September 25, 2024
The story actually begins a few days before I type this first entry, on April 10, 2024. My sister texts me saying that on the Air Canada Vacations website they are stating that trips to Europe are on sale. It was a few days later that we had made a decision and a new life event/vacation was planned!
Addendum April 11, 2024
Yesterday was an exciting day, the door to possibly starting the plans for a trip to Europe was in the air. Well, the talking is over, and a process was started… I’m taking my mom to Europe this September!
It was such a HUGE decision, but it was quickly made and then a few things were added in. It started with us spending some time in Vienna Austria and then since it is only a few hours drive away, to visit family in the Czech republic… but that was not going to last very long.
Looking at best places to land, we added 2 more locations we wanted to visit and suddenly it grew from 1 week to a 2 week event and a pretty busy one!
As the first iteration of our plan went (and plans always have a way of changing, right?), we were to fly to Frankfurt. From there pick up a car and drive to our first destination 3.5 hours south to Trossingen, home of the Hohner German museum of Harmonicas and Accordions. Did I forget to mention that this is also the home base of this small accordion manufacturing company called… Hohner? <hint-hint!>
Next step was tentatively planned to be in Vienna Austria, but with it being near a full day’s drive away, we kind of decided to split it up and spend a night in either Munich or Salzburg.
Once in Vienna, we had a few places we wanted to go and visit, but this is Vienna, there is SO MUCH to see in a very short time, so we will have to do some research. There is one place that is guaranteed (reservations pending), and that is a restaurant where they play Zither music.
Next stop on this trip is Prague Czech Republic (I despise the name “Czechia”!). A few days with family there and perhaps a nice afternoon spent at the Delicia accordion manufacturing company under a 1 hour’s drive away seems like a superb way to spend an afternoon.
From there, we make a mad dash from Prague to Frankfurt, a day ahead of the flight to a nice hotel near the airport, and from there, the flight home.
At least, at this point, that is the plan.
Addendum April 13, 2024
Today was the day the decision was ratified.
- Flight to and from Frankfurt was booked
- Car was rented for 2 weeks and cross-border fees addressed
- hotel for 2 nights in Trossingen were booked
- hotel for 1 night just outside Salzburg were booked
- hotel for 1 night in Frankfurt were booked
- hotel for 4 nights in Vienna were booked
- family in Prague informed we would be there and I also booked a hotel, just in case
- email to Hohner informing them of our trip sent
Wow, my head was spinning, I was feeling anxiety and excitement at the same time. This is going to be an amazing trip!
There is a lot of planning and preparation yet to do, but we are committed.
Update: April 18, 2024:
Seems I made a small mistake on the choice of rooms for Trossingen, so I upgraded the room so that it is closer to our needs. One click on “upgrade your room” and we are done!
September arrives…
I spend little time prepping. Seems every time I make a plan to go somewhere specific or do something interesting it unravels, so I consign myself to the fact that chance and a little luck in some things will work out on this trip.
September 10, 2024
I’m nervous. There are a few serious challenges involved on this trip, but we’ve done everything to make it work as well as can be expected. My sister drove my mother and I to the airport. We came 4 hours early and good thing… the traffic is a mess. We have augmented seats with additional leg room, are pre-booked and all I need to do is get the boarding passes. Getting to our gate, we can finally relax, part 1 is done. Getting on the plane and settling down is now familiar, and thats good for me. I brought my iPad and extra earphones so we can watch something we chose in advance just in case what Air Canada wants to offer is not anything we want.
Up we go and the take-off was smooth as glass. With a few minor turbulences, the trip was a smooth shot all the way to Frankfurt. Next step, getting the luggage and car. The car was a bit of a pain in the butt. The flight was fast, almost an hour early and I booked the pickup time about an hour later, so we were forced to wait 1.5 hours before we could get our car… but once we were in it, I took a HUGE breath of relief. Part 2 done.
The drive to Trossingen taught me something very surprising… believe it or not, just because you can drive on an autobahn at insane speeds does NOT mean you get to your destinations faster! When I drive 300km in Canada, the GPS and I arrive within 5 minutes of the predicted time. When driving in Europe, yes there are long stretches where hitting 190kph is fun and interesting, but most of the time you are driving under 60kph behind some truck trying to wait and find a place pass a slower truck… or 10. You lose a lot of time between that and the slow drives in between towns with 50kph limits, that 300km distance comes at a sacrifice… it takes much longer to cover that same distance than it would in Canada. This is a theme that repeats through out the trip… travelling at speeds of 175kph and it still takes longer to cover equivalent distances in Canada.
Getting in to Trossingen, we’re kind of happy that some things in Europe don’t change. The politeness of the people, the charm of the villages, the amazing things that separate the North American cultures… example… in Germany/Austria, its not a crime to bring your dog to the restaurant while you enjoy your evening out with the family. The thought of doing that back home and in my mind’s eye I see the police pulling me out of the restaurant in cuffs and the family pet sent to doggy prison at the local SPCA… lol. We are such a provincial people at times! 🙂 🙂
The hotel/restaurant we are in for the 2 nights is a small place, PERFECT because of it’s location… 2 minutes walk from the Hohner museum and conservatory and a few minutes short drive to the new Hohner factory. First stop, the factory where I was to get my 4 certificates for the Hohner accordions in my collection. I was not disappointed there… within a few seconds of entering, Ralf, the man in charge, was placing them in an envelope, and that is also where we were introduced to Petra, our guide to my personal little private tour of the Hohner factory.
Let’s be very clear about something… the Hohner of today is sadly not the accordion powerhouse manufacturer that they used to be. Based on what I saw and was told, the majority of their accordions are manufactured in China and Italy and only 3 models are now made here in Germany… the Hohner XS for the kids market, Concerto II for the Latin/Conjunto market and the Gola.
They say “never meet your hero, for they will disappoint you…”. So true.
Earlier this year, I meet a hero from my past. Without even shaking my hand, asked who’s Gola it was while pointing at my Gola, I said mine, asked if I played, I said yes but that I had stopped for near 4 decades. Without so much as a thought, they just said that I would never be good at playing, that 4 decades is too long. Shock, disbelief and shame is what I felt. It was an out and out verbal slap in the face from someone that I looked up to and they did not even have the courtesy to remember me.
Now, months later, I am meeting another hero, the people who built my well loved Gola.
The new Gola is still there, still being made, albeit at lower quality levels and many cost cutting processes, and of the once several models that were made in the past, only one is now being made, the standard 414 model… no converter models, no extended keyboard, no CBA models… those look to be gone., though, maybe if you ply enough money Hohner’s way and give them 2 years, they **might** make one for you, as long as it’s not anything too custom or out of the box.
The Gola quality is mostly there, the commitment to excellence is very evident, the people working on them are of the highest calibre… but you can definitely tell that parts of the Gola that made it what it was are diminished.
Reeds now are from Voci Armoniche (which are still very nice but far from the legendary status of Gola reeds from the past), and per the people there, there is always a huge fight to get them to get close to working properly. Also, many parts are not available or hard to find/source/make, so 3-D plastic printed parts are now part of the Gola (not necessarily a bad thing, just not hand made parts like in the past). The bass registers are now plastic instead of gold plated, the treble registers generic plastic registers that are used on other “lesser” Hohner models. The bellows corners are not gold, they are brass and there is no gold on the front grill anymore.
I’ve met my hero, and am a little sorry that I did. The Gola, for economic and business reasons is not the Gola of old. The King is dead… long live the King.
That said I loved being there, loved meeting the good people of Hohner and they were so very kind and open with me. I especially enjoyed my time with Petra and Sigmund, who took some time off of working on someone’s Gola just to talk to me, answer a few questions and did so well in his broken English… I wish my German was as good as his English… lol
After that, it was time to go to the Hohner Museum and Konservatory. It’s not very big and within about an hour, you’ve had the chance to see all that it offers, but the pieces that it does have to offer are all well protected and most are behind glass. I did mention to them that there was a distinct lack of a Piano accordion Gola, but the button version of their Gola was impressive. 🙂 It was a well designed museum, and I *did* play that little tiny hanging accordion for posterity!
Next day we left for Salzburg, but took the LONG way around, passing through Bodensee and the Birnau church, it was truly beautiful and majestic, as are most churches in Europe.
Though I was again pegging the speedometer at 175kph, the calculated 3.5 hours to get there took closer to 6 hours, including the 1 hour stop-over in Birnau along the Bodensee. This time we arrived at the amazingly charming town of Hallein which is about 30 minutes south of Salzburg. Before I even say anything, I will say that I want to come back to this town again in the future, it’s charm won me over.
The Gasthaus we are staying in is actually a re-renovated 150 year old home with big sturdy furniture from the 1800’s in all the bedrooms and the dining area is like slipping back to your most high-end 18th century wood furniture filled restaurant. We ate a LOT and we ate exotic. My mother had a wonderfully spiced… I want to say cabbage roll, but not, it was beef, rice, cabbage, some incredibly good tasting spices along with a beautiful rich tomatoe sauce. I had… wild deer. The meant was tender, tasted with a hint of gaminess, in a sauce that was sweet, savoury, a hint of spiciness, topped with a noodle that tasted a little like gnocchi and a taste that made my eyes go wide and made me hum in delight with every bite. I never entertained the thought of ever eating wild deer, but this was something that I won’t forget soon.
After supper, we near finished our wine, added an AMAZING desert of wild berries and pistachio-vanilla ice cream and a strong tasty coffee.
Then, we went to our room and the beds. OMG, that bedroom… the furniture… the softness of the two separate beds, I have not slept so soundly in years. As a matter of fact, we got up late the next day and had to rush a little to make breakfast. I cannot really describe a true European breakfast, but let’s say that when we came down to our table, it was covered in 4-5 different kinds of hams, cutlets, a dozen different cheeses, 4 different kinds of buns, 5 kinds of rolls… and 4 different kinds of breads. Then came the fruits… different kinds of pears, apples, grapes ALL local and pots of coffee and orange juice galore.
We were treated like royalty, and when the bill for all this came, I was shocked at how low it was, and so added an above average sizeable gratuity for the service.
After breakfast, it was time to go to Austria, but not before dropping in to a nice church and a near-by gift shop for some salt-related gifts from the Salzburg area. The rest of the drive to our next destination was fun, but I like to drive, even better, I like to drive fast, and in Europe, one gets ample practice to do whatever speeds one wants on the open sections of the Autobahn.
Good news… GPS said 3.5 hours to Vienna, it took us just about that amount of time to get to our hotel on the east side of Vienna.
Our first night in Vienna was not as memorable as Salzburg, so it’s going to have to work harder to impress us… Salzburg/Hallein really spoiled us. The main reason is the unseasonal storm conditions and rains, this weather is trying to drag us down… we are being pummelled with hard rain without stop. In fact it’s so bad that there are rain and snow/ice warnings for all of Vienna… the situation seems pretty serious. Rivers are over-flowing, there is a lot of damage and though I have not yet seen any, there are snow and ice warnings on all my devices (phone, iPad). There are reports of bridges being torn apart and cars and houses being dragged down river. This makes getting around a bit soggy at best, dangerous for travel at worst. The good news is that it is supposed to stop in a couple days… we will see.
Also, our home base hotel is simply mediocre compared to the near majestic lodgings in Hallein… but it’s a place to sleep that is clean.
Today, we’re off to a small district where my mother has many fond memories of as a child, its called Grinzing, a district about 20 minutes north from our base camp, but we are taking it super easy today, Our breakfast is going to be in a bit of a different location too… a garage as a matter of fact (Cafe Garage in Grinzing… lol).
Well, Grinzing was a bust. It’s not the small quaint location of years ago. It is now deeply swallowed up and part of Vienna proper, and that means massive over crowding, zero parking and disappointment upon disappointment.
Vienna is dropping fast in to mediocrity for us, so fast we may not even stay our full 4 days here! We went looking for a breakfast place, NONE available to be found. The ones that we could find (two of them) neither had parking available within a kilometre and one was closed. Driving in the city center is a nightmare, a convolution of 1-ways, odd signs, crazy drivers and several cases of road rage were prevalent. Navigating the tracks is also a nightmare. Some sections they share the road with the cars, others they have their own areas and no clear signage to explain what is what. After 90 minutes of this, we were spent and went to PLAN-B.
PLAN-B was a visit to the Prater… I mean what could possibly go wrong there?
Well getting there was fairly easy (but still had it’s own stresses), but thats about where it ended. The temperatures were single digits, it was drizzling ice cold rain and winds were hitting 50 kilometres per hour. We found a close parking spot, walked to find that it was just dismal outside. All we wanted at that point was a meal and someplace to relax for a couple hours. Well, another disappointment… as we walked in, the main restaurant was in the act of closing early in the day and the Reiseraden (the huge ferris wheel of the Prater) was closed due to the high winds. Now I can understand why the ferris wheel was closing, but there was no freaking valid reason why the restaurant was closing… there were at least 20 people wanting to come in for a meal. The one passable event was that we did a whirlwind tour of Madame Tousseau’s wax museum and even that felt stressful and hurried. We then found a place that made us a sandwich and strudel with coffee, it was good. The saving grace for the afternoon was the pleasant visit to the wax museum. It was interesting, but nothing really amazing.
Back to the hotel. Once there, we took a brief break and then we needed to sit down and make some decisions. I did find a really nice restaurant that let me order take out so that my mother did not need to walk in the cold outside, then we ate and started discussing. Did we want to stay in these conditions?
The decision was made fairly fast and easily… we needed to get out of town… Vienna is NOT what it used to be and we no longer want to waste any time being here.
I’m sure if the weather conditions weren’t as severe that things would be *somewhat* easier or better, but there are still so many things that we absolutely disliked there and those things would not change irrespective of the weather. It is within my power to change this situation, and change it will… starting the very next day.
Next day we gather up our things and do an early departure… we’re off to the Czech Republic!
The drive there is not far, supposed to be something like 4 hours but though the weather seems to be getting better a little it’s still raining and the effects of it are all around us. At one point, we are driven off the main highway because the road is washed out completely… a dangerous situation. We’re forced off in to this little village and since we had no breakfast, we stop at a little restaurant while still in Austria. The nice lady serving us sees we are speaking in Czech and promptly switches to the same language, a nice little surprise. The breakfast is simple but good and filling, and the coffee pleasantly very strong.
The Austria/Czech border rises out of the distance and I see a familiar scene, its the huge airplane/restaurant/King Aurthur castle recreation area, except now, they’ve grown it 3 times larger with the addition of 2 large casinos. Nice to see advancements, kind of disappointing to see the commercialism. This turns in to a common theme as we find out later on. We drive around there a bit, take a few pictures, reminisce about what it looked like 11 years earlier and move on. We are now in the Czech Republic! The trip to Prague that the GPS informed me was 3.5 hours was a 6 hour trip.
The Czech Republic is amazing and nice to us. The moment we crossed the border, the sun pokes out here and there and then becomes a permanent and happy moving fixture in the sky until the night… we’re out of the rain zone!
I won’t go in to details about this leg of our trip, but the days that we spent there were amazing, family is incredible and the only thing that I will say is that I did want to visit Delicia accordions. I emailed twice called twice, had no response so said OK, they either were closed or just not interested, so I passed on it.
I do want to mention that Prague has grown immensely too. Eleven years ago where there were fields and farms are now huge industrial buildings, factories and multi-story apartment complexes. Prague used to have 11 sections, it now is divided in to 31 sections and I barely recognize sections that were once familiar to me!
April 23, 2024
Once our time there in Prague was ended and it was time to go, we sadly said our good-byes and got back in to our trusted VW Polo and made our way back to Frankfurt, a 6 hour drive that was made a little fun as when I hit the open parts of the Autobahn, pushed the little car to over 190kph, something completely illegal in Canada… lol.
Arriving late in Frankfurt (yeah, it again took a bit longer than 6 hours… lol), we had a nice evening to relax before our flight back home.
April 24, 2024
The next morning we had a nice little breakfast, returned the rental back to their spot with 2300 more kilometers on it than the initial 500km it had on the odometer and flew back to Canada. The End. 🙂
A lifetime of beautiful memories in the short period of a couple of weeks, a little bad, but a ton more good!
Life is wonderful.