Terri, all geared up for the ride to Vienna from Berlin's Wesbanhof train station.

BERLIN WESTBANHOF/CORPORATIZATION IN EUROPE?

After checking out of the hotel, Terri and I went to the Westbanhof to board the ten-hour train run to Vienna. Unlike filthy Penn Station, Berlin's Westbanhof is a gorgeous new facility kept meticulously clean with German efficiency. Inside there are plenty of stores and food places; names you would know like Burger King and Cinnebon. I've heard people complain about how Americanized and corporatized Europe's becoming and seeing this, you realize they may have a point. Throughout our travels in Europe we saw buildings and stores and restaurants with the same names we see at home. For example, each city we visited had their own strip with luxury stores like Chanel, Tiffany and Coach. But it's also permeated into the lower echelons through franchises like McDonald's. Why, I wondered, would you go to a McDonald's in Berlin when you could go to a beer garden and have schnitzel? Then again, some people hate to venture out of their "comfort zone," I suppose.

BERLIN TO VIENNA BY TRAIN

The ride from Berlin to Vienna turned out to be an unexpected bonus; an adventure in itself. One thing that struck me was how close everything is in Europe. Going from Berlin to Vienna was almost as easy as taking a train from Boston to DC. The only difference is that you have to cross international borders. Interestingly, each time our train crossed a border a new crew took over. Our route took us through what used to be East Germany and then through the Czech Republic from border to border, north to south. I saw hundreds of abandoned industial properties along the tracks; businesses that no doubt perished with the Communist Regime in the early Nineties. There was a lot of post industrial decay and it occurred to me that each deserted business represented dozens or even hundreds of jobs that just went away, never to return. I thought of a friend of mine who travelled these lands in a van with his punk band back in the Eighties, when the Iron Curtain was still very much in place. He was either very brave or crazy!

There were many gorgeous vistas in the Czech Republic, but some pretty godforsaken places, too!

East Germany seemed very agrarian and undeveloped, with new industries existing side-by-side with the ruins of the old, abandoned "Planned Economy" industries of the Communists. The Czech Republic alternated between gorgeous pastoral vistas and depressed, abandoned industrial areas that gave new meaning to the phrase "God forsaken." Some of the houses had no windows, but still looked lived-in. Many of the old Soviet style apartment complexes stood abandoned and disintegrating. No reason for anyone to live there anymore, I suppose. It made me feel very lucky to be able to witness the Twenty First Century from a relatively privileged perspective, as I do.

VIENNA

If Berlin is a modern, cosmopolitan city more like NY than expected, Vienna is more what most Americans have in mind when talking about a "European Vacation." It has Old World Charm and romance to spare. Like Rome, this city was once the Center of the World under the rule of the Hapsburgs, who ruled their vast empires from here. But all empires crumble eventually and another nation steps to the fore.

Vienna is much more aligned with what most Americans envision when they think of "Old Europe."

One thing that impressed me was the cleanliness of the city. The "Zoological Garden" transit hub in Berlin could have been the Port Authority and graffiti abounded. It had a real "New York ca. 1985" feel to it in a lot of ways. Maybe Giuliani can get a job over there, I hear he wants to run for Mayor again. (Good luck with THAT!) But there were no piles of trash in Vienna. The subways are spotless. They must have homeless here but you don't see too many, as you do in Berlin. Nary a piece of garbage on the streets, unlike back home where I have to pick beer cans, empty cigarette packs and McDonald's bags off my front lawn every day.

VIENNA IS "MUSIC CITY"

Vienna was once very much the center of the Musical World. It is to Classical Music what Nashville is to Country Music. Statues of and tributes to the Great Composers abound. It's the city of Mozart and Strauss and we celebrated both accordingly. We visited Mozart House, where he lived during his three most prosperous years. There were exhibits about his life and times but few actual artifacts, alas. In some historical houses you can still feel the vibes of the former inhabitants when you visit but in this case there really weren't any. Nevertheless, Mozart is an ever-present figure in Vienna, and he occupies the most revered place amongst the pantheon of great composers and musicians in Vienna's equivalent of Central Park

Statue of Mozart in Vienna's main park.

STRAUSS IN THE HAUS!

On a happier note, we went to the ornate musical palace built by the Strauss brothers to perform their music and where people could dance the waltz. There we had the wonderful experience of hearing a program of Strauss and Mozart, played by moonlighting musicians and singers from the Vienna Opera. It was a kind of "touristy" thing to do but the music spoke for itself. They even had dancers waltzing onstage. To hear the orchestra play the "Blue Danube Waltz" in Strauss' own house was special indeed. ...And Dear Reader, I tried REAL HARD not to think of "2001 A Space Odyessey!"

Even a rocker like me found hearing "The Blue Danube" performed in Strauss' own palace unforgettable!

To my surprise I knew almost every song on the programme! I was starting to think I was actually cultured until Terri reminded me that they used Classical themes a lot in the old cartoons to burst my bubble, as she likes to do. All kidding aside, it was a real highlight of the trip and an unforgettable experience. Even to a rocker like me who's been to hundreds of shows in his lifeime, it was a Top Five Musical Experience.

VIENNA FILM FESTIVAL

One very cool thing Vienna does every summer is their Film Festival. They place a huge projection screen in the square in front of Town Hall and show a different programme every night. Being Music City, of course all these films have to do with performances. One night it might be a high-def presentation of an orchestra, or an old film featuring Louis Armstrong, or an opera. The night we went they showed the opera "La Vie la Parisienne," a new production staged last year in Paris. It was performed by characters in modern dress, with the story translated to contemporary times. It was recorded and presented in high-definition video, projected on a huge screen that might host an IMAX movie.

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Vienna Town Hall, with the huge screen for the Film Festival

Adjoining the town square was a food court with any kind of cuisine you want, from Chinese to European to Middle Eastern. Amazingly, all the beverages were served on ceramic plates and drinks in glasses. Customers could leave them anywhere in the perimeter of the food court or take them to their seats, but if they were left out they were quickly collected and reused. Only the utensils were plastic, so imagine how much garbage that eliminated! But then as I've already said, Europe is decades ahead of us when it comes to "green" practices.

HABSBURG PALACE

It's hard to believe now, but Vienna used to be the Center of the World, from which Emperor Franz Joseph and his wife, Empress Elisabeth (otherwise known as Princess Sisi) ruled much of Europe. Only seventeen when she married the Emperor, she had trouble adjusting to life at court and was very unhappy there. Subsequently, she spent much of her later life traveling. She was a celebrated beauty and enforced a murderous diet and exercise regimen to maintain her 20" waist, which she reputedly maintained through her forties. She was a fashion icon and a renowned horsewoman as well. Today she is compared with the late Princess Diana of Wales; another unhappy princess who met an unfortunate end. Like Diana, she was a world-famous beauty. She felt trapped by her very public Royal life, wishing she could go home to the happy life she lived in Bavaria before she wed the Emperor at age 17. She suffered eating disorders and tried every fad diet and reducing regimen to maintain her figure.

Princess Sisi, the Nineteenth-Century Princess Diana

Unlike Diana, however, the Habsburgs knew how to handle the papparzzi of their times. The Princess refused to be photographed after sometime in her mid-thirties, and carried a large fan to hide her face from curious onlookers. Princess Sisi met a tragic end when an Italian anarchist stabbed her to death.

The tour of the palace was certainly amazing enough, but the visit to the old Habsburg Treasury was an amazing experience indeed. What a priceless collection of artwork, jewelry and artifacts it is! In addition to the immense quantities of precious metals and jewels was a whole variety of exquisite craftsmanship from all over the world, and the world was a much bigger place in their era. The thing that really jumped out at me was the number of items that claimed to have a relic of some saint or a piece of the True Cross or even one that had the nails from the True Cross. In an epoch dominated by the idea of the Divine Right of Kings (i,e,. kings ruled because God wished it to be so), he who has the most relics wins.

A MEMORABLE ANNIVERSARY

Celebrating your "Silver" (25th) Anniversary is a huge milestone any way you look at it, especially these days when nobody stays married anymore. To be honest, it was just a day in some ways like the 9131 days that prededed it. It may seem trite to say so but it's all about the trip, not the destination. It's what's crammed into those years that counts, which of course is a book in itself. We've come so far and lived so many different lives together. We've lived together as students, starving artists, young marrieds, young parents; now as older, "empty nesters." In those years we went through college, grad school, starting our careers, all the headaches as we progressed in our careers; our daughter was born and grew up. We've had good times, bad times, and everything in between.

But leave it to Terri to plan something special. She spent a year planning this trip and arranged it so that we'd be traveling between Vienna and Brussels for our anniversary. So suddenly I found myself on our Anniversary walking the beautiful old streets of Vienna.

First stop was a tour of the historic Vienna Opera House, where so many musical triumphs have been heard through the years. It was OK but not thrilling. I don't know what I expected. They walked you around, showed you the hall, showed you backstage. Whoopee. Wasn't really worth the money or the wait but oh well. They showed you around and gave you a little history, what the hell were we expecting?

Next was Music Haus, which is a very cool interactive museum that teaches you about the properties and nature of music, along with some of the science behind sound and Acoustics. It was kind of a condensed Music Appreciation class with a little bit of science thrown in. It was cool in some ways, dumbed down in others. I was really looking forward to seeing the "hyperinstruments" invented at MIT but they wound up being pretty dissapointing; a series of widgets preprogrammed to trigger sounds with very little artistic control. It was fun for kids to make noise but of little use in actual musicmaking.

After lunch, the next stop was the waterfront, where we embarked on a cruise around the city; the Viennese equivalent of the Circle Line back home in New York. We cruised on the Danube and even passed through some of the locks on the river. Although graffiti was conspicuously absent from Downtown Vienna, it was all over the waterfront area. Graffiti was prolifrigate throughout our travels in Europe. And I would like to say now and for the record that TAGGERS SUCK! Maybe one-tenth of one percent of the graffiti you see has any artistic value. People use trains and structures as their canvas and it's big and colorful and it's kind of cool. But for every Keith Haring there are at least 10,000 morons who can't do any better than write on the wall with a magic marker. I want to say now and for the record, TAGGERS SUCK! If the best you can do to get attention in this world is to scribble your name on the wall, you are pretty f'ing pathetic.

But I digress. After the cruise we took the subway to the famous Ferris Wheel; the world's biggest. The amusement park that hosted it wasn't in the greatest part of town but we sucked it up and went anyway. In Berlin or New York you couldn't have this because of all the skyscrapers but in Vienna the Ferris Wheel was one of the tallest structures. We were treated to beautiful views of the city and from that vantage point the true romance of the city can really overtake you. Apparently many other couples have had the same experience, as evidenced by the myriad names scrawled on the wood walls; some ten and twelve years old. I wondered out loud how many of these couples were still together. It being our Silver Anniversary, Terri just smirked.

The view of Vienna from the Ferris Wheel could make anybody fall in love.

Taking the subway back, we were walking from the stop to the hotel when I passed a street guitarist starting to play "Stairway to Heaven" on an electric guitar. So, hambone that I am I start singing with him. Now those of you who have heard me know I have a big voice that fills the room so I had no problem being heard over the guitar or the street noise. As the song went on more and more people started to gather. Then of course when people start to gather others go to see what's going on. So by the time the song was over there were 100+ plus people in the street really listening to us. They broke into loud applause and of course, "Thank you thank you thank you." So, I did an encore of "Hey Joe." I have to say, what I heard from street performers in Europe as a whole was not impressive but this guy was a pretty good guitar player. I got that street guitarist a few extra bucks anyway. I'm sure that made his day and of course it made ours, too. "Hambone," Terri chuckled.

Terri was shocked that I knew all the word to "Spanish Eyes!"

Before we went back to the hotel to get our bags and blow town, it was time for dinner. So we found this place right under the Queen's Residence that specialized in schnitzel. It was a quaint cellar restaurant in what looked to be an old wine cellar with its ancient brick walls. There were only a few tables occupied and there was an accordionist trying to get some tips from people who were mostly ignoring him. He's doing stuff like "Lady of Spain;" songs my Uncle Skippy used to play on the accordion back in the day. I grew up in a Brooklyn Italian family so of course I know all the words to all the Frank Sinatra songs and all the Dean Martin songs and the Mario Lanza songs and the Big Band songs so I am familar with that ouerve. Terri was shocked that I knew all the words to "Spanish Eyes," but that Al Martino stuff is part of that repertoire too. Then of course The Diva took her turn and of course when she sings all eyes are on her.

NO SLEEPER CAR FOR YOU!

After dinner we went back to the hotel for our bags ready to blow town on the the night train, where we had reserved a sleeper car. We say goodbye to our hosts at the pensioner and head out. On the Subway to the Vienna train station Terri checks our tickets and gasps. The train tickets are for 20:00 hours which she incorrectly wrote on our itinerary as 10PM. We get to the station and that was the last train and the next train out is at 6AM. So we have no choice but to deal and besides, Vienna isn't the worst place in the world to be stranded! Terri is livid and furious with herself but I am in way too good a mood to care. So, we go back to the hotel and they kindly give us a room for one more night. It's a more expensive room than the one we had and while nice, it was the only hotel room I ever saw where the bathroom had a glass door. What's up with THAT? I emailed the Hotel Mozart in Brussels and let them know that we won't be coming until tomorrow.

Only in Vienna could you have something like the Opera Toilet!

The next day, as we headed out to the train station, we saw this bathroom called the "Opera Toilet." I should explain here that in Berlin and Vienna they have pay public toilets where you have to pay half a Euro to do your business. There is an attendant there to keep the place clean and keep the riffraff away. As an American who is used to disgusting public rest rooms in places like Penn Station, this seemed like a nice alternative. This toilet even provided operatic music like Mozart's "Don Giovanni." Only in Vienna!