Travels with Karin, Brian and Caroline

It's back to school after ten days of travels and visit with family.  Our daughter Karin, her husband Brian and our granddaughter Caroline visited with us over the Easter vacation and we had a great time seeing some of the leading sites of Central Europe as well as enjoying the comforts of home in Bratislava.


We met up with them on March 31 in Prague and spent several days there, visiting the old city and the castle with a wonderful guide, Miša, and generally enjoying the ambiance of this lovely city.  Some of the highlights were the street musicians and entertainers along with the excellent beers for which Prague is so well known.  We also attended an organ and choral concert on Mandy Thursday in a church that was near our apartment.


After Prague we traveled south to Cesky Krumlov a medieval town that has been unchanged for several hundred years.  This had a castle tower that we could climb to view the entire town and was absolutely dripping with authentic tourist charm.


On Easter, we went on to Salzburg Austria, planning to stop at the cathedral in Linz for Easter services.  Unfortunately, our Garmin GPS led us off into the Czech countryside where we saw lovely hills, cows and villages; so we missed church and ended up in Salzburg in the late afternoon.  Due to Karin's interest in "The Sound of Music" we visited many sights that were related to the movie.  This gave us a good opportunity to drive and walk around the city and to see most of the important sites.  The weather was somewhat dreary, but we still had a great time visiting the churches and fortress of this amazing city.  One of the highlights here was coming into the cathedral on Easter Monday to hear part of a Mozart Mass that was part of the service, so our Easter was not without celebratory music.


We traveled back to Bratislava on Tuesday and Sue and Phil resumed teaching duties at the Lyceum while Karin, Brian, and Caroline saw some of the local sights.  Among these were a puppet show with props that can only be described as "Goodwill rejects" and a children's museum with almost as many guards as toys, but they found the time relaxing and up to Caroline's standards of enjoyment. We got to spend some time with Caroline as Karin and Brian went off to Vienna on their own, taking her to some Bratislava parks.  One of the things you can see on the video link below is her efforts to make music on the "jumping bells", assisted of course by Grandma Sue.


On Saturday, we took Caroline on the train to Vienna to meet up with her parents and to visit some of the kid-friendly sites there.  We all enjoyed a visit to the Spanish Riding School to see the Lipizzaner Stallions in their full Hapsburgian glory.  Caroline also enjoyed a carriage ride and a visit to the Prater Park where she rode the unusual "Pony Carousel", a string of ponies who perked up and walked around the ring immediately as the music began playing.  Dinner at the Prater's Schweitzerhaus involved great beer, potato salad, wiener-schnitzel and schweinsstelze.  The latter is 1 kg=2.2 lb. of spit roasted pork shank that can serve several people, especially if some like crackling skin (much like chitlin's).


After dinner at the Prater, Karin, Brian and Caroline went to an airport hotel to catch their early morning flight home on Sunday and we headed back to Bratislava on the train. We've entered into another week's work at school and things are pretty well back to normal after the Easter vacation.  Next week is one of our dreaded "Classification meetings" and "Parent's night", so we need to get back to reporting grades and making out quizzes.


For some views of our travel, click here.