Through The Sunny Balkans
by Irene M. Trotch
(Last summer a group of 42 Ukrainian youths from the United States embarked on a tour of Western Europe visiting places of general interest as well as some of the Ukrainian centers. Tour organizer was Damian Lishchynsky of Newark N.J. Some of the highlights of the tour are given in this travelogue penned by Miss Trotch).
Sunday, August 1 and Monday, August 2, 1976
11:55 p.m.; Kennedy International Airport: we board a chartered DC 8 flying from New York to Frankfurt, Germany! For me and 41 others on this long, narrow plane carrying at least a couple hundred passengers, it was the beginning of our "Sunny Balkans" Ukrainian Youth Tour.
12:45 p.m. - "This is the captain speaking...": we will be flying between 25,000 and 39,000 feet over Bangor, Maine, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland; will cross the Atlantic Ocean at 56 N. latitude; then over Belfast, Liverpool and on to Frankfurt. The flight will take 7 hours and 10 minutes.
1:25 a.m. - The stewardesses are serving refreshments now. "This is the captain speaking...": we are flying at 29,000 feet and traveling at the speed of 604 m.p.h.; passing over Bangor, Maine. He also said that we would be able to see the Northern Lights. I couldn't see them - at least from my window. Oh well...
1:05 a.m. - Since my seat is in the row directly before one of the emergency exits, the back of the seat does not go down. Needless to say, it is not going to be very comfortable to remain fixed in an upright position for over seven hours! I have a pillow and a blanket but I probably will not be able to go to sleep. Looking out the window, I see the fore part of the left wing with one of its red lights periodically flashing pulsating like an artery.
Dinner! - served at 2:15 a.m.: foul, string beans, potato, roll, salad, and apple cobbler in addition to a 2.5 pint bottle of Napa Rose wine.
2:55 a.m. - Looks like the sun is beginning to rise, or, at least, the sky is getting lighter. Europe is beginning to feel real at last. (Maybe it was the wine that did it!).
I look out the window and all I can see is the front of one of the turbine engines, the hazy blue sky, and a streak of pale pink. The sun is indeed rising at 2:55 American time!...I probably will not get any sleep tonight, or rather, this morning. Wish I could...
The sky is getting lighter.
The sky is absolutely gorgeous! Flying above the cumulo-stratus; cirro-stratus clouds overhead.
It is 3:05 a.m. and I am obviously still not asleep. The sky is brightening. Just a multitude of cumulus clouds below; clear blue above. Beautiful!
5:07 a.m. - Should be in Frankfurt in about two hours. Yeah! Can't sleep at all. Most everyone else can, though, including my neighbors. How frustrating!
No movie. Let's see... "The clouds go drifting down the sky like ships afloat on the sea..." - part of a song I remember from grade school. Now what? Think of some new "images", like:
"The correct time is now 10:55 a.m." My watch says 5:55. Guess I had better reset it. One and 1/2 hours to Frankfurt. Flying at 37,000 feet over the North sea.
11:35 a.m. - over Amsterdam and Rotterdam.
12:30 p.m. - Landing in Frankfurt, Germany!
Our German bus driver, Adolf, in his Cristian Grah/Muenchen tour bus, picked us up at the airport and we left for Munich at 1:30. The road took us through areas of forest, farmland; there were hops growing by the highway, rolling hills in the distance and many villages with red-tile-roof houses.
Arrived in Munich at about 6:15. Drove past the Olympic Village constructed for the 1972 Olympic Games. We got lost in trying to find the Ukrainian university dormitory where we were to eat dinner.
When we finally did locate the rather imposing clay-yellow building, we were welcomed by a group of Ukrainians who then conducted us to the dining room where we were served chicken soup, potatoes, chicken, and tea.
Left for Salzburg, Austria, at around 8:00.
The weather is cloudy, overcast, cold. Not very pleasant.
Munich appears to be a northern, somewhat "strict" city, rigid in house design and "cold" in its ultra modern points of architectural accomplishment. For example: the Olympic Village and stadium, the BMW building, apartment houses and even parking garages.
As we left the city, there was a beautiful beginning of the sunset over a plain before Munich - inspite of the clouds. Radiant and broad fanning rays of golden sunshine.
Mr. Lishchvnsky, our tour organizer and leader, introduced all of the members of the tour and then Mrs. Lishchynsky gave a short introductory lecture on Salzburg founded in the seventh century A.D.; a powerful bishopric in the eleventh through the fifteenth centuries; the bishops made money from salt (hence the name "Salzburg"), and funded the development of the city with the revenue; the city's principal cathedral was to have been modeled on St. Peter's in Rome. Mr. Lishchynsky also mentioned that leather goods, handicrafts, and Austrian folk attire would be good buys in this "city of salt".
About two hours to Salzburg.
We came to the Austrian border at 9:45 and arrived at our hotel, the Roemerwirt, less than an hour later.
I was in room 206 (third floor; corner room on the right) with Barbara and Christine T. Very cold. Very tired. It had been a VERY long day.
Tuesday, August 3
7:50 in the morning - a knock on the door followed by "breakfast in 1/2 hour." It was so cold, none of us wanted to get out of bed, but of course we all did. I finally made it down to the first floor dining room at 8:30. The room had about eight tables with six light wooden chairs at each. Breakfast consisted of one roll with butter and/or marmalade and coffee. Something which looked foreign and yet not too unfamiliar was printed on the small round marmalade tins: "Guten Morgen" - at least we will all know how to say "good morning" in German!
At 9:10, we boarded the bus and left for Hellbrunn, a palace built at the beginning of the seventeenth century for Archbishop Marcus Sitticus. It was a short drive to Hellbrunn (approx. 8-10 mins.), but it gave us our first daylight glimpses of the Austrian city and its surroundings. The mountains are so beautiful; the chalet houses - window boxes filled with flowers in bloom. Everything about Salzburg is picturesque, provincial and yet stately, dignified, and well kept. Many women walk the streets in Austrian folk costume. Men may also be seen wearing traditional garb, though not as frequently as women and girls in their dresses with white blouses and aprons.
Hellbrunn is definitely not an "ordinary" palace. With all of its "water surprises", it is amusing as well as "involving" for tourists. These water surprises are located on the palace grounds and include such points of interest as a large stone table around which water could be made to spray (if some garden party guests became particularly rowdy), and the accompanying chairs to the table from which water could be made to spout - if guests were especially rowdy!
There is also the Neptune Grotto where unsuspecting "victims could get showered with water and in addition, some of the Karden lanes are also potentially "dangerous" in this respect. Aside from these kinds of water surprises, there is a display of small wooden figures which can be made to move by means of a minimum amount of hydraulic pressure.
We had a guide who narrated the features of the grounds first in German and then in English (there were many other tourists besides our group). After seeing the Neptune Grotto, I thought that I had escaped the possibility of getting wet by leaving this small cave dominated by a statue of the sea god Neptune with water mechanized sounds of "singing birds" heard in the background, but as we were standing outside, the guide pushed a button and water came out of the deer antlers from the sculpted deer heads above the entrance.
From this point on, I became quite suspicious of the walkways and other places that we stopped at! Nevertheless I got sprayed again while walking through the "water alley" as water began shooting up in an archway over our heads. After the tour, we were able to walk through another portion of the grounds where there is a garden and a small lake in the middle of which dancers performed on a platform (though I imagine that what everyone really wanted to do at the conclusion of the tour was to throw our guide into the nearest fountain!).
Though we did not get a chance to see the interior of the palace proper, the grounds, with its "water works" and beautiful garden is a perfect introduction to the blending of European formality, grandeur, and stateliness, on the one hand, and wit and humor, on the other, which, blended together, inspited European artistic achievement from the Greek times to the present.
(To be continued)
Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, December 26, 1976, No. 255, Vol. LXXXIII
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