Whose idea was this, anyway?

Chata Diviak’s Year of the Garden

Now that spring has finally arrived and we have sated our wanderlust for the moment with the Sisi Sojourn Road Trip (see last post), we turn our attention to the home front.

JoEllen says 2012 will be the Year of the Garden – the Year of the Yard. We focussed on the inside of our Chata Diviak in 2011; now it’s time to focus on the outside.

Sometimes Jo despairs of the exterior condition of the chata: railings have fallen and we haven’t repaired them. The back garden around the firepit is a pit itself, denuded of grass during construction when it was a holding area for old tile, broken concrete and bricks dug up and hammered out from old parts of the house.

Even the new kitchen entry on the middle floor needs enhancement around the outside: we routinely enter by our new door by walking past the wood pile along the west side of the chata and not around the ‘front’ and up the stairs. It’s a hazard that will see one of us with a big gash on our forehead before long, because the clearance of flat ground by the entry is narrow and dangerously close to the rain gutter.

But, lots of work has already taken place:

The stone facing under the new entry has been repaired and the drainage of rain water has been diverted so that the new facing won’t erode so quickly in future.

Our wonderful friends Iveta and Jaro surprised us while we were away on our road trip by policing the pathway from the road to the new entry and by stacking wood from the tree Jaro & Co. took down for us by the garden. It’s a marked improvement.

As you can see, we have installed a water butt for the garden. It catches the rain from the west side of the roof.  The butt is one cubic meter – and that holds one thousand liters of water. (It filled entirely on the first good rainfall of spring – the night after we had it installed!)

Jo is working on the areas outside the veg garden – she’s been putting grass seed out and she plans to plant hydrangeas along the old broken-down railing on the north side of the chata, as well as some sun-loving flowers in boxes for the stairway.

She’s already planted her four window boxes – three with spider geraniums (in hopes of imitating the Bavarian and Austrian custom);  the north-facing box with impatiens.

Scott has worked really hard getting the garden cleaned up and planted. Here he tells you exactly what he’s done:

 

This morning, Scott has also planted 80 beets.

While Chata Diviak’s exterior is a work in progress, our house is always ready for our friends and family to visit!

 

 

Journey Part the Third, of Sisi's Grand Tour

Journey, Part the Third

This last report on Sisi’s first adventure by car focuses on our search for really nice hotels along the way.

We found three very different hotels along the way, but all Saying goodbye to our friends in the Netherlands was bittersweet.  Jo knew it was very likely the last time she would see Jimmy, the grand old gentleman golden retriever she first met in 2004.

We packed Sisi into her new seat belt we bought just that morning; kisses all around; promises for next visits; tumbled into the car; and we turned the key.

Nothing.

Battery dead.

Pfft.

We tumbled back out of the car, and our hosts arranged an auto repairman to jump the battery. We do not have international road service insurance (yet). While Bart and Claire could call their own service, it was going to cost us €150 cash for the guy to come out (within the hour) to give us a hand getting the battery up and running again.

They were good on their word and arrived 45 minutes later. The guy jumped the battery and we were good to go again. The serviceman could not bring himself to charge us the €150, so he did it for free. 

Don't you just love the Dutch! (We do!)

An hour later, we were on the road to Germany.

We decided to spend our first night toward home, back on the Rhine again. This time we stayed on the west bank of the river, in St. Goar at the Schloß Hotel Rheinfels sitting atop the cliffs overlooking the village and the river.

This hotel is situated in a real, castle ruin, but with very fine rooms, room service, bar, restaurant, spa and all luxuries one would expect in a castle. Sisi seemed to like it a lot too.

We ordered room service, not wanting to risk a dog scene in the fine dining room. (A country inn in the woods of Baarn is one thing. A fine dining room in a castle is something else entirely.)

Nevertheless, three of the staff from that fine dining room paraded our evening repast into our room: paté of hare, crispy fried prawn in tomato potage; roasted beef loin topped with truffle; steak with asparagus. The riesling we drank was from the hotel’s own vineyard, and one of the finest we found on the trip.

The only complaint? No cream for Jo’s coffee and no sugar for Scott’s tea for room service breakfast. Small complaint indeed.

On the road again along the river, we marveled at the stunning panoramas of vineyards and castles perched upon the cliffs. The old villages and towns hugging the river banks until alas we turned inland and back onto the Autobahn, on our way to the next stop in the Bayernwald (Bavarian Forest) on the eastern side of the country.

Along the way, more reminders to pay close attention to the traffic and our speed:

Our Dutch hosts had this little book called Links und Rechts (Left and Right), a dense book of country inns and Gasthofs (guest houses) located close to the autobahn, where we found our next stop.

That was Gasthof Stegmühle, about 20 kilometers from the Austrian border. 

We wound our way through the village of Iggensbach (about 500 meters from the Autobahn) and out again on the other end along a country road for a couple of kilometers. Around the corner our next night’s sleep appeared:

Gasthof Stegmühle is among a handful of buildings along a bubbling brook at the edge of the Bavarian Forest. Our hosts have owned and managed the place since they took over from his parents. He cooks. She serves and chats in broken but very passing English.

Our room was furnished in pure Austrian: pine desk, footed bedstead, wardrobe, walls, all in warm pine. Arched white plaster doorway to the dressing area and loo. Generous balcony overlooking the biergarten and eccentrically decorated garden. (Please take special note of the garden gnome, one of the best ones we've seen.)

The hotel even has its own private chapel, dedicated to St Benedikt.

On the first real spring day – temperature in the 80s and clear blue skies – we spent ever so many hours in the hotel beer garden, first with half-liters of good, cold lager, then with a very tasty and slightly bubbly Grüner Veltliner, liter bottle.

Sisi promptly went to sleep under the table.

Dinner began with white radish slices and buttered rye bread topped with fresh chives. Jo waxed nostalgic with the food.  She was more excited about the faint scent of manure that wafted through the air from freshly fertilized, neighboring fields.

Dinner started with a clear broth with raw egg poaching in the bowl.

Soup was followed by a pfeffer Rind (pepper steak).

We ordered another liter of wine it was so good. And our hosts urged us to try the local hooch: a clear spirit made of apple and pear. After that it gets quite vague.

Clearly we made it up the stairs and into bed, where we found all three of us safe and sound the next morning.

And slowly, quietly getting along to the car and on the road again toward home.

Our last leg before the final stretch had us stopping at our favorite Bratislava hotel: the Kempinski River Park.

Since the hotel opened in the spring of 2010, we have both visited enough so that the hotel staff at the front desk, valet parking, bar, restaurant and spa all know us by sight. Many of them know us by name.

The strange thing is: we have never, ever stayed there together.

One of us is always “at home with the dog.”

We would each laugh with the front desk staff about bringing Sisi someday when she is better behaved. And the staff would always ask after our spouse: “How is Mr. Burgess?” “How is Mrs Zumberge?” “And how is Sisi?”

This time we surprised them all and showed up all together.

After we checked in, we headed to the terrace where we had lunch in the warm sunshine and blustery wind.

Smoked trout with crème freche to begin. Burgers and frites as the main. Yum.  All accompanied with a tart Slovak rosé.

Sisi slept peacefully under the table.

After lunch, Jo made her way to the spa for her ritual massage and we met back up at the bar for a cocktail before dinner. Sisi was so well behaved: she did not bark, she did not pee, she allowed all sorts of strangers pet her and give her water. It was as if she were an entirely different pooch!

We opted to dine in the room on some simply fabulous fare (also it was too windy to dine outside again and the fine dining room was off limits to dogs after an ‘incident’ that had nothing to do with our own dog)

[please forgive the out-of-focus nature of the following photos - we were a little out of focus after the night before!]

Crawfish with blood sausage garni; veloute of baby spinach with a poached quail egg. Lamb chops, beefsteak and a selection of Slovak cheeses to finish.

One more accomplishment achieved:  getting Sisi into an urban hotel with a cavernous lobby, lots of strangers and limited areas outside in which to make her ablutions.

She was a star.

She even said hello to the front desk manager the following morning, upon our departure. Without peeing on the floor.

The rest of the trip was uneventful and we were home before lunchtime.

We are already planning our next sojourn.

 

On the Road with Sisi – Her First Grand Tour of Europe

Journey, Part the Second

On her first-ever overnight journey, round-trip from Slovakia to the Netherlands, Sisi calmed down in the car (sort of) eventually, because the German Autobahn is a smooth, flat, straight surface on which to drive.

Fast.

The silly word with which VW used to advertise comes to mind:  fahrvergnügen. We pronounce it ‘far-fig newton’ and it actually means ‘driving pleasure’.

Driving the autobahn is not JoEllen’s idea of driving pleasure. 

For one thing: we do not own a Mercedes, BMW or Audi. (VW likes to think of itself as in this class – or rather, VW sedan drivers like to think this). 

While our lovely old Hyundai SantaFe can go fast and has a pretty good acceleration, it ain’t the above.

Driving pleasure is for the Mercedes, BMW and Audi assholes.  Forgive our vulgarity, but that’s the way we see it.

Jo has driven on the Autobahn before. Several times, in fact. The first time was with her sister-in-law and her then-eight-year-old nephew, Andy. They had rented a 1989 VW Golf. They drove from Munich to Heidelberg. JoEllen attests to the fact that a VW Golf cannot go as fast as a Mercedes, BMW or Audi.

Andy still chuckles about that trip, when he learned a lot of new words, sitting in the back seat and listening to Auntie Jo as she scrambled to get back into the slow lane in time to miss being hit by the flashing lights of the assholes flying up behind her. Andy's mom didn't chuckle so much at the time.

Observe the Autobahn today:

 

Yes, this is JoEllen driving 140 kph and those are the assholes who pass us as if we were standing still. One hundred forty kilometers is 85 mph.

What’s more: the German Autobahn, in some places – in fact in most places – does not post a speed limit. Oh, they make us slow down in sensible places like congested interchanges and on steep descents.  But then, when you see this sign, MOVE OVER!

But then the last time Jo was on the Autobahn before this, it was on the road from Munich to Hanover. On the Sunday after the opening of the Oktoberfest. The entire drive was a commuter traffic jam.  What would normally take about six hours took nine. She was back in a Golf, but the Mercedes, BMWs and Audis weren’t going any faster than she.

Finally, we cross the German Dutch border and smile to see the Dutch have a very sensible thing called a speed limit on their autobahn: a modest 120 kph or, 72 mph.

And we arrive at our friends’ house in one piece.

This is where Sisi begins to learn some new things.

First: she has never spent a night in someone else’s house. Hotels now yes, but not a private home.

A private home with another dog.

And three small children.

Yes, you begin to get the picture.

In the Netherlands, it is typical to drive the dogs to the forest for a good long walk off leash. This is a good thing. While our hosts’ house is comfortably large, with an even larger garden, it is nice to get out into the woods. Especially for Sisi, who is used to running free in the woods.

The resident dog – an old friend of ours named Jimmy – does not join us. He is a grand old gentleman golden retriever who is 14 years old and has retired from long walks.

Sisi on the other hand, is happy to get out.

And so are we all.

 

After the walk, it is customary to stop at a country inn to eat lunch and relax. It was Sisi’s first time sitting inside a restaurant.

Everyone was relaxed about it, except JoEllen.  But even she relaxed – after several glasses of wine.

Sisi was perfectly behaved except when an unleashed dog wandered over. Once the other canine left, she relaxed too.

This brings us to the issue of Jimmy, the grand old golden retriever who has graced the side of his master Bart for almost a decade and a half. Always gentle during his long life, he is the epitome of a type B personality. And now that he is in his dotage, his arthritis and deafness keep him from being a threat to any one, let alone a big, loud, extremely ambulatory poodle.

Well, Sisi just didn’t get it.

She barked and barked and feigned attack (Jimmy is deaf and sleeps most the time) whenever the old man would get himself up for a slow trip to the outside loo. We scolded her every time she misbehaved, but it was not until the day we departed did she finally sniff him out enough to realize he wasn’t going to hurt her. Or usurp her throne or something.

Our last day in the Netherlands found us on a picturesque drive to a large lake.

JoEllen wanted to see if Sisi could swim. Poodles were once used as water fowl retrievers (it’s why those silly haircuts were invented – something about keeping legs hair-free to get through the bushed but protecting joints from the cold water); but we had read that swimming does not come by instinct with poodles.

Sisi loves puddles – Jo’s always washing her off in the shower after a hard rain at home.  Now we’ve found out how much she liked big puddles.

It was a little too cold and windy for Jo to get more than her shoes off to help Sisi get into the mood. But when we pointed out the ducks to Sisi, she took right off. . .

. . . for about 30 feet, before she realized what she was doing. She got just chest deep in the water then decided it was best to turn for shore.

So, no real swimming.  But we were proud of her all the same.

Sisi’s visit to Baarn was, all in all, a positive one. She didn’t bite any one or any thing (just barely); she learned to sleep in a ‘strange’ house with a ‘strange’ dog and three little kids (mostly);

… and she (almost) learned how to swim.

Next post we report on the road trip home, where the hotels were vastly different from those on the inbound leg; and even vastly different from each other.