has observed that Joan has cracked the code for Giotto’s three-level biblical sequence of frescos, and pretty soon she has a little tour group of her on. We now decide, against all advice (“e un impossibilita”), to look for an apartment in Venice, failing that a hotel with a lift, failing that a campsite caravan within commuting distance of Venice. But by a series of wrong directions and wrong turnings we arrive at a deserted waterfront in Cannarregio and blunder round a corner into the real estate office of Massimo (uno), Massimo (due) and Valentina, who don’t speak English but have an apartment to let in Castello. They must cater for locals, not tourists. We go, we look, we can’t believe the price, and we snap it up. Repeating to each other “I just don’t believe this” we have a celebratory drink watching the gondolas bobbing up and down on the sparkling waters of the lagoon outside the Church of the Red Priest (Vivaldi). Next day we check out of Padua, the “problema industriale” has been solved and the train speeds across the long bridge into Venice, and our new home for two weeks.
LA SERENISSIMA, the most serene, as Venice is called, is married to the sea, each year and for the last thousand years, in the gorgeous ceremony captured by Canaletto. Round the corner from us are the highly efficient shipyards of the Arsenale whose assembly lines once turned out a warship each day, driven by three banks of oars. The third Crusade, strapped for cash and ships, traded the booty of Constantinople for some of these hi-tech triremes. That’s how these four bronze horses came to be grafted on to the more ancient balustrades atop the Basilica San Marco. On our first evening we watch the sunset reflected in the mosaics behind the horses, until the booming of the huge campanile bells suggests to Joan that there might be a mass in ten minutes. As we marvel at the processional splendour, the singing, the brass, the percussion and the floodlighting, all completely denied the ordinary non-Catholic tourist, I am reminded of a king, converting to Catholicism before taking the city of Paris, who said “Paris is worth a mass”. That night it is hard to sleep – there is no traffic noise.
LA DENTISTA ELEGANTA looks like a fashion model as she sweeps into the waiting room. I hear her and Joan laughing together, that is until the stitches start coming out. Afterwards we wait for the bill, but she comes out again and wishes us buona vacanza – no charge because we are on holiday. In the narrow lanes where we live there are little family shops where we buy fresh bread, fruit, salad, tomatoes, cheese, pasta, salami, and wine, and Joan’s cooking is better than any restaurant since we left Madeleine’s kitchen. Vivaldi’s church is round the corner and, each time we walk past, I feel the urge to genuflect. But then I would be trampled down by a bulky Brunhilde holding up an umbrella and leading a charge of tourists. So, as we get closer to San Marco, the surge of tourists keeps us moving until we escape across the wooden Academia Bridge and into the Frari church. There, we dream at Monteverdi’s tomb, marvel at Titian’s magnificent “Assumption”, and crick our necks admiring the Tiepolo ceilings in the Gesuati round the corner.
LUNCH AT PALAZZO SMILEY. We all meet at the campanile as arranged by Madeleine’s email, Marg and Jane Huxley from Rome, Ann and Jane Crack from Padua, Michael Hogan also from Padua on a scholarship there, and Chris and Madeleine, Faith and baby Anya who had driven the 1000 miles from Cold Ashton in two days. In our minute apartment we all sit on settee, chairs, or floor according to age, Joan serves a buffet lunch, and the conversation ranges for three hours over recently visited countries, customs and cuisines.
“E NON PERMESSO” it is illegal to have four adults and two children in the flat, and I keep saying sadly “Daccordo, daccordo” But Massimo repeats the phrase urgently on the phone until I realise he trying to tell me if he doesn’t know anything he won’t charge us anything. So the Sparkes family, known in the campsite as SPARK-EZ, pack their tent and spend their last two nights with us. As Faith trundles Anya’s pushchair through the Doges Palace two old ladies ask if Anya is for sale, and another says “e vero?” is she real? Captivated by gondolas, Faith has also been introduced to Juliet’s balcony in Verona, pizzas in Galzignano, glass blowing in Murano, some local playmates in Burano, gelati on the Zattere, and the excitement of the ferries which join up all these wonderful places.
THE MADONNA OF THE ORANGE TREE is a refreshing title after so many “Madonna con Bambino”s. If we get to the Ufizzi we may see again the Madonna of the Pomegranate and the Madonna of the Magnificat, with the relevant psalm tucked into the corner of the picture. Here in Venice Tioepolo’s unmistakable blue skies and yellow clouds hover over the lagoon.. Various reasons have taken us, in the evenings, in search of phones which function mechanically, have a grasp of international protocol, and do not tell us that phones in Sydney are “occupato”. Within one week Venetian seasons, as unpredictable as Venetian telephones, have leapt from humid summer to crisp autumn, and we wander from the telephone booths through the mists of St Marks Square listening to its two or three little orchestras, led by flamboyant fiddlers and cheered by late crowds, in competition with each other.
PAUL THEROUX would classify us as travellers (vague) and the American girls sitting in the train opposite as tourists (exact). They booked their accommodation months ago after actually seeing their hotel room on an internet screen, whereas we decided only yesterday to go to Florence. But Joan has worked out the location of the information bureau (never in the obvious places) and we fall into our familiar routine. We cloak our baggage, pick up a hotel list and street map, plan a route while eating bowls of pasta, then trudge in search of a suitable hotel room. You can’t smell stale cigarette smoke on an internet screen. What you smell, see and touch is what you get. Next day we get a coach tour to San Gimignano, the medieval Manhattan of tall towers, and Siena where the Palio race round the (circular) square is won by the first horse over the line, whether it has a rider or not. They say the losing jockeys simply ride on out through the city gates to avoid the wrath of those who put their shirt on that horse. Next day the number 7 bus takes us halfway up a mountain to Fiesole where the Bambino in the Duomo is quite middle-aged and we have coffee at the Quo Vadis cafe in the (triangular) square. The restaurant car on the Eurostar to Rome turns out to be fully occupied before Florence and, as we had had an early breakfast to get a good seat for the sung mass in the Florence Duomo, we stretch our evening meal in Rome to three courses. We are very tired and confused so it is only next morning that I am convinced that the soap dish has been installed upside-down in the shower, probably by a Roman called Paddo O’Connero.
WE WISH WE HAD DISCOVERED TRASTEVERE before our last night, though the magic of a 12th century mosaic frieze floodlit in a medieval square was somewhat dispelled for Joan when she nearly bumped into Bishop George Pell of Melbourne there. But for me the highlight of Trastevere was a medieval alley with tables in it, a fish soup like a boulliabaisse, a seafood extravaganza piled high like a Bernini fountain, and a bottle of Chianti named David (after the statue, actually). Rome, like so many other marvellous places we have seen in three months, is impossible to describe adequately. I’ll probably say the same about Nepal, but maybe in December I’ll try and make sense of it all, and inflict yet another diary on you.
ON DREAMS
At the end of A Midsummer Night’s Dream Puck explains it all:
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this and all is mended,
That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear…So goodnight unto you all.
Here in this play, when “The course of true love never did run smooth” and two girls are in love with one man, the dream beautifully resolves this amorous triangulation into a conventional quadratic. Others are more cynical of dreams. For Keats “Fanatics have their dreams, wherewith they weave a paradise for a sect” and Mercutio saw dreams as “the children of an idle brain, begot of nothing but vain fantasy.” In an Evelyn Waugh novel “John woke queasy and despondent. All over England people were waking queasy and despondent.” But perhaps in the end “We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep” (The Tempest).