Jewels of Bohemia Day 11

Day 11     Friday, September 5

After breakfast, we departed Bratislava and began our journey to Budapest, Hungary. En route, we stopped at the Roman city of Carnuntum, which began as a Roman army camp along the Danube River in what is now Austria. At its peak, some 50,000 people lived here, and after 1,700 years Carnuntum's ancient glory is currently being recreated from the site's extensive ruins.

     

Crossing into northwestern Hungary, we stopped for an included lunch of goulash soup in Gyor, an ancient city situated at the confluence of the Danube, Rába and Rábca rivers. We also took a stroll to admire the Baroque and Neo-Classical structures in Gyor's pedestrian-only historic core before continuing to Budapest.  Two different couples were having wedding pictures taken there. 

Benedictine Church

Cathedral of the Virgin Mary. On the sight of a Romanesque church the present Baroque building dates from 1639-1645. The west facade and tower were built in 1802-1823.

Cathedral of the Virgin Mary.  The ceiling frescos and main altar masterpieces were painted by Franz Anton Maulbertsch between 1772 and 1781.

We arrived in Budapest in late afternoon and had dinner at a Jewish restaurant, “Macesz Huszar.”

Jewels of Bohemia Day 10

Thursday, Sept 4 -- Bratislava

Just as in the Czech Republic, the Velvet Revolution spelled the end of communism for Slovakia, a densely forested country with towering mountains in Central Europe's heartland. Its capital, Bratislava, is situated along the Danube in Slovakia's southwestern tip, close to the border with Hungary and Austria. 

Our morning walking tour with a local guide focused on Bratislava's compact Old Town, home to a variety of 14th-15th-century structures that include the Old Town Hall, the Neo-Classical Archbishop's Palace, and St. Martin's Cathedral, a Gothic coronation church where several Hungarian Habsburg kings and queens were crowned. As a stark contrast to Bratislava's vestiges of imperial grandeur, we visit a section of town featuring blocks of housing projects that serve as symbols of the days of communist-era oppression. 

The site of a synagogue that had to be torn down in 1968 to make room for a new bridge.

A statue of an eccentric man named Schoner Naci, who lived in Bratislava until the 1960s.

Working man

We also enjoyed a glimpse of life in contemporary Slovakia when we visited the local home of Katarina Selcova for tea and cake.  Katarina did not speak English so her neighbor, Jan, interpreted for her.  She lived in a building that had been built during the Communist era but had been updated and made to look more contemporary by painting parts of it with bright colors.  When we left, Katarina treated us all with bags containing Slovakia bracelets, small colorful picture frames, and booklets about Slovakia.

 

Katarina's building

Jan, Katarina's friend, meets the group

Katarina and Jan demonstrate their dance moves

Her living room

Jan translates Marsha's question for Katarina

The daughter's and son's room

Katarina and her husband's bedroom

Ready to leave

That afternoon we were on our own.  Dave and I picked up sandwiches and soda at a window in Old Town and walked to the park and ate them on a park bench.  We then walked outside the Old Town to find the only synagogue in Bratislava.  We found it in a less affluent area of the city, but it and the attached museum were closed. 

Bratislava's synagogue

We then went back to a shop we had seen in the morning and bought wine and a bag of "bagels" which turned out to be a crusty, sweet pastry with walnuts.

Painted eggs seemed to be popular gift items in many of the gift shops we visited

Wine made in Slovakia

The region surrounding Bratislava is renowned for its quaint villages and vineyards on the fertile slopes of the Little Carpathians, so this evening we journeyed outside the city to enjoy the vineyards, wine-tasting and dinner in the  cellar of a local vintner.  The bus couldn't make it all the way into the vineyards so we met the wife of the vintner family and walked the rest of the way in.  She explained where their vineyards were located and the kinds of grapes they grow.  We then met her down in the village where they have their restaurant.  And we started dinner with wine tasting.  She spoke incredibly good English but her husband did not.

The vintner's wife explains where their grapes are grown.  They are not on contiguous plots b/c they plant their grapes wherever they can buy the land.

grape vines

view of the village from the vineyard

heading back to the bus for the trip into the village

getting seated for our wine tasting and dinner

 

Jewels of Bohemia Day 9

Wednesday, Sept. 3

After breakfast, we began our journey to Bratislava, capital of Slovakia. En route, we stopped for a visit to Trebic, an ancient Moravian city that is home to one of Europe’s best preserved Jewish ghettos—a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Jewish and Christian cultures co-existed here from the Middle Ages up to the 20th century, and our stroll took us to the ancient Jewish Synagogue.  Services were held in the synagogue until World War I, after which it fell into disuse and disrepair. It was a ruined shell when restoration work began in the early 1990s.

The structure has a barrel vaulted interior, heavy, partially buttressed walls, and arched windows. Walls and ceiling are covered with colorful paintings including Hebrew texts (some of them fragments), floral motifs (including a garland of flowers surrounding the small round window above the Aron niche), and painted lions on one of the doorways.   Behind the synagogue was the store and the Rabbi's home furnished as it might have been when the synagogue was in use.  We later purchased pastries at a local bakery.  

All Jewish inhabitants of Trebic were deported in WWII; nobody returned. 

 

 

 

 

The bakery run by special needs adults.

 

Later, we enjoyed lunch at a local restaurant in Lednice. Over the centuries, the region surrounding Lednice (and its twin town of Valtice) has been carefully landscaped with a series of woodlands, lakes, streams, gardens, and tree-lined chateaux—all of which have been designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We explored Lednice (Liechtenstein) Castle, an immense structure built in the Neo-Gothic style and then we got to wander among the tropical plants in the Castle's original iron-framed greenhouse.  

The palace of Lednice began its life as a Renaissance villa; in the 17th century it became a summer residence of the ruling Princes of Liechtenstein. The estate house proclaimed rural luxury on the grandest scale. In 1846–58 it was extensively rebuilt in a Neo-Gothic style .

It's hard to believe that this was just a summer mansion. Aristocracy used  this monstrous fairy-taleish building just as a cottage. They came here in early spring , but for winter they returned to central site in Valtice.

Lednice greenhouse is a technical landmark. It was built in 1843-1845, when England gave the lead to everything. That is where the idea of cast-iron framework, carrying light glass sheets, came from. The frame of the greenhouse is supported by cast-iron bamboo-shaped pillars, edged with superficial decorative leafs. Glass flakes are bicolour so as to easily distinguish the original parts of building from those reconstructed. The manor greenhouse is 92 meters long, 13 meters wide and 10 meters high.