Dragonfly Ranch

Lunch on the train from Prague to Vienna. In first class, you get service at your seat.

The Augustinians’ Church in Vienna. Every Sunday they have a mass with choir and orchestra. We heard the Mass in C major by Rheinberger.

The Vienna State Opera isn’t doing any opera this week. They’re about to remove the orchestra-level seats and create a huge dance floor for the annual Opera Ball. So we took a tour of the opera house instead.

South tower of St. Stephen’s Cathedral. We climbed the 343 steps (which only get you halfway up). We also toured the catacombs, where the internal organs of the imperial Habsburg family are preserved in alcohol. You can’t make this up.

Statue outside the cathedral — St. John of Capistrano preaching death to the Ottoman Turks. There’s nothing new under the sun.

Our reward for the 343 steps – an excellent Italian restaurant just up the street from the hotel. Arlin had artichoke pizza with an egg in the middle; I had gnocchi with chestnut sauce, arugula, shaved parmesan, and thin-sliced veal.

When are Phil and Arlin coming home?

Sent from my iPad

Friday the 17th was our last day in Prague. We spent our morning in the Jewish Quarter, Prague’s old ghetto, which has (surprisingly) a number of well-preserved sites, including the “Old New Synagogue”, built in the 13th century and still in use, and the “Spanish Synagogue”, built in the 19th century in the Spanish/Moorish style.

But the most profound experience is in the Pinkas Synagogue, where there is virtually no decoration other than the names of over 70,000 Czech Jews who were removed to Terezin concentration camp. From there most went to the death camps.

“There’s a couple of accordions behind me. I wonder how many more Pilsners I need to drink before I start playing one …”

“Maybe just one more after i finish this one?”

“Yes. One more Pils after this one, and I’ll be ready.”

A 17th-century door on St. Vitus’s Cathedral:

A wall painting in the romanesque St. George’s Basilica:

A modern statue in the courtyard of Prague Castle:

If I don’t post pictures, there won’t be any of Phil …

At the Jewish Memorial in Leipzig…

Buying language books in a Czech bookstore …

Heading back down after visiting the Castle in Prague…

Looking dapper in his new hat and scarf …

Afternoon coffee: a place called Chocoffee, which offers melted chocolate alongside stuff you can dip into it. I had pastries they call cream horns, and Arlin had cookies. They also offer pretzels, fruit, and much else. Heaven. We’re going back.

Lunch at a restaurant next to the Kafka Museum. I had pumpkin soup, and Arlin had duck soup. (No Marx Brothers jokes, please.) Our main courses were pulled pork sandwich and tagliatelle.

We were freezing after spending an hour in the cavernous Cathedral of St. Vitus, so we needed to warm up.

Breakfast at the French bakery about 20 steps from the hotel. Believe it or not, we had the ham, cheese, and sun-dried tomato stuff rather than the sweet stuff.

We attended a performance of Don Giovanni at the Estates Theater. Mozart wrote Don Giovanni for this theater and conducted the first performance here in 1787, a few years after the theater was opened.

The performance was good musically, but disastrous dramatically. The costuming for the two lead women’s roles was absurd — they looked like a cross between Darryl Hannah in “Blade Runner” and Elsa Lanchester in “The Bride of Frankenstein”. There was interpretive dance during the overture and various arias, apparently just to make noise and something to look at. Perhaps the most outlandish touch was the film of a running bison in the background of Elvira’s “Mi tradì.” I’m not kidding.

Before the opera we hung out for a while in the Old Town Square.

A spectacular example of the late baroque. The architects’ motto obviously was “too much is barely enough”. Mozart played the organ here when he was in town.

We ate lunch at a Czech restaurant today. After the beer, the bread, and the appetizers we didn’t really need the main course, but we had to be polite and eat the goulash (Arlin) and roast beef with dumplings (Phil).

My appetizer was called a “spread made with greaves” in English. The waiter explained it was made from pork fat, so I had to try it. It came with a “Balkan salad”, which turned out to be cabbage and carrots in vinegar. It turns out that “greaves” is a real English word, meaning what we call crackling — the crispy stuff that’s left over when you render the fat out of meat. It was delicious. Arlin had a salad, which is why he’s looking self-righteous.