Vienna's Schonbrunn Palace...

Our trip to Vienna was just for the weekend, and we had to head back to Prague by about lunchtime on Sunday. So Sunday morning we spent at Schonbrunn Palace and gardens. We decided we could spend several days here on the grounds - palace, conservatory, mazes, zoo, Glorietta, etc.




From europeforvisitors.com:
Summer cottages have always been popular with wealthy Europeans, so it shouldn't have come as a surprise when Emperor Leopold I--ruler of the Austro-Hungarian Empire--commissioned a hunting lodge near the old Tiergarten, or Zoo, at Schönbrunn ("Beautiful Fountain") on Vienna's outskirts in 1695. What was surprising was the grandiosity of his vision: He ordered Bernhard Fischer von Erlach, the greatest architect of the Baroque Era, to design a palace larger than Versailles. Fortunately for the Austrian Treasury, the emperor balked when the architect's estimate came in, and the Habsburg family settled for a more modest dwelling with only 1,441 rooms.

When Empress Maria Theresia ascended to the throne in 1740, she had Schönbrunn Palace expanded and redecorated in French Rococo style over a five-year period from 1744 to 1749. The palace was later occupied by Napoleon and surrendered to the Austrian Republic upon the abdication of the last Habsburg emperor, Charles I, in 1918. Today, the restored palace is both a national monument and an apartment house for a number of lucky Viennese.







Here's the view from the front of the palace looking up to the Glorietta.




Here's looking back at the palace from the Glorietta.




This is the conservatory. It reminded us very much of the one at Como Park in St. Paul. We didn't actually go inside, and will save this for the next (longer) trip to Vienna.







I have to include a picture of Noah. Here he is by the fountain

The Heurigen of Austria...

The “Heuriger” is a famous instiution the wine growing areas of Austria. A law - more than 250 years old allows Austrian producers of wine to sell their own wine and other products at their places with very low taxes. Heuriger is the name of the youngest wine. In September, soon after the first grapes are harvested, it is possible to enjoy the “Sturm”, the only partially fermented intermediate product that later becomes full wine. It is sweet and good but you could easily drink much more than you should. Most also sell food - simple meat and potatoes and other "stick to your ribs" German-type cuisine.




Here is the Heuriger we went to in Grinzing, Austria. Grinzing is on the far outskirts of Vienna, but it still only took about 40 minutes door-to-door from our hotel. A ride on the S-bahn and then a tram to Grinzing, and then a short walk.



Last Saturday evening in Vienna was gorgeous, and we ate and drank in the garden which is a standard feature of the Heurigen. There was a table of loud American tourists (or is that redundant?) but mostly it appeared to be Austrians.



There were two musicians - an accordian player and a violinist. Here an older gentleman patron wanted to sing a song that they were playing. His voice wasn't bad and you could tell that he was one of those guys who really loved life. He did a couple of songs before being distracted by a child at a table accross the way.

Fellow Minnesotans, welcome to Prague...

I was wondering why the hits on the blog took a jump this week, and then realized that it was due to my having registered it at twincities.com, the web site of the St. Paul Pioneer Press. It's a fairly new feature so there are probably a limited number of blogs registered yet. To those of you visiting the blog via twincities.com, welcome! I, my wife Kathy, and our 9-year old son, Noah, moved to Prague last summer. I work for Radio Free Europe.

I started the blog in April, and like most blogs, mine has a general theme - our experiences in Prague and elswhere in Europe - but I also digress often into other areas that interest me (from music videos to Stewie from Family Guy). I hope you like what you see and come back from time to time to see what's up. Feel free to send me an email or leave a comment. I'll be heading back to St. Paul on June 30 for a two week vacation, but will continue to blog from MN.

Again, thanks for stopping by.

The giant ferris wheel (Reisenrad)...

One of the stops on Saturday morning was the Prater, Vienna's best known amusement park, which is just outside the center of the city. The only thing we did here was take a ride on the giant ferris wheel, or Reisenrad. It's different from most ferris wheels in that it has cars of about 4 feet wide and 10 feet long that you ride in. It was mostly destroyed by fire during WWII, but it was quickly rebuilt, and it offers a great view of the city.

From the web site aboutvienna.org:
The Giant Ferris Wheel (Riesenrad) was erected in 1897 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the reign of Empereror Franz Joseph I. The wheel itself spans 200 feet (about 60 m.). 15 cabins and the upholding structure weigh a total of 430,5 t and rotate at the speed of 0,65 m/sec.
In 1914 the Giant Ferris Wheel was the location of a sensational film stunt: Madame Solange d'Atalide managed to complete one round on horseback on top of one of the cabins. This would not be the only time that the 'Riesenrad' was featured in major films: The Third Man or Before Sunrise to name just a few.
In 1944, at the height of World War II, the Giant Ferris Wheel burnt down, but was rebuilt in 1945 - at the same time as St. Stephen's cathedral. The Viennese Riesenrad is the only giant ferris wheel of its time which is still in use today.



Sorry for the bad exposure, but I'll just blame the nice older couple (Austrian or German) who took the photo.




Here we are at the top of the ferris wheel looking at the next car.




A great view from the Reisenrad!

Back from Vienna...

Well, we are back from our whirlwind trip to Vienna. It was 48 hours from leaving Prague to getting back. It's about a 4 hour drive each way. The point of the trip was to get a quick thumbnail view of the city to lay the groundwork for a longer trip later, and in that we were very successful.

The hotel was nice but not great. It was a "family" room that could accomodate three people, but in typical European fashion it was very small. Basically, there was room for a double bed and a single bed and not much else. Also on the negative side, the neighborhood didn't have much to recommend it. Not that it was a bad neighborhood, just kind of "blah". No cute shops or restaurants - just pretty much residential on the outskirts of the city. On the plus side, parking was free, breakfast was free, and it was right across the street from one of the many metro lines, so getting around the city was very easy.

We arrived at the hotel by around 9:00 PM on Friday evening after leaving Prague at 4:00. Traffic leaving Prague was horrendous, and not having a freeway around the city didn't help. We had downpours for the first two hours of the drive which didn't help our travel time. However, we got through the border to Austria quickly and without any problems. Surprisingly, both the Czech and Austrian border guards just glanced at our passports and gave them back to us - no stamps. We hoped for stamps.

We got up Saturday morning and had breakfast then went to the station and bought 24 hour passes that let us travel by train, subway, tram and bus. We hopped on the subway and went into the city.

There will be pictures from Vienna all week, but our first stop was Stephansdom, a church in the center of the city. The "Steffl" as the cathedral is called, was damaged by WWII bombers but was rebuilt and is a fine example of Gothic architecture. The foundations date to 1147.



The cathedral has an interesting mosaic tiled roof.


A mass was about to start so we had to stay in the back. It's truly a beautiful cathedral.


Kathy and Noah lit some candles at a side alter.

And then we are off to Vienna...

We are taking a quick trip to Vienna - leaving late this afternoon and coming back on Sunday afternoon. Vienna is only about 3 1/2 hours away by car and is generally regarded as one of the most beautiful cities in Europe. This is meant as just a little exploratory trip to get the lay of the city for future longer trips. I'm not bringing the laptop so no posting until maybe Sunday evening when I may be able to put up some pictures.

Noah's last day of school...

This is Noah's last day of third grade and he finishes up at noon. It's a little different here than back home since the nature of expat life means there is a turnover of about 25% every year. So there are quite a few of Noah's friends that he won't see after today. He is both happy at completing the year and sad at losing some friends. However, the good news is there will be a whole flock of new kids when he gets back at the end of the summer.

Class Picnic...

Today Noah's 3rd grade class had its end of the year picnic. There was pizza and games and a good time was had by all. Thanks to Kathy, Mette, Tuana and a few other moms for organizing and running it. I can't beleive that Noah finishes the current year on Friday!

Hilton Party...

I thought I had posted on this earlier...but I guess I forgot. A week ago Friday we were guests at the Hilton for a going away party for Armin and Tuana. Their son, Ares, is a good friend of Noah. Armin is the manager of the Hilton - and just a few days after the party President Bush stayed at the Hilton and Armin met him and had a picture taken with him.

Armin, Tuana and the kids are going back to their native Turkey. They have invited us to stay with them if we go to Turkey, and we are strongly considering a visit next year. Turkey is probably my favorite country that I have visited. It is truly spectacular.



Here is Armin (center) talking to a few guests.





Here is Tuana (5th from right) with the other women guests.




Here is a portion of the food. There was another table with two chefs carving meat. The whole party was quite elegant.

Meeting the chairman...

There are VIPs in Prague this week. The June meeting of the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) is being held here. The BBG overseas RFE/RL and the other "entities" such as Voice of America (VOA), Alhurra, Radio Sawa, Radio Farda, Radio Free Asia (RFA), and Radio and TV Martí. The BBG has a new chairman, Jim Glassman (at right), who was just confirmed last Friday and is replacing the outgoing controversial chairman Ken Tomlinson. I talked to Glassman for a few minutes after a meeting today at the Don Giovanni hotel, next to the site of our new new building. He is very bright, but comes across as a normal guy who you could discuss sports or politics with over a beer. Here is part of his bio from the web site leadingauthorities.com.


James K. Glassman is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington public policy think tank, where he specializes in issues involving economics and financial markets. In addition, he is host and co-founder of TechCentralStation.com, a website started in February 2000 that concentrates on matters of technology and public policy. He is also chairman of Investors Action, a new organization that aims to help educate and represent America's 100 million investors.

In November 2004, Mr. Glassman started writing a monthly column on investing for Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine. He also writes a weekly op-ed column on political and economic issues for the Scripps Howard News Service.

Between July 1993 and July 2004, he wrote a syndicated weekly column on investing for The Washington Post, which also appeared in the International Herald Tribune and other publications. He has also been investing columnist for Reader's Digest.

Mr. Glassman's most recent book, The Secret Code of the Superior Investor (Crown) named one of the top 10 investing books of 2002 by Barrons.

From 1987 to 1993, he was editor and part-owner of Roll Call, the twice-weekly newspaper that covers Congress. Prior to that, he had a long career in magazine publishing -- as president of the Atlantic Monthly, executive vice president of U.S.News & World Report and publisher of the New Republic. In 1972, he started Figaro, a New Orleans weekly newspaper, selling it in 1979. He was executive editor of the Washingtonian magazine from 1979 to 1981. He has also had extensive television experience, as host of Capital Gang Sunday on CNN and TechnoPolitics on PBS. He has appeared as a guest on the CNN's Larry King Show, ABC's Nightline, PBS's Charlie Rose Show and many others. His articles have been published in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Forbes, Reader's Digest, and other publications.

However he is not without controversy. In the late 1990s he predicted the Dow would soar to 36,000 when it was only about 10,000 at the time. From Wikipedia:

Glassman is known for his market analyses and commentary on economics and equities investing. He is a long-term optimist and is quick to point out positive developments, which is clearly typified in his book Dow 36,000. In this book, published near the peak of the late 1990s stock market bubble, Glassman infamously declared that the Dow Jones Industrial Average was undervalued and would rise to 36,000. This prediction proved to be drastically off the mark.[1] In its introduction, Glassman and his co-author wrote that the book "will convince you of the single most important fact about stocks at the dawn of the twenty-first century: They are cheap....If you are worried about missing the market's big move upward, you will discover that it is not too late. Stocks are now in the midst of a one-time-only rise to much higher ground–to the neighborhood of 36,000 on the Dow Jones industrial average."[2]

A swanky party...

Last week Kathy and I were invited to a big party at a local hotel - the Don Giovanni. This hotel is half a block from where our new building is being constructed, so I have already been talking to their management about working some long term arrangement for our visitors to stay there after we move. The Don Giovanni is basically a higher end tourist hotel, but it was just acquired by Dorint and will be making some changes to attract more business clients (and their higher profit margin). That timing of that will work out for us just fine. The party was to christen the new Dorint change.

It was very upscale, with free food and drinks and many door prizes (alas, we didn't win one). Before the free food they had a fashion show, which had 1930 as a theme. The host told us that in 1930 the Czech Republic was in a very prosperous and productive period and they wanted to say that it was heading in that direction again. It seemed odd celebrating the prosperous year that was 1930 since our great depression started in late 1929. I had thought the whole world had followed the US instantly into depression, but perhaps there was a lag. Anyway, it was a great time and here are a couple of photos.




This looks like it could be one of those "host a murder parties".

Noah has an email account...

It seems that many of Noah's 9 year-old friends have their own email accounts, so we relented to the peer pressure and set one up for him at yahoo. It's wombasrock@yahoo.com. The Wombas are a soccer team on a cartoon called "Galactic Football" and he is really into it. Anyway, email is still very much a novelty to him, so I'm sure he would appreciate it if you dropped him a line even if it's just to say "hi".

This is where the magic happens...

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I said that I would eventually get around to some detail about the office. Well, here is my office. It's not much, but it's home - at least for 9 hours, 5 days a week. It is one of only a handful of offices that faces inward to a courtyard inside the "cube".


The courtyard is where the smokers congregate, so there is always activity down there (this picture was taken early in the morning). Also, the courtyard is not at ground level - it is actually on top of the first floor.






This is the 5th floor conference room where the daily 10:00 editorial meeting is held. It has a great view of the skyline of Prague, including the castle. If you look closely you can see the castle in this picture.




You get a sense of the strange architecture of our building in this picture. It's basically a three story building that had an addition of a fourth and fifth floor on stilts. Here is the view to the interior of the cube from the 5th floor. That's a Voice of America satellite dish. There is a neat patio area on top of the third floor, but I've never seen anyone out there. In the background you can see the top of the TV tower - another Prague landmark.



Here is our building from across the street on the steps of the National Museum. Again, you can see how the top two floors were added later.



Here is the view the other way from the steps of the National Museum. I'm basically about 30 meters from the top of Wensceslas Square - the heart of Prague.

ISP versus hated Riverside...

Yesterday was Noah's second real soccer tournament - the first was last month at the British School. ISP hosted this one, and the only other participant was Riverside - a small Christian school for expats. Noah's team played two 30 minute games, and there are so many kids on the team that they basically each played one of the games. Noah played the second game that ended in a 2-2 draw. Unfortunately, he failed to convert on an early penalty kick and so he was unconsolable. Some of his teamates blamed him for failing to win and he took it very hard. The lessons of team sports are many, and he learned some yesterday. I guess it was "character building". Anyway, today it's forgotten and we're on to the next shiny object.

Fred Thompson on Radio Free Europe...

He hasn't announced that he is running for president (yet) but he has been utilizing the internet to generate quite a bit of buzz. This is a shrewd move, since it gets his name out, he can control the message, and the cost is just about zero. A couple of weeks ago he posted a short video on YouTube responding to criticism from Michael Moore, and it was one of the most watched videos for days. Now, he has posted an article at townhall.com that praises "the Radios" - Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty - and asks why we don't have something similar broadcasting into Venezuela. It's an interesting question and an interesting read.

Well, he's done it. Hugo Chavez was already systematically silencing criticism of his autocratic rule through threats and intimidation. Journalists have been threatened, beaten and even killed. Now he's shut down the last opposition television networks in Venezuela and arrested nearly 200 protesters – mostly students. It’s a monumental tragedy and the Venezuelan people will pay the price for decades to come. Americans are also at risk as he funds anti-American candidates and radicals all over Latin America.

It’s equally tragic that the U.S. is in no position to provide the victims of this emerging dictator with the truth. There was a time, though, when Americans were on the front lines of pro-freedom movements all over the world. I'm talking about the “surrogate” broadcast network that included Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, often called "the Radios."

When Ronald Reagan was elected, he greatly empowered the private, congressionally funded effort and handpicked the Radios’ top staff to bring freedom to the Soviet Union. Steve Forbes led the group.

Cynics still say that the USSR fell of its own weight, and that President Reagan’s efforts to bring it down were irrelevant, but Boris Yeltsin and Mikhail Gorbachev say differently. Both have said that, without the Radios, the USSR wouldn't have fallen. The Radios were not some bland public relations effort, attracting audiences only with American pop music. They engaged the intellectual and influential populations behind the Iron Curtain with accurate news and smart programming about freedom and democracy. They had sources and networks within those countries that sometimes outperformed the CIA. When Soviet hardliners and reformers were facing off, and crowds and tanks were on the streets of Moscow and Bucharest, the radios were sending real-time information to the people, including the military, and reminding them of what was at stake.

Then we won the Cold War. The USSR collapsed in 1991, and America relaxed. Military downsizing began and the Radios began to reduce broadcast air time to target countries.

Now, of course, we know that the Islamofascists, many trained by the old Soviets, were making plans and plots of their own. Unfortunately, the plans to broadcast a pro-freedom message into Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, Georgia, Kurdistan and Ukraine were shelved or diluted. Reagan's ideological audacity was replaced with a more "diplomatic" tone.

And see where it's got us? Not only has Islamic totalitarianism spread without a true ideological challenge, many of the freed Soviet bloc countries are slipping back into repression. Russia is making the same old threats and even protecting Iran's efforts to build nukes.

We'll never know if Afghanistan might have rejected al Qaeda if America had actively engaged that country as we did those Eastern Europeans. We can't know if Venezuelans would have chosen liberty over the false security of authoritarianism if they had been challenged to face the issues. I do know, though, that it's time for a new generation of Americans to stand up for freedom -- like others before us. And this time, we’ll have a whole new set of media technologies.


Since President Bush isn't visiting us, maybe we should invite Fred Thompson.