We drove along the Donau (Danube) today. At one point we had to stop on a country road to allow several pheasants to pass. Yesterday it was some ducks. We could see evidence of last month’s floods, including broken windows in the little shrines that show up along the road in the countryside. We visited the abbey of St. Florian, because that’s where Bruckner lived for years, as the church organist. We saw the church, the organ, and his grave, but not the abbey itself because we weren’t part of a group of at least six. We had lunch at a restaurant down the hill — the Gasthof Erherzog Franz Ferdinand (the one whose assassination set of World War I).

We’re spending the night in Melk at Hotel Zur Post. They have historical photographs of the town in the hallways, and I commend them for having photos of a pro-Nazi rally in the town on May 1, 1938. We had dinner in the hotel restaurant. We ate wild duck, and it really was wild. There was a bit of grape shot left in it. At the end of the meal we had a homemade walnut schnapps that was excellent.

We just got back to the room from Sud, the “modern” restaurant near our hotel. After we asked, our big blonde waiter (with earring in right ear, which seems to work the same way here as in the USA), told us that it was his restaurant, open since December. It’s good, updated food, with a few classic German/Austrian dishes on the menu. The crowd was cool — a lot of young people, plus people travelling through the area. The kitchen had an electric eye-activated slidind door, through which we could see the chefs cleaning everything with cloths and spray bottles at the end of the evening.

I liked the fact that, when we were looking at an Austrian magazine, the waiter asked whether he could “translate anything for us”. The building was once a salt-processing building — this area has been rich from the existence of salt since the Iron Age. During World War II, artworks in the area were protected from Hitler, plus Allied bombing, in the salt caves in this area.

We had an amazing sort-of-dessert-wine called Isabella that is local to this area. Isabella seems to be the grape.

One of the things I like about the German-speaking world, by which I really mean Germany and Austria, is the sociability of restaurants. It is common practice to greet others upon entering a room in a restaurant, and to say “Auf wiedersehen” upon leaving the room for good.

One of the things I noticed today, that I didn’t mention in my earlier post, is that historical museums in this area often put contemporary art on display as well. The photo museum at Sissi’s Teehaus mixed historical photographs with a display of contemporary works. The Bad Ischl Stadt Museum had sculpture by an Italian artists. I’ve seen this in other towns as well. I can’t really imagine that in a small town museum in America.

I just saw a few minutes of Bush on CNN talking about the economy. I can’t believe he has any support in America, where the “common man” watches much more TV than I do. He’s a complete idiot, incapable of forming a decent sentence or explaining a simple concept. I feel horrified as an American when I watch him. Here in Europe, I search for some graceful way to let people know that not all Americans are warmongers, and that it’s OK to tell us that our President is an idiot. As I read the coverage of the Germany election, all I can think is that they’re just being polite. I’m sure that most European governments would love to say, “it’s scary that the man with his finger on the nuclear button is such an idiot with no advisers with any historical knowledge”.

We spent the day walking around Bad Ischl itself, on a rather cold and rainy day. I can hear the ducks on the river through the (slightly) open window of our hotel room, and watch a big flock of starlings. I’m not really uploading pictures right now, since I’m on a dialup.

We first visiting the Teehaus (Tee House) of Empress Elizabeth, popularly called “Sissi”. Apparently there is a trilogy of movies about her starring Romy Schneider, and she is very big as a romantic heroine in this part of the world. She was beautiful and intellectually curious, learning how to photograph soon after it was invented, and building a villa on Corfu for when she needed to “get away”. She was assassinated by an Italian anarchist while on a trip to Geneva in 1898.

We then saw the Kaiservilla, or the summer palace of Franz Josef I. It is a beautiful small Biedermeier palace, and It is still privately owned (and partially occupied) by a descendant of the family. The texts on the homepage say that the Kaiser allowed any subject of the empire to visit the interior, including his private apartments, when he was not in residence.

The thing that most struck me on the tour was when we saw the desk where he signed the declaration of war against Serbia, which began World War I. Looking at the desk, I remembered how many people died in that war (mostly young men), and I felt ill — similar to the way I felt when I have visited sites of Nazi horrors, such as Dachau. Every town in Europe has a memorial to its sons who died in that war.

Finally, after lunch, we visited the Museum der Stadt Bad Ischl — the town museum. We were both surprised by how good it was, and we actually ran out of time and were told it was time to leave. There are rooms on the history of the region, the city itself, the Imperial family, folk music, traditional costume, etc. There are a few neat rooms that are reconstructions of a peasant house, and one of a combined home/inn/tavern.

We drove through pretty countryside in Styria today, having lunch at a tasteful, attractive restaurant called Pilz Stub’n at the edge of Filzmoos There was a table of three older ladies in once corner, drinking coffee and trying their recently purchases chocolates from Salzburg (about an hour’s drive away). They also got into a discussion with the waiter on different types of coffee that the restaurant made — expresso vs. coffee vs. “kleiner Brauner”. I think the kleiner Brauner is just espresso served with a tiny pitcher of cream on the side. We had a traditional soup native to the area (and rarely found) called farfel-suppe. It’s a broth made by boiling smoked beef, plus dumplings with little bits of the beef. We talked to the waiter when he asked where we were were from, where we were travelling, etc. When we mentioned New York, he said it was a beautiful city, but it wasn’t for him, since he was a “Bergkind” (mountain child).

I’m amazed by how carefully resources are used here, compared to the USA. Over time, as the world starts to have conflicts over resource limits, this area of the world is going to work out things much better than our country. Clothes made of expensive wool or leather (like trachten — traditional clothing — epecially home-made) have different prices based on size. I also see recycling bins, for separating different types, everywhere — including gas stations.

There are so many details like this — clean bathrooms, well-maintained roads even in rural areas, public transit available even between villages with hundreds of people — that make Germany and Austria, and most of Europe, so attractive. I know many of my friends don’t really understand my Euro-philia, but I think the things one sees after travelling here regularly, especially if you have a little bit of money and don’t have to “backpack it”, make one realize what a rich, thoughtful society is capable of. I’m very frustrated that a country as rich as the USA manages its resources and public infrastructure so badly. The quality of life is so high here for people, even if they don’t have a lot of money.

I see on the news that Bush isn’t sending congratulations to Schroeder on being re-elected as Chancellor of Germany. Apparently it’s anti-American to disagree with the policies of an out of control president who wasn’t even elected with a majority of votes. I hope the rest of the world realizes that many Americans are horrified by Bush and this march to war.

We went driving around to some of the beautiful towns in this area of Austria, the Salzkammergut — including St. Wolfgang and Hallstadt. We had a late lunch at the Cafe Zauner here in Bad Ischl. It is the oldest pastry vendor/cafe in Austria, and historically was a supplier to the Emperor and the aristocracy. At one time it was said that the way to learn what was going on in the empire was to listen to gossip at the tables. As it was crowded, we shared a table with a really handsome older couple. She looked like good peasant stock — her hands were bigger than any men I know, and he looked like Bruckner.

We had dinner tonight at the hotel restaurant, since many places in this town aren’t open for dinner on Sunday night. Our handsome, lederhosen-wearing waiter reminded me of a younger, tall and skinny Bill Arning.

There are public internet terminals with webcams scattered about in public places in small towns here in Austria. Last night we were walking around Bad Ischl around 9pm, and we saw two teenage guys in front of one of them. They must have had the webcam on, because one was dancing around in front of the terminal.

I hurt my back for no apparent reason, so I don’t feel up to writing more right now. We’re occasionally watching the BBC World News for the German election results.

We found a hotel, The Goldenes Schiff (The Golden Ship) — in Bad Ischl. It was the summer capital of the Austro-Hungarian for at least 60 years. The Crawford, Texas of Emperor Franz Joseph, but with culture and pretty buildings and great pastries.

On the drive here from Munich we were slowed down at one point by young men wearing traditional clothing — wool hats, lederhosen, etc. — herding cows across the road.

We had lunch on the way at Hotel Gasthof Mauthaeusl in southern Bavaria. They were having a tournament of the card game Scharfkopf (sharp head), which James‘s family in Wisconsin, who came from northern Bavaria to the U.S. 150 years ago, also plays.

Last night in Munich, things were already starting to get rowdy one day before the official beginning of Oktoberfest. For the first time I saw drunk, loud, people in the streets. Along the lines of icky people, there was also a CDU/CSU rally (the Christian conservative parties) in Marienplatz, the main square of the historic center.

While watching TV tonight in the hotel room, I saw some performances of pop stars on German TV shows. I was really struck by how “controlled” and choreographed British and American music stars are at this point. The Germans looked so amateurish compared to how our pop stars now look on TV. I’m not saying the music’s any better or worse, just that the production values are so different.

We had dinner at a restaurant visible across the narrow Traun river from our hotel room. It’s called the Weinhaus Attwenger, and we absolutely had to go there once we read that it was a place where Anton Bruckner dined many times when he stayed here in the summers. There is a plaque near the entrance with a relief of his head in profile and a text telling us this fact.

An office building near our hotel has a cool neon sculpture on the ground floor. Photo courtesy of James.

I was harsher than I had to be, and some would say shallow, in my previous post about the appearance of my fellow geeks. I guess it’s not that bad, but part of my overreaction is that I find smart people (men and women) sexy. An average-looking person with a good mind is HOT, in a way that a well-toned body housing an incurious mind is not. The other problem is the astounding lack of social skills in a lot of geeks. I realize that’s not exactly breaking news, but the reason I’ve found myself in the technical world over the last decade is precisely because one can now find interesting people in the tech world who are interested in something other than science fiction and Monty Python.

One of the weird things I see here is people keeping their computers on during a presentation — writing email, reading slashdot, even writing code. I’m sure they believe that they’re multi-tasking, but at times even people sitting in the front row do it, and then ask questions that show they haven’t been paying attention. They even did it during the talk by Larry Wall, the inventor of Perl.

I’m trying to write a little bit before I fall asleep. My geek conference started yesterday. Except for a few fabulous exceptions, such as this Dutch guy:

this group makes all of the financial conventions I’ve attended look like a supermodel gathering. Loads of pasty, out of shape guys with long hair and beards — not as a fashion statement, but for low maintenance. Not that I have much of an excuse on the beard-while-traveling front right now.

The exceptions are generally from Europe. The guys from Copenhagen are in a class all their own, as are a few of the German ones.

For the Mac fans — Macs make up a majority of the computers here at the conference.

I was pleased to see my fellow Americans making fun of Bush. I feel like wearing a big “I’m not one of those bad Americans” button while I’m here. It’s horrifying to see the U.S. and Iraq on the front page of every paper here each morning.

Today was a phenomenal day on the food front. We had lunch at Pfistermuehle (Pfisterstrasse 4). Wow! It was incredible. I had a trio of soups for my appetizer: venison broth with a pistachio dumpling, foamed cream of chestnet mushrooms, and a creamed fennel and celery root soup. That was followed by homemade ravioli filled with freshwater crayfish — yes they have those here — on a bed of Savoy cabbage. It was accompanied by a bottle of Austrian Gruener Veltliner.

We went to the Alte Pinakothek for three hours tonight — it’s open until 10pm on Thursdays. I always knew they had an amazing collection, but I saw so many paintings tonight that I have loved for years, but only knew from books. They have a huge number of Breughels (8 rooms!), Duerers, Cranachs, Rembrandts, Titians, etc. I finally got to see the Rembrandt self-portrait I’ve always loved:

The museum building was damaged by bombing in WW II, and it’s interesting to see that they’ve chosen to make it obvious in places that they’ve only partially restored the building. There are areas that were once more decorative that have been left plain.

We had dinner afterward (at 10pm) at an Italian restaurant in a passage called Amalianpassage between our hotel’s street (Amalienstrasse) and Turkenstrasse. The restaurant, Il Baretto, was pretty authentically Italian. The older woman waiting on us said she had lived in Germany for 40 years, but she was still Italian. She was from Naples, my favorite city in Italy. We all three spoke in a mixture of German, Italian and English. I told her that my simple (and perfect) pasta dish couldn’t be made in NYC today, and she said that was because they were all American there now, instead of Italian.

When she found out we were from New York, she went, “Ooooh”, and frowned. I told her, “It’s OK”, and she said something like “the world just goes on”. We also told her we really hated Bush, that he was terrible. She responded, “like Berlusconi”.