So last Thursday I drove to Vienna with Dorothy (70), Sanda (54), and Sanda’s uncle Valeriu (about to turn 80 and who had never been out of Romania before). Another long drive for me. After some stops along the way and a very slow run into Vienna, we finally made it to the Park & Ride. Sanda, who speaks excellent German, was able to ask someone how that whole system worked. Then we took the underground to our apartment which was in an old building similar in style to the ones in Timișoara. (Timișoara was part of the same empire then, after all.) I shared a room with Valeriu. My mother’s father was 77 when he first left New Zealand. Valeriu had him beat, and at times he was like a fish out of water. He relied heavily on his niece. (Valeriu lost his wife last year after a long illness. They never had children.)
The apartment had cooking facilities and we used them three nights out of four. The next day I was completely shattered. A combination of the long drive, broken sleep, and the sheer heat meant I couldn’t stop yawning the whole day. A shame, because we visited the beautiful Schönbrunn Palace, the residence of the Habsburgs until their monarchy ended in 1918. Valeriu was very keen to see everything there was to see about Empress Elisabeth, otherwise known as Sisi, who Romanians have great affinity with. She was stabbed to death in 1898. We did an audio tour of the palace – I had no hope of keeping up with the Ferninands and Josephs – then climbed up to the top of the Gloriette which sits at an elevated position at the end of Schönbrunn’s garden. I tried to decipher the inscription on the Gloriette with the help of Dorothy who once taught Latin and Greek. The way I was feeling, my favourite part of the day was in the morning when I had a very good coffee with Dorothy at an underground station while Sanda helped Valeriu buy an “Austria” baseball cap.
Day two was much better. Sanda and Valeriu went to a technological museum, while Dorothy and I visited the Albertina, a quite wonderful art gallery near the centre. The previous time I properly went to an art gallery was in 2006 when I visited the Quai d’Orsay in Paris. This was at least as good. The Monet to Picasso collection could hold you transfixed for hours. Zoom in, zoom out. What is this supposed to be? What was he thinking? What further wonders would he have produced if he hadn’t been killed in the war? How shocking was this at the time? Look how incredible those hands are. We must have spent four hours there. The thermostat was turned right down – it was pretty parky in there – but much better that than sweating and yawning and rapidly losing interest. The night before I’d found an out-of-the-way restaurant with local cuisine; the four of us met up there at 6:30. (I relied mostly on an old map. Outside the apartment, my phone was a brick with a camera.) We took one look at the prices and went next door instead. Sausages, goulash, beer. Perfectly good, only I could have eaten twice as much.
Our last full day involved us all meeting up with two of Sanda’s friends at a café slap-bang in the middle of the city, in the shadow of St Stephen’s Cathedral. Again we split up – Valeriu stayed with Sanda and her friends, while Dorothy and I wended our way through the Mozart zone to the Belvedere Gardens. We didn’t go to the museum; we just walked through the gardens which were free to enter. On the way back we had tea and an apple strudel in a café, then met the other two in the city centre once more. By this stage, Sanda had tummy troubles and Valeriu was understandably tired. I wonder what he made of the whole experience. He certainly travelled light; he came with one small holdall and no shorts or other summer clothes. He predates even the baby boomer generation and grew up in the sticks not too far from where I went in late June, and having never been abroad before, the idea of changing his wardrobe from the tried and true was alien to him.
Dorothy and I got on well. We talked a lot about language. That subject came up a lot with Sanda too; she is practically fluent in four languages (Romanian, English, German and Italian) – that level of mastery isn’t that rare in Romania, but it continues to blow me away. I did get slightly annoyed by Sanda’s tendency to organise everyone, even though she meant well, and her penchant for selfies. Valeriu had clearly done a lot of driving back in the day; much of our conversation focused on that.
After breakfast the next morning, we were off back home. A short loo break 170-odd km down the road, then a similar distance to Kecskemét, a small city in the centre of Hungary, far from the tourist trail, where we stopped for lunch. (It was close to 3pm by then. I was ravenous.) Sorting out parking payment was hard work. None of us could read the Hungarian signs. Does that mean three wheels? But I’ve got four wheels. What the hell? Dorothy and Sanda exchanged forint notes for coins at a bank – this took ages and Dorothy thought it was jolly good fun – while Valeriu and I stood by the car. Eventually that was sorted. Now for some food. A bistro round the corner. Looks good. Then it came to ordering our meals. A major performance. We found one guy who spoke English but he didn’t work there. Sanda made cow noises and flappy bird gestures. Google Translate came out. I was rapidly losing the will to live. We got there in the end, and it took them less time to bring us our food than it took to order it. I had a substantial meal of pork escalopes and chips. Great. But then two massive plates of food materialised that we hadn’t ordered – a communciation breakdown despite everyone’s best efforts. By 7:45 I’d dropped the others off and I was home, but not before a tight squeeze in the car park behind my apartment block which nearly threw me after being on the road for so long.
Yesterday I spoke to Mum and Dad. A sigh of relief. Bar the first couple of days, it had been a really shitty time for them all. Dad still isn’t right. My sister-in-law didn’t want to come to NZ anyway, as far as I could see. She’d rather have used up her leave allocation elsewhere – probably something involving a cruise. Mum and Dad were pissed off that my brother did most of the work when it came to looking after my nephew. He was up early while she stayed in bed. And as for my nephew, he’s a very bright little boy, and physically strong with it. He hurt my parents on several occasions, and seemed to enjoy it. (Yikes.) He can already count to twelve. Count me out.
I can’t wait for the sub-30 temperatures that we’re forecast to get early next week. Right now it’s still far too hot. My university friend and his girlfriend are staying with me for two nights from the 21st. Not many people other than students get to see the inside of my flat, so that’ll be slightly nerve-wracking for me. I’m now off to Dedeman to get flat-related bits and pieces. When they’ve gone it’ll all be back to normal.
Like my recent drives across Hungary – four of them – this post has gone on far too long.
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