Ivan’s MidSummer Northern European Rumpus July 2003 Stockholm, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Budapest, Munich and Concorde Flight to NY Link to Photos is at end of text.

Stockholm – 7:15 flight from Newark; SAS features Airbus with lots of techno options in the front of the cabin including bathrooms with windows (some people never leave), backstretch chin-up bars and videos showing the views from cameras in the cockpit and below the plane. Just as good or better than having a window seat. Food not much to write home about. TV offerings a bit more sophisticated than normal for an airline with programming from BBC World and International Herald Tribune, for example. There was no passport control in Sweden; turns out they made a mistake and landed us at the wrong gates. There is an airport express train which goes downtown in 20 minutes and it is easy to get on this train as well as to connect to the metro system once you arrive. It is also worthwhile to do this because in the central station you can buy a 3 day city-pass which includes all your tourist attractions and public transport. Cost of the pass is about $65 but worth it because I saved about $40 using it. 

Subway stations are cool here; decorated with lots of weird art. It’s an easy walk to the Grand Hotel from the subway exit. The Grand Hotel is the most famous hotel in Sweden and I got in for Euro 100 a night (at this point $115 USD) including tax and breakfast buffet. Problem with this hotel is no air conditioning; I was there during the one week of summer but they brought me an electric fan which was good enough. Another hotel choice would be the Radisson Strand, located on the water a few blocks from the Grand. Not as grand, but a legit alternative and I think they have A/C. Started in the afternoon with a 90 minute circle bus tour for $20; it is a good orientation. Catch the tour by the Dance Museum right by the opera house; the museum is free with your card and will keep you occupied for 20-30 minutes while you’re waiting for the next tour. The Rolling Stones are staying at the hotel and doing a concert; lots of paparazzi at the hotel and crowds at the stadium. Stockholm features lots of good-looking people wearing black and white; techno music abounds, even on city buses. Seems like a gay paradise; Sound of Music soundtracks play in restaurants. Wouldn’t recommend this place for honeymooners, unless you’re sure that the person you’re with is the only person of interest. Dinner at the café at the opera house was trendy and one of the better places to eat in town. NK Department Store has very nice housewares and trendy clothes; this is a somewhat casual country, people walk around in flip-flops. At the escalators in NK there are stands offering a free guide to Essential Stockholm put out by the store that are very well written. One thing to do on Friday before the weekend is to visit the covered market at Ostermall because it is closed on the weekends. FYI, The café in the garden area nearest the hotel just across from the opera house is awful. For good views of the old part of the city, go to Katarinahissen and take the elevator up to the Gondolen restaurant which is a great place to eat with a view. At the nearby metro station entrance is a kiosk that serves only herring; it’s what cheese steaks are to Philly. Also, go to city hall (no later than 4pm), take the elevator and then walk about 8 minutes to get the best view of the city from the top of the building. Going to city hall, it is best to use the Radhuset metro station because the city center station is confusing since you have to cross a bridge and go behind buildings to get to city hall.

Taxis are very expensive here and one or two rides should be enough to convince you to avoid them. It costs about $10 to go 1-2 miles.  The VassaMuseum is unique; it is a large building containing the restoration of a ship that sunk in the 1600’s in the harbour just an hour after being commissioned by a very impatient King. I assume there must be very good Swedish navy jokes making the rounds. Amazing how failures become the stuff of legends; in Australia, it’s all about Waltzin’ Matilda (a failed sheep thief who commits suicide).  Skansen is an open-air museum; the equivalent of a big city park dedicated to showing off local culture and history, sorta like Colonial Williamsburg. An escalator takes you up the hill to this area. Across the street is Tivoli Gardens, a nice amusement park. At the TV Tower, you can see lots of greenery and lakes surrounding the city, there is a rooftop restaurant and I had the first of many dishes of sole, stuffed potato, asparagus, all drenched in cream sauce. I am taking the bus back into town because I ain’t paying $20 for a 2 mile taxi ride. Finding a nice piece of cake and some ice cream is a challenge here; maybe that’s why the people are so healthy. This is not a desert-eating country. By midnight when I look out the window, it is darkish but not that dark.

Saturday visit to the Grand Synagogue, about 2 blocks from the hotel. Volunteers from the community provide security. 3 seating sections; one for men, one for women and one mixed. The service is not orthodox and an organ is used, but it is the only game in this part of town. Summer crowds are smaller than the rest of the year; few young people. They had a snack afterward; the one guy my age there was a non-Jew in the process of converting. The only thing the rabbi said in English was to please not take home the prayer books as souvenirs. In the afternoon, stroll to the Royal Palace; lots of rooms but fairly simply furnished. Not as impressive as the mansions I saw earlier this month in Newport, Rhode Island. Very hot today and it is not fun walking around these buildings with no A/C. Next door to the palace is the Nobel Museum worth a short visit; many of the prizes come from Sweden except for the Peace Prize which comes from Norway. This old part of town is called Gamla Stan and nearby is the City Museum, also pretty lame, but all of this is free with the 3-day pass. 

Sunday visit to the National Museum; some nice items but the king was evidently not very rich. But he had a good system; paid everybody with rations of beer and wine. If you were highly paid, you got more of it. Sweden a few hundred years ago must have been a totally sloshed nation. Taxi to the Jewish Museum; there are about 18,000 Jews in Sweden; 5,000 of them in the capitol. They have distinguished themselves more in the arts than in politics in this country. From city hall’s dock you can take a 50 minute ride to the Drottningholm Palace; take a quick walk through the palace, gardens, theater (very old theater with brand new technology behind the scenes), bus to the Chinese pavillion. Allow 4 hours for this whole sidetrip; on the river boat you’ll see kids swinging from bridges and swimming in the river. The river is very clean. More bad cake on the boat. At the castle, the king’s guard talk to you but you have to step across a blue line and then they come out to talk to you. Here just about everybody speaks a good English. Back in town, I take an odd excursion 15 minutes by subway to a cemetery on the edge of town designated as a UNESCO site with very interesting architecture and serene settings with forests but I wouldn’t recommend doing this unless you have excess time. You can do things like this when you have a metro that works well and tells you digitally when the next 2 or 3 trains will arrive on the track you are standing on. I just wish they would do this in New York. It means you can arrive somewhere, and decide on a whim what to do knowing when you need to be back in the station. It’s a bit hot today and many people are walking around with their shirts off. I was lucky; I threw in a T-shirt just in case and wound up wearing it 3 days in a row; I didn’t sweat because at least it wasn’t humid. Dinner tonight at a lucky find; a really good Italian restaurant “Michelangel” on one of the cobblestone streets of Gamla Stan and the person at the table in front of me came with a big dog and it is interesting just watching all the people walk by and reacting to the dog; at least here the desert was fairly good. A nice weekend for me, walking around town without any worries; sites are nice but not that exciting. The Vassa Museum at least is different. As long as you avoid taxis and expensive restaurants, the city is not that expensive. 

St. Petersburg

1 hour flight; very light flight. 2 people in business, 20 in coach. The passport line in St. Pete was 45 minutes; the actual check was fast but they have few windows open and lots of flights arriving at the same time. My amigo Robert met me on arrival. Instead of the $50 taxi, we did it Russian style. Took the airport shuttle bus for $1 to the metro and then hailed a “taxi” from the street. Anyone with a car is a taxi and it was another $5 into town. The better your Russian language, the better you can negotiate the fare down. It was rather hot here too. Started with a walk from the Astoria Hotel to Nevsky Prospect street, which is 20 minutes away. The street is particularly pretty with the sun hitting the buildings about 2 hours before sunset, which right now means it looks pretty at 9pm. Streets have been paved during the past decade; no more potholes at least in the city. Hugo Boss and Versace have boutiques on the street. Under the polish though, it’s the same old shit. We ate at a cheap buffet, sat in a park, picked up my friend Kostya who started with nothing a decade ago and now is a partner in a law firm with a dozen attorneys plus staff. He drove to the seaside near the city and then back to town. When we last met in 1992, he drove me in his father’s Russian-style “cadillac” which was from 1965, meaning older than I. Now he has two Mercedes, among other cars. Late dinner in the hotel lobby; it is rather expensive here – $26 for vegetable crepes and orange juice. The cakes had been put away and my waitress wouldn’t fetch me a slice; same thing happened the night before in the Swedish hotel so I would just say that if you want to know if a hotel is truly service oriented, ask the waitress to bring you a piece of cake that’s not on the menu (but that you know they have; ie: it’s on the room service menu) and see if they make an effort to get it for you. Kostya says the winner of a legal battle is the one with more money or better connections to the judge. His English is still poor and he’s not dealing with many foreigners. Seems one of his partners owes him about $170,000; but he obviously has made enough money elsewhere to have put away a few Mercedes. Robert has been screwed but keeps trying. His best story is that he put up 60k for an apartment owned by the city (the city owns everything) and they were supposed to fix the elevator and the building; instead, they told him that another city building had been damaged and that the funds were taken to fix that building, legal under the city code. And by the way, someone was interested in buying his apartment at 10 cents on the dollar. Putin, he says, is more interested in Big Business than in lots of little businesses he can’t control. To make things work, the city needs to divest itself of assets and give people a sense of ownership. Even in condos where people own 100% of everything, the laws discourage the formation of condo associations so nothing is done to improve the common areas.

Tuesday, a late start at 11. Walk to summer palace along the canals; it is raining a bit this morning. Duck into a Georgian-style café for a snack and then back to the main street for some window shopping. A bit more polish (ie: glass and paint) but it’s the same linoleum, cabinets, floors, walls and fixtures. Just below the surface you can see the infrastructure is still very poor and there are many cracks and filth. Took the metro one stop to a vegetarian café; food for a buck. Street crime here; accosted twice today by little youths in gangs which is a lot; I don’t have this happen anywhere else I visit. A Pakistani taxi driver took us to the local synagogue which has been restored by the banker Safra a few years ago, just behind the Marinsky Theater. There are 90,000 Jews in St. Petersburg; this is the only synagogue and regular attendance on a Saturday is about 100. New and only kosher restaurant Shalom, tel. 327.5475.

Saddam’s two sons were killed today. Something always happens when I’m abroad. Evening walk along the Strelka and the city. SAS/Radisson Hotel on Nevsky Prospect looks like a good choice for the future and they offered me a decent rate of $175 per night; I am paying $250 at the Astoria and the Kempinski is about $400. Add 25% tax to each of these rates. The Kempinski looks lovely and is very centrally located, and the Astoria is nice, but its location is off the beaten path. Evening snack at the Aquella restaurant right by the Strelka and on the river; it is a boat with a restaurant on it. Slow service here and many places in Russia; they get tips but don’t seem to be motivated. This place needs a Gap fashion update. 

Next morning took a taxi to the Russian State Museum. The rate went down 65% when I hailed a taxi 25 feet away from the entrance to the hotel. It is really nuts here in that sense. Museum still charges 8x the amount of admission if you are a foreigner. I’d love to see us charge tourists 8x the price of admission and see how the Russians like it. It’s not like we haven’t already paid for the visa and the heavy taxes on hotels. The museum takes a good hour; lots to see but I am out of time. Kostya drives me to the airport; it takes 30 minutes. Bathrooms have communal toilet paper. There is no business lounge and the bathrooms on the Russian airliners are just gross. Food is about as good/poor as the Israeli airline. First time on a Russian airplane; it flies fairly well in good weather. Takes off somewhat like a dirigible. Plane reeks of vodka. All in all, it looks and feels pretty much like an airplane; the world has become rather standardized and the flight is not as bad as I had hoped. It is about an hour’s flight to Moscow. 

Moscow

Roads here have been paved; traffic in center city is heavy and it is 50 minutes to the hotel; the last 2 miles take about 15 minutes. The Baltschug Kempinski in Moscow is very nice; I am getting a deluxe room for $150 a night. Deluxe is the right term in Europe for something better than Standard. This hotel really costs about $400 a night. Problem here is that the bellman and taxi wants $16 for a 1 mile ride and I just turn around, walk back to my room and tell my friend a mile away to come and pick me up with his own taxi. That’s not the way I intend to be raped in this town.

We had tickets to a USA-Russia gymnastics tournament but there was a terrorism scare so the stadium has been closed. The city is on edge since a terrorist attack a few weeks ago. Dan lives in a 1,800 square foot flat (170 meters) for about $3,000 a month. New housing has been built in the city and looks a lot better than it used to. Still, his flat could be bought for about 200k, about 10% of what it would cost in Manhattan. Long lazy dinner at the American Bar & Grill. Late night walk at Red Square was aborted because they’ve closed the square to the public. Even after 9/11 we didn’t close Times Square, so the Russkies could learn a few things from us softies here in America! 

Dan thinks Putin is serious and in control; the country is a little less corrupt and citizens are satisfied because they think that the system in place is working and at least know who to pay off to get what; for money you can buy yourself a ministry here. Big Business is here because they can make things happen with fairly reasonable investment. Iran is a major concern but there are 1 million people working in the Atomic Energy Ministry and that is 1/5 of the Israeli population, meaning that one million is quite a constituency of its own. Dan thinks that Sharon wants to make peace and will make concessions, will let prisoners out and will build up Abbas and that Arafat will become irrelevant. The secular shift in Israel is good; Jerusalem mayoralty is especially corrupt. Netanyahu’s economic policy is against the poor and lacks real reform. He is an optimist; his wife is more pessimistic. No interest in cashing in to become a consultant. Wife feels that the Arabs are ratcheting up the terror and that people on both sides become immune to worsening conditions; feels that the Arabs don’t really suffer and that most of them outside Israel really don’t care about the Palestinians; only reason there is a peace process is to please the mediator and to deal with the fact that the US and Europe doesn’t want the Middle East to boil over with Israel as a flashpoint. She is not aware of how much satellite TV the Arabs are watching these days. Most Russians think the US went into Iraq for the oil and that Saddam was secondary. Big valedictory project is raising the money to bring Gesher theater group to Russia; 90% of the money has been raised. Will return to Israel next year. Kids are in the American school; they are trilingual now. In the apartment, Nickelodeon cartoons in English abound. 

Moscow metro costs 25 cents; it is crowded and the signs still display the amount of time since the last train left the station, but it works. Thursday morning walk to GUM and Red Square which is still closed but people stand in line anyway hoping for a break. No English signs or speakers here and the city is really not tourist-friendly. New buildings are built very fast and supposedly very well but most of the buildings are still old. Certain things are less corrupt; some traffic tickets are citations telling you to go to court. Russia still should loosen up on the visas to encourage tourism. More Western restaurants and shopping malls here now but as I said the service is still surly and slow. Manezh Square shopping mall just off Red Square opens at 11; I have seen it before and it is time to leave; I arrived at 4pm Wednesday and my flight is departing 2pm Thursday. 

At Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport, there is no longer a currency exchange after passport control. You can however go to a duty free shop, buy something, give them all your rubles and then have them give you back dollars or whatever. I bought a $10 CD and gave them $100 worth of unspent roubles to change back into dollars (I spent hardly any cash here during my 3 days in the country; again, staying out of taxis is a big part of it). Taxi to airport was $26 for me booked through Dan; otherwise it would be $65 via the hotel. My driver was thrilled with his 100 rouble tip (about $3); I haven’t seen anyone appreciate a tip in a while. Especially not NY taxi drivers who think it is an entitlement. At the airport, there is this big line at passport control and then on the other side not one person in line. So of course I went to that line. I took a photo of this. Allow 40 minutes to drive to the airport. No business lounge here either, but you get $11 credit at the Irish bar and it is airport food. Newspapers here are a day behind; Russia is still very much in the Third World and its airport continues to be on the world’s ugliest. British Airways this month started using the new airport that has been constructed. There is a service that costs $60 that supposedly gets you past customs on a fast-track basis if you are arriving in the normal airport. www.aerotour.ru. 

Budapest

A 2 hour flight has you arriving at the same time you left, because you pick up 2 time zones flying west. Passport control is 15 seconds here and there is no customs, and the newspapers have today’s date on them. Clearly, we’re now in NATO land. There is a taxi dispatcher with a uniform who gives you a ticket with a price on it. OK, so it’s back to civilization and you see the difference in the first few minutes. Malev Airlines is roughly akin to Ireland’s Aer Lingus. The ride into town is just under 30 minutes. Most of the good hotels are very near each other; I am at the Kempinski. Next door is the Meridian, and a few blocks away are the Marriott, Sofitel (used to be the Hyatt) and the Intercontinental. The Hilton is on the other side of the river, in a location that is not located near anything useful. The Intercontinental, Marriott and the Sofitel probably have the best river views; the Kempinski is decorated very nicely and was a very good hotel in terms of service and amenities. I like the Kempinski Hotel chain; they give good discounts to travel agents and their hotels are much better than the Starwood properties which I often stay at by default due to good discounting (better rooms with more amenities, more interesting architecture with good food and beverage and TV selections and good service), many of which to me are hotels in a box, especially the newer Westins. Some of the Sheratons are really old hat and coasting.

Start with a piece of cake in the lobby; theme from Schindler’s List is playing in the background. My father’s parents came from this country; they took an earlier train than the others who didn’t get out in time. Start with the 2 hour bus tour; most tours have a taxi pick you up at the hotel and bring you to the starting point. I took the tour at rush hour which is good in the sense that it doesn’t waste the day but you will sit in lots of traffic; to some extent the tour is of limited use – you pass by museums and they are telling you about the statues in front of them, but you can ask questions. Nice view of the city from the Citarella and this is worth seeing from the bus tour; not worth going out of your way to see it. Buda and Pest are two sides of a river that make up the joint city called Budapest. Buda has the castle and the old town; Pest is the modern city that works. Grand bridges span the river linking them. Pest is best viewed from the Buda side in the late afternoon; and Buda is best viewed in the morning. Here is a mix of old and new buildings, cars and clothes. Hungary is right in the In-Between; they are tearing up streets everywhere and trying to rebuild the place. After 10 years, many are disappointed hoping their life quality would be higher, but the place has changed much I’m told; much more colorful, things to buy, infrastructure and of course freedom to say, think and do. People here have not gotten over the novelty of having those freedoms.

Evening walk to shopping street and along the river promenade. Unlike Prague, Budapest is a river city and the river is part of life here. The Intercontinental has a good jazz band playing and there are places to eat and buy souvenirs here on this promenade. It’s hot though and I retreat to the hotel buffet. Prices here are more reasonable than other places in Europe but not that cheap. Conversation with Burak from Istanbul. Bush wanted oil, wants to be a world power. Turkey’s generals for some reason wanted to break with the US. Turkey right now is an economic disaster. Not ready for the EU; still can’t shake itself from Cyprus since many soldiers died there; Northern Cyprus is the only place that Turks can go to casinos and the rich folk go there on weekends. 

Few know English, but it is a friendly place. Tour of Jewish Budapest; sad story but beautiful synagogues, some of which have been recently restored. Four on my tour; 2 of them are Hungarian Catholics living in Netherlands; the guy kept saying “Jesus Christ” throughout the Holocaust section and his girlfriend kept shushing him. The Kings Hotel is kosher and serves pay-in-advance meals on the weekends. It is near the synagogues although the synagogues are located fairly centrally. The Great Synagogue has a cemetery in its courtyard, which is unusual but it is a remnant from the World War II. On Saturday visited a small and simple community synagogue that serves lunch afterward. Located on Visegradi 3, a block from the Nyugati metro station (West railroad station). There are other larger orthodox synagogues but this is the one my friend goes to. It is friendly and Americans show up there as well.

Groceries here are cheaper but the quality of the products is also inferior. Paper goods for instance are cheaper. Shops selling crystal and porcelain (ie: Adja and Herend) are good shopping values; both have shops right near the hotels. Lunch at Gerbaud, an elegant and famous café on the square between the Kempinski and the river promenade. Clothing is not something worth buying here. No postal insurance here so it’s cash and carry or pay a lot of money to a courier service to ship it Fedex or DHL. All the hotels here have spa services but try booking any of them and they are all sold out. Taxis in front of hotels are slightly more expensive. There is a metro stop and it is a good metro; no A/C but 1/10 the price of a taxi, so again use the metro and dump the taxis for short trips, except that the metro doesn’t go into Buda. The metro is on the honor system so buy one ticket and keep it on you all the time till you get caught. The West End shopping center is new and realistic for the area, but very middle class and no real reason for a tourist to buy stuff to take home.

The Budapest Eye is a balloon ride with a great view of the city but the balloon only goes up and down on a string; you are not really going to fly anywhere and the ride appears quite safe. I have done this before in Berlin. Reservations are a must; don’t go expecting to get a ride if you walk up, even if no one else is riding. You will waste an hour and stand around like an idiot if you don’t follow this advice. Logic does not always work here. Let your concierges book all these bus and balloon tours. You don’t pay extra just because they book them.

Dinner at Gundel Restaurant, the most famous restaurant in the country. They have a full band playing and the food and service is quite good, but not that good. Jacket and tie rule is not enforced; I was sitting next to Israelis who were wearing T-shirts. Prices were reasonable here too. Soup, fish, dessert and 2 soft drinks came to $40 with tip. There is a nice park near the restaurant and a big square with some memorials and pretty buildings that are photographed well before sunset. The street that goes between this Millennium Square and the area of the hotels is a long 2 mile boulevard lined with trees and beautiful villas that looks like a nice boulevard in Paris. The opera house is also on this street. At night, a walk down the boulevard with the opera and the nearby Basilica is a nice stroll. Continuing to walk along the promenade here you see two distinct groups of tourists in town; there are 40,000 Jehova’s Witnesses here on convention and they all have these Give God Glory badges on (and as if on cue at a certain time they all appear to be laughing at the same joke no matter where they are on the streets), and there are the Israeli tourists in droves. They come for casinos and cheap package tours, and the fact that Israel is only 3 hours flight away. I didn’t see lots of normal American tourists around and indeed business is still down.

There was no city guide to Budapest in my room, and there is not a lot of English signage around so the concierge in your hotel is useful for maps, suggestions and directions. It was warm all week and there was little rain; hardly ever wore even a raincoat or a jacket. All things considered, I think mid-August is a better time to be in Europe than July. Dinner at Baraka, Magyar Street 12 behind and around the corner from the Astoria Hotel. Excellent Asian-French fusion food and reasonable; owned by a New Yorker who moved to Budapest. Food was better than Gundel and my friend here says it is the best in town. Dinner featured cantaloupe soup with ginger and mint, baked tuna with polenta, broccoli and spinach and chocolate hat for desert. Ice cream at Gerbaud and another stroll on the promenade. 

Walk and cross the bridge to the Buda side and back, visit the Parliament at 10am for the English tour; it is an impressive building and allow an hour to include getting a ticket and the 45 minute tour. The Museum of Fine Arts on the Millennium Square offers a quick walk-thru. There is a modern art museum on the other side of the square. Walking down the boulevard you come to the Museum of Terror; this house was the headquarters for the Gestapo-like organizations during WWII and during the communist era, with torture chambers in the basement. There is an English audio guide or you can just walk through and get the idea. This is a nice boulevard to just walk along and admire the pretty architecture. My taxi had to be pushed from behind to get going but then we were off to the Pest side to Ruszwurm, a famous pastry shop in the old city Pest area a few blocks from the Hilton. The Castle contains the Hungarian National Gallery of art, the Ludwig museum of contemporary art and the museum of the history of Budapest (be sure to meander around the basement with the medieval chapel and passages; lots of stuff to see and walk around the historical area. Next to the castle is a handmarket to buy souvenirs such as baby dresses and table linens, and there is a funicular that goes up and down the side of the hill that lets you off by the bridge to cross back into Pest; there are pedestrian walkways and the bridge takes 5 minutes to cross. This paragraph took me about 6 hours to complete, with the last 2 hours being in the Buda area. The museums are generally open from 10 to 6, so that is your window. Late lunch in the hotel; tuna fish is prepared differently here and it is not that bad but probably not going to be enjoyed by small children.

Lots of food this week and cake-hunting but my weight hasn’t changed. Sorry. Hungary is a free country, says David the owner of Baraka restaurant. Easier here than in New York to own a restaurant but mafia still exists. He isn’t being bothered for several reasons; has a strategic partner and is small-fry. Real estate boomed; apartments went from 10k to 40k and have since stabilized. They may go up again. Lots of infrastructural improvements have been made during the 5 years he has been here. Last minute souvenir shopping at the promenade near the hotel and then a one hour flight to Munich. No business lounge in the Budapest airport either. This flight is rather full.

Munich

Terminal 2 arrivals not quite ready. The escalators only work going down to the airplanes on departure, not up to arrivals. Train to the city took 45 minutes and made lots of stops; the station in the airport and the ticket kiosks have no English signs that make sense or that tell you what to expect. They spent a lot of money on this terminal and really didn’t think about the details of making it tourist friendly. Took a short taxi from the central railroad station to the hotel (about 7 Euro plus the 8 Euro train ride); taxi back to the airport took 25 minutes but 45 Euro. Consider also that in the summer you will be sweating through a shirt if you take public transportation and unless you want an additional shower upon arrival, this is definitely not the way to get to the airport.

Munich is a pedestrian zoned city within the first ring of boulevards that circle the city. The City Museum is free on Sundays and go upstairs to the various exhibits – they had wonderful puppetry, children amusements, musical instruments and furniture and room reconstructions exhibits. They were very large and lots of fun. Europe can be fun with kids if you keep them in mind when you go places. A big thunderstorm was in progress while I was in the museum. Then it cooled off and stayed cloudy while I walked a lot. In 2 hours, I covered city hall, the shopping street, botanical gardens, opera house and the Residenz, the local beerhouse in the tourist area with cobblestone streets (lots of fun; a big oompapa band, 5 rooms of people drinking, eating and singing, but again no A/C). Dinner at the hotel Kempinski Vier Jahreszeiten Hotel (I’m in at 100 Euro per night); very good hotel on a nice fashionable street 2 blocks from the opera house and the Residenz. Dinner was excellent but pricey; featured sweet potato ravioli with diced sweet and sour pumpkin, a Mediterranean snapper-style fish with crushed hot tomatoes, and nougat-filled mousse cake, ice cream and fresh fruits. For the second time this year, I forgot my room number (these magnetic keys don’t tell you that), there are no house phones on the floor and many rooms in the hotel and the hallways are endless. Had to switch rooms during the night due to noisy neighbor and all these adjoining rooms which undoes a lot of the soundproofing.

In the morning, another walk around town and along the river and forest that ring the city. The main department store Kaufhof has lots of merchandise and people shopping but I don’t like it. A few consolation neck ties at C&A and then a few killer neckties at Ludwig Am Dom tie store (a block from the Opera house) and at Lanvin (there was a great sale here and you could get beautiful ties for 60 Euro minus the VAT refund). Juice and cakes at a coffee house (samplings of sacher torte and poppyseed strudel) across from the entrance to the museum of the Residenz which houses the crown jewels and the rooms of the residence of the Bavarian kings. 

Be sure and confirm special meals with the airlines in each departure city. Even if the concierge says there is no need to reconfirm a flight, you must do this or else expect to be screwed. Lufthansa forgot a meal and offered me a bottle of wine; they were shocked when I didn’t take it. That’s the European form of apology. Good way to use up spare Euros is to pay what you have to the airport taxi and then use a credit card for the rest of the fare. Another tip: If you take your receipt with the customs stamp back to the store in Germany within 1 year, they must give you back the full VAT refund. 

90 minute flight on Lufthansa to London’s Heathrow. Allow 30–45 minutes to get from the plane and to transfer from Terminal 1,2,3 to Terminal 4. Get a trolley for this transfer; you can use it all the way through. The London Express allows free ride between terminals and my 45 minute connection involved the maximum 15 minute wait between trains. I am here 1:45 early for the Concorde; 78 of 100 passengers have already checked in but you can check in up to 45 minutes before departure and you are pretty much fast-tracked at Heathrow if you are in business class or higher.

Concorde

This was a bit of a thrill ride, made somewhat affordable by the virtues of Interline ticketing in Europe which allows you to take advantage of mileage based fares which in its odd ways factors in a segment on the Concorde at about $2,000 above the price of business class travel (which is about half the price it costs on the open market). I haven’t seen so many adults so giddy in a long time. People with cameras at the ready, taking pictures of each other. The flight attendants are having lots of fun with all these people and said that of the 100 people aboard, 2 were regulars and 98 were sightseers. These flight attendants could write a book about the people aboard; Madonna always wanted row 4; somebody who flies twice a week always took his coffee 10 minutes before landing. The flight from London to New York is 3:25; the first 15 minutes is over the UK and is below 650 miles per hour. Then the plane goes supersonic and reaches Mach 2.0 or roughly 1,350 mph at about 58,000 feet. The route is about the same as the regular routes flown except a bit more southerly. One should sit in the first cabin and on the left side for this westbound late afternoon trip. The second cabin is a bit more rough on the takeoff and landing, and you get more of a view of the wing. If you like the throttle, then by all means sit in the back. At cruising altitude, the back of the bus for this plane is surprisingly comfortable. On the bigger planes, the back of the bus is a distinctly rougher ride. Seats are roughly comparable to economy seats on a regular plane, the plane is tight on space, and the air conditioning system is not that great; you don’t really get any work done on this plane. The point is to save time, have some fun and beat a bit of jet lag. The plane leaves London at 18:30 and arrives in New York at 17:30. After October, British Airways grounds the Concorde (Air France already has) and people will have to sit on flights of roughly 7 to 8 hours to get back to the USA. The future will be on small private planes that make the trip in around 7 hours, allow you to check in 15 minutes before departure and fly to more convenient airports.

The rattle of the takeoff continues even after you’ve left the ground (and feel like you’re still throttling down the runway). The seatbelt light goes off just as you’re passing the speed of sound, and you really don’t notice anything. It actually is a rather smooth flight, even at that speed and height. There is a good sound system on board and the food is OK but not great (they put canned fruit in my fruit salad and the flight attendant virtually apologized for the vegetarian plate of beans and lentils she was putting in front of me, which is not exactly what you expect at this level). The regular menu is fancy and there is emphasis on fine wines. They served a champagne with the bubbles coming up the sides just perfectly and I even took a bit of the bubbly. The preboarding lounge has food too and nothing spectacular; British Airways is not known for its food; the late lunch on the Lufthansa flight from Munich to London was much better. People here in the US have no idea how good airline food can be and on the Continent it still is quite good.

The Concorde feels different on the takeoff and landing, both of which are twice as fast as regular planes. You feel the throttle and a good bump on the touchdown, as well as a bit of gravity pull on the touchdown roll. Afterward, I shot some photos in the cockpit and bantered a bit with the pilots. If you stand in the jetway afterward, they will let you in. 

I registered with INSPASS, a biometric system that reads your handprint, designed to bypass the passport lines in the US. If you go to the airport an hour early, you can register for it. It’s free, but alas, when I arrived back in the US, there was no kiosk. No matter, I was the last one off the plane and by then there was no one in the line. I should have felt like an idiot walking off the plane wearing a rose in my jacket pocket just given to me by the cabin steward, but I was having too much fun.

All in all, a very good week of good sightseeing and eating with a joy ride home and no complications abroad. Keep the faith! Next trip (and last one for awhile) is to be in September.

Click here to take the photo tour.

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