TravelStream™ news feed for member waltmeier on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/waltmeier en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Sun, 08 Oct 2006 17:13:41 -0400 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/waltmeier/viennajapan2006/1160341500/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/waltmeier/viennajapan2006/1160341500/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/waltmeier/viennajapan2006/1160341500/tpod.html Sun, 08 Oct 2006 17:13:41 -0400 Never the 'Twain Shall Meet: Walt's Vienna and Japan Trips, April 2006

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Tokyo, Japan

Part 2 - Japan

Having seen "Lost in Confusion", I knew what to expect when I landed in Tokyo (movies are exactly like reality of course): a bustling city, masses of people, glowing neons lights. As the train to downtown left the airport, I was confronted with...rice paddies. And not just a few rice paddies, but mile upon mile of farmland. This is Tokyo?!

It turns out that the Tokyo airport, Narita, is nowhere near Tokyo. It's about 40 miles from the center of Tokyo, and it seemed much farther - perhaps partly because I was going to Yokohama, which was a half hour beyond downtown Tokyo. Many people in Colorado complain about how far the (relatively) new Denver International Airport (DIA) is from downtown. A common joke is that Denver's airport is actually in Kansas. Well, if DIA is in Kansas relative to Denver then, relative to Tokyo, Narita is in Guam. And the terminal is also ridiculously far from the gate. It was a good 20 minute walk at a fast pace. Former Speaker of the House, Tom Foley was on my flight. He was looking a bit frail, but bravely ambled toward the terminal, even though an assistant had a wheelchair at the ready. But because the distance was so far, Rep. Foley finally gave in and took the wheelchair. On the plus side, the customs officials and baggage handlers were the most efficient I've ever seen - I hardly stopped walking as I passed through customs.

Four hours after landing, I finally made it to my hotel in Yokohama - the Yokohama Crown Prince Hotel. It sounds quite nice, but the fact that it's the "Crown Prince" hotel and not the "Emporer" hotel should've been a hint. In many ways it is indeed quite impressive. It is a huge complex sitting atop a couple hundred foot cliff - you actually entered a high-rise apartment building below the cliff, went up 18 floors and then crossed a bridge to get to the floor of the hotel. My room on the 12th floor, with floor to ceiling windows had a potentially magnificent view. Unfortunately, the reality of the view was rather disappointing. Basically, the hotel overlooked generic apartment buildings in the foreground and the warehouses and cranes of Yokohama harbor in the distance. The hotel had the feel of a glamorous age gone by. It was a very nice hotel, with a beautiful atrium, first-class restaurants, etc. However, it was virtually empty and while at one time it was certainly nice, the furniture, carpeting, etc. were worn and stained in places.

Thus, my first experiences in Japan were ones of contrast, which really marked my entire visit. For example, take technology. I expected Japan to be at the forefront of the latest technology. And in some ways this was certainly true - particularly in the bathrooms. I've never been a fan of the automatic faucets with infrared sensors. In America, you often need to wave your hands under them in a epileptic-like fit trying desperately to get water to come out. In Japan, the faucets appear to have some sort of ESP sensor that detects your subconscious decision to use the faucet and times the water to turn on just as you're about to put your hands under the faucet. I've also never been a fan of the hand dryer in public restrooms. I realize that they're environmentally friendly and also more hygienic. But it's just annoying that after vigorously rubbing your hands under American dryers for a minute or more, your hands are still moist. In Japan, the hand dryers are top-notch. The blowers must be based off of jet engine technology. You put your hands in and in less than 10 seconds, your hands are drier than the Sahara desert. And their toilets - let's just say that the best of their toilets are suitable for astronaut training. There were hi-tech features on them that I didn't dare try to figure out.

And yet I nearly had to sell my soul to find a usable ATM. I found one in the airport when I arrived and got some cash. Later in the week, I looked for an ATM to get more money, but could not find one. They are not nearly as ubiquitous as in America. And apparently, most ATMs that are to be found do not take foreign cards. I actually had to dig into my reserve American cash that I had saved for my return (fortunately I had some, and fortunately the hotel had a currency exchange) or else I would've been stuck at the hotel. This is very different than Europe, where ATMs can be found on almost every corner.

The ATMs are symbolic of how surprisingly insular Japan is. I knew that it was a very different culture. However, it is also one of the more westernized Asian countries, is an aggressive international trader, and has close ties with America. Which meant, in my naive understanding, that Japan would be easy for an American to negotiate. And in fact, American businesses are found all over. There was a Denny's and KFC just down the street, a 7-Eleven next to our hotel, and right at the train station was...Mr. Donut! But, despite these familiar sights, I found Japan surprisingly perplexing. This was most evident in language. Of course America is generally ignorant of foreign languages. But in my travels overseas, particularly Europe, most foreigners were much more worldy and most speak English (often better than Americans). This was clearly evident in Vienna, and I expected much the same in an international metropolis like Tokyo. However, this was not at all the case. Very few Japanese speak English. Even most of the hotel front desk staff could speak only rudimentary English. This made things much more challenging.

And the language difficulties were more than simply communicating with other people. Because of the alphabet, just walking around was a challenge. In other foreign countries, even if you don't know the language, you can still read store signs, etc. - you may not know what the signs mean, and you may not be able to pronounce the words, but there is something comforting in just being able to read it. Even in Moscow, with its cyrillic alphabet, one can fairly easily transliterate it to roman characters and read the text. But this is impossible in Japan. While some signs have English characters, many do not. This difficulty really hit me while trying to figure out the weather. For some reason CNN didn't seem to want to put Tokyo on their list when giving weather for international cities. So, I thought I'd try the local channels. Sure enough, just like in the US, the local morning news would flash the weather of various cities for various days. And they used icons of sun or clouds or rain. But of course, the cities and days were in Japanese characters. So, I knew the weather for someplace in Japan at some point in the present or future, but nothing more than that. Of course, communicating with others, was the biggest problem, as the following example illustrates.

I took the train from Yokohama to Tokyo to spend a day. As expected, the trains in Japan are efficient, well-kept, and convenient. (And fortunately, in a rare exception, all the signs are in English and Japanese characters, making it relatively easy to navigate the system). But, in another strange contrast, there is not one unified system. In fact there are two train lines and two subway lines, none of which are interconnected. As I was going to and from Tokyo and then wanting to travel at will around Tokyo during the day, ideally I wanted an all-day pass for any train or subway. According to my guide book this was doable. However, it was not possible from the automated machines I had been using. So I had to go to the ticket agent. I tried to explain what I wanted. After a period of confusion, he seemed to understand. He charged me an extra few hundred yen (about $3) more than a simple round-trip Yokohama-Tokyo fare, which made sense since I would also be riding locally in Tokyo. He gave me my ticket...or should I say two tickets. As I eventually figured out, there was one ticket for the ride into Tokyo and one ticket for the ride back. With no ticket remaining for the rides around Tokyo. So why did he charge me a few hundred yen more? I guess he interpreted my English "I'd like an all-day all-train pass" as "I'd like to give you a few hundred more yen than I'm supposed to."

A final demonstration of the language difficulty was when a group of us went to downtown Yokohama for dinner one night. Many restaurants, while having menus only in Japaneses, often had models of the food in the windows so that you can just point to a model of what you want to order (apparently making such food models is a big industry). However, we wanted to go someplace more local, more authentic. We went down several alleys with small restaurants, trying to find a place to eat. However, we ran into a problem in that we couldn't read the menu, so we had no idea what kind of place it was, and it seemed like a place was either too full to accommodate our relatively large group of six, or it was so completely empty that we suspected something could be wrong with it. So, we wandered through countless blocks of Yokohama for over an hour. (A contributing issue was that there were just so many restaurants - there was always another one or ten on the next block that looked promising). Finally, exhausted and starving, we stumbled into what we eventually figured out was not really a restaurant, but a bar that served only appetizers. The food was very good, but it wasn't much. So as we headed back to our hotel, we were all still rather hungry. Where oh where, could we obtain the needed sustenance? As we exited the train, there it was, its neon lights shining like a beacon in a storm: Mr. Donut!

Food was another study of contrasts. Some of the food was excellent and some of it was, well, to say the least, weird - usually all within the same meal. One night, a fellow co-worker Bruce joined us for dinner. Bruce lived in Japan for a few years and is fluent in Japanese. This was most helpful; it made for a much easier night than our previous night's excursion in Yokohama. He took us out to an authentic, local Japanese restaurant. No food models, you take your shoes off before entering, etc. - the real deal. And Bruce was able to order a great selection of stuff - some of which was great, and some was very strange indeed. One thing we had was whale bacon ( or as Homer Simpson would say it, "Mmmm, whale bacon..."), a rather politically incorrect thing to eat, but it was something unique. And as Bruce rationalized, "Well, the whale is already dead anyway." It was quite good, though it left me with no desire to emulate Captain Ahab.

A major contrast between Tokyo and Vienna was in the architecture, and for Tokyo it was one of the biggest disappointments. I've been to many big international cities and Tokyo is by far the most underwhelming in terms of architecture. This is not completely Japan's fault. Most of the city was destroyed by America during World War II and the rebuilding had to surely be done quickly and inexpensively - not much time or money for distinctive styles. So there are blocks and blocks of generic cement and steel structures. On my free day after the meeting, I went first to Tokyo Station, right downtown and walked out expecting to see a distinctive city center, something like St. Stephen's Square in Vienna. Instead it was just a bunch of faceless office buildings. One of the few real distinctive structures is the Tokyo Tower, which is modeled after the Eiffel Tower, but whereas the Eiffel Tower is a radio antenna that looks like an elegant steel structure, the Tokyo Tower simply looks like a radio antenna. And in a big city one expects some nice shopping districts - New York's 5th Avenue, Copenhagen's Stroget, even Moscow had some really nice shopping streets. But not in downtown Tokyo. While Tokyo is home to some of the world's largest shopping malls, many stores are underground, leaving the ground level feeling rather desolate.

On the other hand, amidst the rather soulless city buildings, were numerous beautiful gardens and temples. Near downtown is the Emporer's Palace. And while you can not get anywhere near the actual palace building, the grounds and gardens surrounding it are quite pleasant. And on a day off from the meetings, our group was taken to Kamakura, one of the more famous temple areas in Japan. The emporer actually lived in Kamakura for a relatively brief period in (I believe) the 1200s, before moving to Kyoto and then Tokyo. This was beautiful architecture amid a beautiful and peaceful setting.

Though many shopping malls are underground, there are some interesting above-ground shopping districts, including the famous Shinjuku and Shibuya, with their huge neon signs and bustling masses of people. Both are particularly well-known for their many huge (and I mean huge) electronics stores. I eventually (on my last night in Japan) made it to Shinjuku (partly because that was one place where my Lonely Planet guidebook said foreign ATMs could be found) and this was the classic, bustling, neon-lighted Tokyo that one sees in "Lost in Translation". I had finally found the "real" Tokyo!
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/waltmeier/viennajapan2006/1160340240/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/waltmeier/viennajapan2006/1160340240/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/waltmeier/viennajapan2006/1160340240/tpod.html Sun, 08 Oct 2006 17:04:30 -0400 Never the 'Twain Shall Meet: Walt's Vienna and Japan Trips, April 2006

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Vienna, Austria

Part 1 - Vienna

"You know I've always wondered what happened to him", I thought I as stared at a cardboard cutout of Mozart hawking his chocolates. "He was big in the 1700s, but then he did a Syd Barrett/J.D. Salinger and disappeared." Apparently, Mozart got burned out on music, took a couple hundred years off and then went into the chocolate business. And he seems to be doing quite well. Mozart chocolates are all over the place in Vienna, and they are quite good - a symphony of chocolate flavor.

As you can see, Mozart is big business in Vienna. Particularly in 2006, which is the 250th anniversary of his birth. Though his memory lives on in music and chocolate, there's not much tangible left from Mozart's time in Vienna. Only one apartment where he once lived still stands, though it looks nothing like an apartment; it has been turned into a small, but pricey, museum. The apartment is just down an alley from St. Stephen's Cathedral, Vienna's main church and the center of the city. The cathedral has an impressive tiled roof, with intricate designs. Unfortunately, one of the towers was being refurbished, so it had scaffolding around it, thus ruining any attempts at a nice photo. The scaffolding was wrapped by large banners with advertisement. You know things are going bad when even God is selling out for a few bucks.

I was in Vienna for a conference, along with several co-workers and my frequent travel sidekick Todd (also a former co-worker). A bunch of us went out for Viennese cutlets, better known by the German name: Wiener schnitzel. Oliver, who grew up near Vienna, made the arrangements at the famous Figlmüller restaurant for "Wiener schnitzels as big as your head". They don't actually describe their schnitzel that way, but they certainly could. They are huge round cutlets that literally hung over the edge of the plate. And they were delicious. In fact, the food in general was excellent in Vienna, from schnitzel to bratwurst to German potato salad to frankfurters to good German beer to...scrambled eggs.

Scrambled eggs? Yes, scrambled eggs. I don't particularly like scrambled eggs and very rarely eat them, but the morning after I arrived I realized that I had hardly eaten anything in over 24 hours and was starving. The hotel had a free breakfast buffet and desperately needing some protein I grabbed some eggs. They are by far the best scrambled eggs I've ever had. At first I assumed they only tasted so good because I was ravenously hungry. However, they were just as good the rest of the week. I don't know what they did to make them taste so good, but they were amazing - I ate more eggs in Vienna than I've had in years.

One day during the conference, I met Todd and another Boulder friend Bjorn to go out to lunch. The conference was on the east end of town and the recommended restaurants were downtown, to the west, easily accessible by the (of course) convenient subways. However, Bjorn suggested taking the train the other way, to the eastern end of the line and see what we find - maybe some out of the way, local, non-touristy little authentic Viennese restaurant. Sounded like a good plan. So off we went to the end of line to find...a Hooters.

After the conference ended, Todd and I had an afternoon on our hands before Todd had to catch his flight home, so we decided to go visit the Schönbrunn Palace, the famous home of Hapsburgs, one of Europe's great dynasties. First though was lunch, along with a beer or two of course. I was surprised to find that the restaurant was serving "Schneider" beer - owned by some fairly distant relatives on my grandmother's side of the family. So, it was nice to help the old family business. Todd was particularly generous. But after 3 liters of beer (each beer glass was conveniently marked with a 0.5 liter line), he wasn't in great shape to tour the palace. So, we just wandered around the gardens for a while before he went to catch his flight.

I on the other hand, had a couple more days to spend in and around Vienna. One thing that I had forgotten is that Austria borders Eastern Europe and Vienna is only an hour from the former Iron Curtain. In fact, Vienna, like Berlin, was partitioned after World War II, and for a time there was the possibility of at least part of Austria becoming part of the communist bloc. So, I decided I need to take a side trip to eastern Europe for a visit. I hopped a train one evening to Bratislava, Slovakia. Normally, the train stations are near the center of the city and I figured that I could just get off the train and walk around the center of Bratislava for a bit. As it turns out, Bratislava's station is in the middle of nowhere on the outskirts of town and after getting off the train I was in the middle of nowhere. I checked my Lonely Planet guide book and it confirmed that the station is not walking distance from downtown (I really should read the guidebook before embarking on an adventure); it also mentioned that one could take Tram No. 1 to get to the city center. Sounded easy enough. Except that there was no indication anywhere of a Tram No. 1. Apparently, Bratislava has renumbered their tram lines since the guidebook was printed. Of course, the native language is Slovakian and relatively few people speak English. And I spoke zero Slovakian. But with a little investigation I figured out what tram to get on. Taking the tram also meant that I needed money and had to exchange my euros for Slovakian korunas (I had not planned to spend any cash in Slovakia). I had no idea what the exchange rate was, but I handed the teller a 10 euro note and got back a handful of bills and coins that added up to about 500 korunas. The tram ride cost 20 koruna - about 40 U.S. cents. So, now I had a bunch of extra korunas I was was going to have to try to spend.

The tram took me to downtown Bratislava, which lies on the Danube River (fyi: the Danube is not at all blue - thanks for the misinformation Herr Strauss). On one side of the river is a classic old-style European downtown, with cobblestone streets, little alleys, church spires, all overlooked by a castle up on a cliff. A very nice little town. On the other side of the river is mile after mile of identical gloomy 10-story gray cement block apartment buildings, obviously built during the Soviet era. Sometimes I wonder if communism would not have fallen if only they had built aesthetically pleasing buildings. Unfortunately, I arrived too late and the castle was closed. Reading my Lonely Planet, I discovered that the castle, in addition to having the usual castle things, also housed the Slovakian Hockey Hall of Fame, which would've been kind of cool to see. Hockey is actually very big in Slovakia and, like in Canada, is the national sport. When you put the hall of fame in an ancient castle, you know the sport is pretty important.

After walking around a bit, I headed back to the train station to go back to Vienna. Of course, I had all my korunas to try to spend. After buying some postcards and trinkets, I still had 200 koruna left. At the train station, I decided to buy something to drink and a sandwich. The sandwich, was well, something one would stereotypically expect to get in a former communist country. In short, it was pretty awful. So, after a couple bites I tossed the sandwich in the trash and hopped on the train. I spent about three hours in Slovakia, thus carrying on a tradition I have of spending three hours or less in European countries that begin with the letter 'S': Switzerland, Sweden, and now Slovakia. I'm hoping to find a spare six hours sometime so I can visit Spain and Slovenia.

Back in Vienna the next day, I hopped off the subway at the wrong stop and promptly got lost. I was planning to go to the natural history and/or art museum, but after a long walk, I ended up at the entrance to the Belvedere, a former palace that's been turned into a modern art museum. Tired of walking, I figured, "hey it's a museum, might as well have a visit." As I was about to go in, I encountered what must be the most enthusiastically unsuccessful restaurant owner I've ever met. Yelling in broken English with a Greek accent, the short olive-skinned owner caught my attention from across the street. He then ran over to me and said that I must come into his restaurant. "You buy Coca-Cola", he earnestly told me. It was about lunch time and I was hungry after the walk, so I thought that I might as well eat lunch before going into the museum. And this place was as good as anywhere. Plus, it felt good to give such a motivated entrepeneur some busines. I entered his establishment and he immediately served me a Coke. Then he promptly left and went back outside to chat with a friend and accost other tourists. I sat there drinking my Coke and waiting to get a menu. And waiting. And waiting. Other people were in the restaurant eating, so I knew they were serving food. I finished my diet Coke and waited some more. Finally, I decided that I really didn't want to spend my little remaining time in Vienna sitting in this guy's restaurant, as friendly as he was. So I left - or I tried to. As I mentioned, he was standing just outside the door. As I tried to exit, he grabbed me before I could get away. Did he shove a menu in my face and tell me to order some lunch? No. He dragged me next door to his souvenir shop. Which wasn't open at the moment. But he opened it for me and encouraged me to buy something. Now, I really wasn't interested in souvenir shopping at the moment (I was of course, looking for some food). However, I didn't want to be rude. So I looked around and politely feigned interest in the kitsch. Finally, after an appropriately polite amount of time, I told him that I needed to leave. But I couldn't get away before he gave me a Mozart postcard and before he made me promise to return (a promise that I must admit I broke). So, I finally got away, walked down a couple blocks and got lunch. The poor guy, enthusiastic as he was, had not yet learned that if you want to make a sale, give the customer what he wants.

Since I didn't get a chance to see the Schönbrunn Palace with Todd, I decided to head back the next morning. Fortunately, I went fairly early in the morning and missed the throngs of crowds that built shortly after I arrived. The palace is reminiscent of Versailles outside of Paris. In fact, I would suggest that you could take in just one or the other and not really miss anything. The Versailles palace is a bit larger and Versailles also has a larger gardens, but Schönbrunn's are also quite nice and I walked around them after the tour of the palace. One thing that Schönbrunn has, that Versailles does not, is a zoo ("tiergarten" = literally "animal garden" in German). Normally, I wouldn't waste time in a zoo, especially in such a cultural city as Vienna. However, the Vienna zoo is not just any zoo. It's the world's oldest zoo! And it's quite a nice zoo - it even has an impressive polar exhibit with polar bears and penguins. But thing that really caught my attention was the exotic bison exhibit. Yes, a bison, American buffalo. Where, in Colorado, would I ever get a chance to see a buffalo? Well, other than twice during every University of Colorado home football game.

My final night, I decided I had to end with Mozart - the composer, not the chocolateer. While I had listened to some Mozart on my MP3 player (hey it's the 21st century) as I strolled around the city or rode the subway, I decided to try the real thing. There are Mozart concerts virtually every night and in fact, there are folks peddling tickets to tourists on the streets all over town - it felt a bit like "Mozart in Vegas". I decided to try something a little less touristy and found a concert in the Votiv Church. This ended up costing me about $50, which seemed a bit much for a guy who has been dead for over 200 years, but what the heck. Plus it was the "Requiem", which ended up seeming appropriate. When the orchestra walked out, they were all wearing rather heavy coats, which seemed odd at first. This was April, so the weather was cool, but not terribly uncomfortable. But after the sun went down, the church seemed to immediately lose all its heat. So, while the music was great, it was a little hard to appreciate as I shivered in the church pew having only a lightweight jacket to protect me from the freezing cold. Someone should really write a piece of music about such as coldness of death.

Well, that was the end of the west. Now it was time to leave Europe, the occident, and head to the Orient...
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/waltmeier/arcticexhibit/1158690720/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/waltmeier/arcticexhibit/1158690720/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/waltmeier/arcticexhibit/1158690720/tpod.html Tue, 19 Sep 2006 15:12:47 -0400 Arctic Exhibit at the Smithsonion Museum of Natural History

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Washington, District of Columbia, United States

Here are photos
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