The Road To Prague

The road to Prague was paved with challenges. Travel days can be long and sometimes arduous. This day started with French sunshine as a taxi picked us up at the boat basin in Montceau les Mines. The driver was dressed in an EMT uniform, don’t ask, it is one of the vagaries of small town French life.

We bade a sad farewell to Mary & Jim Neil; their warm hospitality had been infectious and deeply satisfying. If you get a chance to spend any time aboard their barge, run do not walk. The food, the friendship, ahhh… but just stay away from the Mexican Train.

The taxi connected us to the hi-speed train (TGV) and shortly we were having lunch at the Gare Lyon in Paris. Then it was time for a three train trek on the Metro to Orly Airport. This even included a change at the dreaded Chatelet Metro Station; Mary and I have had horrors of walking what seemed like 12 miles, between trains at the dreaded Chatelet. But today it treated us kindly.

We had a long wait at Orly Airport that was worsened by a delayed departure; it was 10:30pm before our arrival in Prague. The car at the airport was a no show, and the clerk at the hotel could not find our reservation.

The night clerk was so deliciously gay and bitchy as to be a Saturday Night Live cliché. We finally got our room and the bed had a mattress that is usually reserved for the out of Battalion, probie, detail guy.

We upgraded our hotel and could not be happier. Tres bon ! We love Prague, the buildings are to die for and the people are foriegn looking enough to make us feel we are far from home.

It is difficult to appreciate Prague through all the rain and overcast; the bare bones of a beautiful city present itself. The Czech Republic, formerly Czechoslovakia, formerly part of the Hapsburg Empire, once the Kingdom of Bohemia, and also part of the Holy Roman Empire has had a tumultuous history. Now it is an independent nation and in the European Union.

Unlike many eastern European countries the Czech Republic had a strong manufacturing base and good tourist industry to build upon. The buildings of Prague are unique, beautiful, and plentiful. A visit to Prague should be on your horizon.

Old World Vienna

Vienna, gateway to eastern Europe, home of the Hapsburg Empire, bustling capital city of 1.6 million citizens, and a city I visited with Steve O’Neill during a winter Cognac run of epic proportions over 20 years ago. Many phone calls, drunks showing.

We checked into the multi story, modern Marriott Hotel in Vienna. The drive from Prague was accomplished in a light rainfall with a stop at the castle town of Cesky Krumlov. This a UNESCO site worth seeing. As we crossed the Austrian border on a small backcountry road the improvement in housing and the towns was obvious and immediate.

The Marriott corporate culture, branding, and marketing outreach was everywhere in evidence as we checked in to our hotel; American corporate hegeonomy is omnipresent.

The lobby reminded me of a Las Vegas hotel more than a European; when we got to our room the corporate branding seemed excessive. Every horizontal surface in our scrumptious room was covered with placards, tent cards, brochures, branded shopping magazines, Marriott branded anti allergic bedding, and the ubitiqiuous lobby picture of John and JW Marriott Jr.

Every instrument (telephone, Internet access router, TV Instruction Card) was pasted with a bright red Marriott decal, just in case you forgot where you are I suppose. Even the toilet paper has a blue one inch Kleenex sign every five tissues. A strategic alliance at the toilet can be dicey…….. but remunerative!

All of this was a prelude to our visit to the sports bar on the ground floor. We decided to eat-in our first night. The sports bar was identical to any at home with 30 overhead monitors playing competing sporting events. The large screen was reserved for the LSU - Miami game and endless highlights of the Michigan and Oregon debacle. The volume level was one notch below the auditory pain point.

The overly friendly bartenders welcomed us effusively. Their denim pants and Izod shirts said USA. The big sign on the wall said 147 days to the Super Bowl. I was relieved. The German accented bartender chatted us up in perfectly colloquial English as he brought our drinks. Within minutes he was thrusting a large menu under our eyes telling us to stay for dinner.
Tres Amercain.

The menu had many choices that bore a familiar ring: Burgers, Philly Cheesesteak, Questedellas, and a Giant Schnitzel from the porks neck “Grandma Style”. So many choices. While I was deciding I watched two late middle aged businessmen to my right with their Rolexes and cell phones working on four flight attendants that looked like Junior Achievement trainees.

Meanwhile the overhead screens lurched from highlight to intrusive graphics, to athlete camera mugging, and to ESPN personalities extolling the wonderment of it all.

The following night we were in the Lobby Bar, it has two large, flat screen monitors playing worldwide Marriott promotionals over a Roy Orbison sound track. Every elevator waiting area assaults you with Marriott ad videos but without Roy Orbison.

I was sitting at the bar watching the mezzanine area above. There was a corporate reception of 30 somethings standing up, holding wine glasses and food and discussing Cryptographic Hardware & Embedded Systems. It looked like fun, like the firehouse at 6pm without the hurled epithets, war stories, and personal insults. They are all networking, schmoozing, and telling lies.

This is a target rich environment; descending the stairs is a group of young Asian engineer types with backpacks, Bluetooth enabled ear pieces and carrying corporate sample gift bags in a bold magenta color and give-away tee shirts. ……. Welcome back to Vienna Mr Healy, we have been busy changing while you were drying out.

Gay Old World Vienna.

Six Hundred And Thirty

For six hundred and thirty years the waiters of the Stadtbeisl have elegantly sailed the aisle ways of hungry diners, negotiating past hungry Hussars, angry Hungarians, hapless Hapsburgs, Germans Gypsies, irate Istrians and even drunken San Francisco jakies.

Years ago Steve O’Neill and I stumbled upon this shrine to Teutonic tastefulness while taking a Cognac fueled culture crusade thru central Europe. Even two local and friendly frauleins, who we met in an impromptu cultural exchange program in a Bavarian themed beer garden, brought us here when we asked them to take us to a typically Viennese restaurant. We laughed because we had been dining there for several days.

So prior to this trip I have been boring the Baroness with endless stories about this great Viennese temple to Teutonic cuisine. I prattled on about the Goulash soup, the apple strudel, and the Weiner Schnitzel that melts on your tongue, and she smiled wanly as she patted my head and asked if I would like to visit the old beer garden alone.

Last evening we traipsed to the Old town in the shadows of Saint Stephens to the scenic shores of the Stadtbeisl. But whoa ! Hold all tickets mein munchkins, the restaurant has disappeared. Six hundred and thirty years of dirty dishes and hungry Hussars and it is giving up the ghost on my watch ?

It was a sheepish husband who slipped his wife into a late night Hungarian café for a hurried dinner. Our Weiner Schnitzel was from veal that had passed away at some assisted living farm for geriatric veal. It did not melt on your tongue as much as dented your fork. Our race home thru the rain dampened my disappointment.

Paris - Again

We arrived late in the evening and we dashed to a sidewalk café down the street for a glass of wine and sparkling water. The café owner greeted us warmly and then went to spend time with a group of South African Rugby fans in town for the Rugby World Cup. There was much back slapping and taking of pictures and pouring of red wine; Mary and I watched the show and smiled at each other.

Our experiences last summer had been so positive that I had harbored some concern that Paris would not be able to live up. Stow those concerns sailor; All is well in Healy heaven. We spent the next day reintroducing ourselves to Paris and resting from a long travel day.

We went to Luxembourg Garden to stroll and watch the tennis players and spend quality time with the Petanque crowd as they kibitzed the games. We sat at a sidewalk café watching the rowdy rugby fans. Then we went to our old café for dinner. Le Chartreux had not changed a whit, and that includes the menu or the pictures of aging French movie stars on the wall. They still make the best cheeseburgers we know.

Returning to our hotel we stopped by the Swan Jazz Bar. Lionel, the expat American owner was standing in front. We stopped to say hello and talk old times, soon he veered into a political discussion. His passion has not banked and his smile has not dimmed. We waved good-by and headed across the river for our 8th Arrondesmont hotel home.

Toby's Arrival

The first time I met Toby he was a college student with an infectious smile and a Triumph sports car painted primer gray; it had a starter motor as temperamental as an opera singer and as stubborn as a Persian cat. On that occasion he was taking me for a row on the Potomac River. His Washington DC Rowing club was as charmingly down market as the Triumph. I felt at home.

Now he was taking me to lunch at the Harvard Club of Boston. Toby knows value. The club is on the top floor of a downtown hirise; we had been thoroughly vetted by the lobby security staff who had issued me a guest name card. Their instincts told them I was a Battalion # 1 no account but protocols demanded a card. Then a nonstop elevator had whisked us to the sky.

The clubs muted tones and sedate atmosphere fit in with my expectations: dark wainscoting, views of the harbor, and Currier and Ives era drawings on the wall gave balance to the wood floors and Oriental carpets. Elderly gentlemen in sports coats passed time drooling in the reading room, they were waiting for the Harvard Crimson to again field a football team as good as De La Salle High.

This was the first official day of our trip, two days in Boston, three in Vermont, and then off to France and points east. We were stopping in Boston to see Toby and his wife Sacchi. Since that row on the Potomac Toby had studied in Japan, lived and worked in Tokyo for 4 years, gone to the Kennedy School for a year, and started a family. Toby knows value.

Time is moving quickly and now Toby is analyzing markets and I am accepting free lunches at the Harvard Club. The Operator knows value.

Vermont Touchstones

The Baroness and I are going for the mixed bag of travel adventures this time around…. from the Sacramento airport to Boston for a cameo visit, and on to Vermont before crossing to France.

We visited our friend Paul who moved from the Bay Area back to the countryside surrounding Hanover, New Hampshire, which is home to Dartmouth College; it is now Paul’s fulltime focus and GPS setting. Thomas Wolf said you can’t go home again but Paul is trying to prove him wrong.

Paul loves the lifestyle of small town New England living where he is on a first name basis with the postmistress, the UPS driver, and the bartender at the Norwich Inn. The town general store is a rabbit warren of nooks, backrooms, and hidden passages that extend forever. You would not want to be a truckman at a fire in this place.

When Paul is not traveling as a tour guide he can be seen manning the information booth on the Dartmouth Green, this is the center of campus life.

Rural Vermont is an endlessly green and beautiful environment; frequent rain and humidity have their advantages. Country lanes meander through the hilly countryside revealing ageless villages of white churches, clapboard homes, and people with serious gardens. There is a unified look of architectural cohesion and reassuring uniformity.

But don’t be fooled by the tranquil setting. There are still the disagreements over whether Dartmouth is a university or a college, and the annual town meetings to decide if tax revenue will allow them to buy a new snow plow.

Touchstones can be the bedrock of our lives; they reconnect us to our real selves and to our histories. Dartmouth is this man’s touchstone.

The Captain And The Probie

The fog scuttled along the canal highlighting the morning sun and the country quiet. It was early morning at Artaix, it was day 3 aboard the barge Festina Tarde. A lone fisherman was hunched over his pole across the lagoon.

Like two punch drunk fighters, we alighted from the Boston/Paris redeye, found the rail connection and headed south to Roanne. Jim and Mary Neil met us at the RR station and whisked us to the Bateau Festina Tarde.

Lest one get an impression of rustic and bare bones boat accommodations; the Festina Tarde is a 75 foot Dutch barge with two en suite staterooms, king size beds, full kitchen, dining room, living room, and enough wine on board to toast every fireman that ever lived. Twice.

Sometimes in the afternoon our stateroom could get a little warm, so the Wally Quinn Nap Ventilation System was utilized. This is a complex HVAC platform of open portholes and multiple oscillating fans. Wally and Sue know nautical comfort.

On board we had a light lunch, heavy conversation, a three hour nap and then an evening that included dinner and a visit to another barge for a boating party and a domino game called Mexican Train. This game is as vicious and provocative as firehouse Pedro.

Day two found us at the Chateau de Champlong for a lunch that included seven courses with special wine selections and even a pre dessert course that is now a must for me. Life without a pre dessert course would be just too meager and minimalist. I am sure you agree, every Daywatchman should get on board the Predessert course.

Another Rude Frenchman

We were standing in line at the railroad station; Jim Neil was helping me buy my return rail tickets to Paris. The clerk did not speak English and we were attempting to bridge the communication gap with the usual hand signals, written notes, and talking louder. “Can I help you?” Asked an attractive, middle aged woman behind us.

Soon she had sorted out our problem and the tickets were in hand. She introduced us to her college aged daughter and explained she was married to a Scotsman and lived locally. Jim gave her a Festina Tarde business card as he explained we and our wives were tied up in the canal harbor for several days. We invited her and her family to stop by.

Sunday afternoon we heard a knock at the wheelhouse door; Natalie our rail station translator and her husband Grahem were there with a chilled bottle of sparkling Brut Rose. The Captain eagerly piped them aboard and we all introduced ourselves.

Jim and Mary gave them a tour of the barge and answered all their questions. Soon some local pate, bread, and full glasses were on the wheelhouse table. The conversation raced around; they told us of their trip to San Francisco and Yosemite with a camping expedition to Grand Canyon.

It was a lazy Sunday filled with fun conversation and a pate worth killing for. Graham sold railroad locomotives and entire rail systems and maintenance programs. They invited us to stop by their home later in the evening.

As the sun approached the yardarm we sat beside their pool with cool beverages and small finger food. We discussed things and laughed; meanwhile I thought: Another rude Frenchman.