Category Archives: Random Blogging

Fantastic Hotel in Berlin

When Bob was planning this trip, he depended a lot on Trip Advisor.com; since we were planning to visit places we hadn’t previously been, we depended upon internet photos and ratings from other travelers for our choices. And thus far, we’ve been pretty lucky. The Shakespeare Hotel in Vilnius was delightful; the Westbury in Dublin was what one would expect of a 4 or 5-Star hotel.

But I must say, the Circus Hotel in Berlin has been the high point of our trip so far.

It isn’t much from the street, but the interior is impeccably done, whimsical and modern. Not only is the hotel artfully done, with beautifully executed details (and very high-quality fixtures–architects and their spouses notice things like windows and bathroom accessories)–but the hotel has a very obvious personality. It is seriously green–with all manner of energy and environment-saving practices. The magazine in the room explains that the owners are committed to paying staff a living wage, and to other “ethical practices.”

Not only are the rooms (at least, ours) spacious, bright and well-appointed, the restaurant (organic, local foods) is excellent. And the prices for rooms and food can only be described as “great values.” To add to that value, it is located in the midst of art galleries, cafes and music venues–what is evidently the artsy section of the city. I really recommend this hotel!

The trip here was tiring; we got up at 3 am and took Ryan Air from Dublin, the train from Birmingham to London, the Eurostar to Paris, and–in our only stressful experience–a sleeper train from Paris Est (East) to Berlin. The stress was a result of the chaos that is Paris Est and the attitude of the French personnel in the misnamed “Information” booth. To suggest that their attitude was dismissive would be kind. Nevertheless, we made it to Berlin as scheduled, if exhausted.

We’re going to bed early, and we will cram as much sightseeing as possible into the day and a half we have before we leave for Florence.

Once I figure out how to include photos in these blogs, I’ll share some. We are meeting son Stephen (also known as The Tech God) in Tuscany, so I anticipate learning this arcane skill. We will also have daughter Kelly, son-in-law Robert, son David and daughter-in-law Jackie, and grandchildren Sarah and Bert all together for a week exploring small villages in Tuscany.

So far, a fabulous vacation. (What WOULD we do without MasterCard…)

Last Day in Dublin

We had scheduled a train excursion to Waterford and a couple of other spots in the Irish countryside, but it was cancelled for lack of other participants (apparently we were the only people who’d signed up), so we spent most of the day walking around Dublin.

The area around our hotel is fairly posh, but a few block away, things changed. While the amount of retailing remained astonishing, the quality of goods on display–and seemingly all being offered at 50-60% off–was somewhere between poor and shoddy. While we had remarked on a lack of diversity around the hotel, there was much more in the poorer precincts, leading us to form an impression that ‘people of color’ are probably disproportionately poorer here, as at home.

We walked through and around Trinity College, where students could be identified by their traditional black robes (now polyester–I wonder what they used to be). The campus is very old and impressive, but there is a lot of deferred maintenance visible.

We were struck by what appears to be a really first-rate public transportation system. Buses, rail, taxis are everywhere. And we were jealous of the impressive bike-share program; the distinctive blue bikes can be checked out through a kiosk, which unlocks the bike from it’s stand. No attendant needed. From casual observation, the program seemed very popular–we saw lots of folks checking them out and returning them.

People are not as thin as in Vilnius, but still far, far from as obese as we are in Indiana.

Tomorrow is a long travel day–we need to leave our hotel at four in the morning, and then it is air and rail with several changes until we reach Berlin.

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DUBLIN

The difference between Vilnius and Dublin in attitudes is palpable. Although the young woman who narrated our tour in Vilnius said that Lithuania was experiencing an economic downturn, it wasn’t visible–shops and cafes were bustling, there was significant construction and restoration activity, and everyone we interacted with seemed upbeat.

In Dublin, by contrast, the shops are all plastered with sale signs, there are empty shops even on Grafton Street, the “fancy” and expensive shopping thoroughfare, and both our cab-driver yesterday and a salesclerk in Marks and Spencer’s today volunteered that Ireland is experiencing a depression. (Their terminology.)

The taxi driver also volunteered considerable anger at “the bankers” who are giving themselves bonuses after their actions bankrupted the country. People are losing everything, he said, and those who brought on the crisis are still living high. One of these days, he predicted, someone with nothing left to lose will shoot a couple of them.

Sobering realities, and not so far from those we left at home–although I haven’t heard so direct an indictment elsewhere.

Last evening we strolled around Temple Bar and ate at a traditional Irish restaurant called Gallaghers. We had Irish boxty–the Irish version of Knish, with some variation. (It has been a theory of mine that every culture has similar dishes that are simply named differently–kreplach, ravioli…).

Tomorrow we are taking a day train out into the Irish countryside, and quite early on Tuesday we head for Berlin via Birmingham, London, the Chunnel and Paris. It will be a long travel day, and I anticipate no time for blogging until we are in Berlin.

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A Meditation on Taxi drivers

We’re in Dublin, having arrived via Baltic Air a little past midnight local time (around three a.m. Vilnius time.) I’ll share observations about the city itself in a subsequent post, but two experiences with cabbies are–in my opinion, at any rate–worth thinking about.

Yesterday we took a taxi from our hotel to the sole remaining synagogue in the city. (it was closed when we got there, but that’s a different issue.) The Lithuanian cabbie spoke halting English, and was surprised that we were from the US, because he could understand us–most Americans, he said, didn’t really speak English, but some confusing offshoot. (Given my undergraduate students’ written work, I had to agree.) when we got to our destination, he offered to wait for us, since it would be difficult on that street to get a taxi back. When I asked how much he would charge to wait a half-hour, he quoted us a ridiculously low amount; he was clearly genuinely worried how we’d get back.

Arriving late in Dublin, we took a cab from the airport. Our driver nearly talked our heads off, but–again–was a great ambassador for his city. When he found that this was our first trip to Ireland, he pointed to landmarks, took a couple of detours (which he didn’t charge for), and protested that we were tipping too much when we tried to compensate him with a generous tip.

My husband and I both remember when the Hudnut administration held regular “tourism training” sessions for cabdrivers and others who are the first face of the city–the people who give visitors their very first impression of the city. To my knowledge, Indianapolis no longer does these, and that’s a pity. Our experiences with these “road diplomats” left us with a very favorable impression of Vilnius and Dublin.

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Last Day in Lithuania

We woke to a really magnificent day–sunny, warm and breezy, and no humidity. We strolled though Uzupis and Old Town, stopping at
A couple of the ubiquitous cafes and doing lots of people watching. Lithuanians are a remarkably attractive people–many of them resemble Scandinavians ( since they are neighbors, my guess is they’ve intermarried).

Lithuanians also seem fairly prosperous. They dress well and I have been impresses by the tidiness and condition of their public spaces. I’ve seen very few abandoned properties and many, many buildings under renovation.

If there has been one disappointment, it has been the lack of evidence–historic or otherwise– of a Jewish presence in a city that was half Jewish before the second World War. I had hoped to learn more about the community from which my great-grandfather emigrated in the late 19th century, but at least in our brief time here, we’ve seen nothing reminiscent of the community once known as a center of Jewish life and scholarship.

We leave tonight for Dublin. (Our itinerary is an odd collection of places we’ve previously missed–after Dublin comes Berlin!)

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