Bucharest, Belgrade, Vienna, Salzburg, Krakow to London

Wednesday 11 March

Well, I think I’ve recovered sufficiently from my trip to the opera to continue with my blog. I’m writing this from London – it’s been a bit of a whirlwind tour from Budapest til now. From Budapest, Hungary I went to Bucharest, Romania. My main reason for going to both these places is that in my mind I constantly get them mixed up. And I’m not the only one. In 1992 Michael Jackson, yes he who dangled his baby Blanket out a window (in Berlin – I have a photo somewhere of that same window), stood upon the balcony of the People’s Parliament in Bucharest, the first person to address the people since Nicolae Ceausescu and greeted everyone: “Hello Budapest”. So even the Prince of Pop can get it wrong.

Bucharest was okay – Romania’s a very poor country and it doesn’t always feel the safest. I made sure my bag was held tight, and were warned in the hostel not to go out at night. But, the highlight for me was after going for a wander round the city (in the daytime of course) was discovering that just around the corner from my hostel was the Bucharest Music Academy and there was a concert there in 5 minutes time and…it was free. It was the end of term recital for two of the violin students and was being recorded for Romanian TV. The camera often panned around to the audience, so I could very well have made my Romanian TV debut. Awesome!

From Romania I took the overnight train to Belgrade. This was a bit of a disaster couple of days. The train was horrible – it smelled like a toilet, the toilet was worse – it smelled like a…well, something amazingly gross anyway.

I get to my hostel in Belgrade, to find out that I’m at the wrong hostel. I get to the right hostel only to find that they are full, despite me having booked a room days ago. They refund my deposit and book me into an alternative hostel – the one I went to in the first place.

Anyway…

I quite liked Belgrade. Again, like Romania it’s very poor, but the city felt familiar to me. Well, sort of. My map-reading skills had improved dramatically, but I still managed to get lost in Belgrade because all the street signs use the Cyrillic alphabet, not the Roman alphabet we use. I kept walking south-east, knowing that was the direction of my hostel. Unfortunately I hadn’t counted on the six land motorway with its myriad of over and underpasses. Eventually I asked in a shop, the girl said hop on the Number 9 tram and you’ll get there, and, hey presto, I did. I was actually pretty close to my hostel, it was just the motorway was in my way.

I only had one afternoon in Belgrade before catching the early train to Vienna. This was so exciting. Vienna has been at the top of my travel list since 1995 when I first saw the film “Before Sunrise”. The Vienna of “Before Sunrise” was a bit different from my Vienna though. In the movie it’s the middle of a hot summer. I was there in the middle of a cold, wet winter, but it’s still an amazing city.

The first thing I noticed was the number of fake Mozarts walking round, trying to get you to go to a Mozart/Strauss concert. Mozart? Yes, I could handle that. But Strauss? Whatever. Not wanting to influence your musical tastes or anything, but seriously? Strauss? There’s no member of the Strauss family I’d pay to go hear their music, so I went to the Vienna Symphony to hear Debussy, Ravel and Zemlinsky. Much better.

In Vienna there’s a museum called the House of Music which is an interactive display looking at all the facets of music-making. My two favourites were the roll-the-dice compose a Viennese waltz and the chance to conduct the (digitised) Vienna Philharmonic!

It was also in Vienna where I discovered two ‘new’ (i.e. new to me) artists – Egon Shiele and Gustav Klimt. Klimt in particular is an amazing painter, with very complex geometric designs, almost mosaic-like, in his work.

From Vienna I took a day trip to Salzburg, a beautiful – if over-Mozartised – city. Salzburg is famous for two things: Mozart’s birthplace and the Sound of Music. Fighting the urge to turn the curtains into lederhosen, I focussed on the Mozart aspects (though giving a wide berth to the Mozart chocolates, Mozart perfume and, uh, Mozart/disco CDs).

After Vienna/Salzburg I took another early train back to Krakow (Poland). I had spent a few days there some weeks ago, but Nigel Kennedy was playing so I HAD to go back.

For those of you in the dark, let me shed some illumination on the subject of Nigel Kennedy. He’s an English violinist who now lives in Poland. He is one of the most talented musicians of our era, if a somewhat controversial figure. He shot to world-wide fame in 1988/89 with his groundbreaking recording of Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons” (Come on Kiwis, get some Viv – remember the ad?). Many of his critics don’t like the way he talks, dresses or behaves. And maybe some of that is justified (apparently when in New Zealand in 1996 he flooded his hotel room in Christchurch, letting the hot water run to create the correct level of humidity for his violin…), but musically, I think he’s brilliant (maybe except for his cadenza in the Beethoven violin concerto. This is the example I play for all you flutey-types of what not to do – Jimi Hendrix and Beethoven don’t actually mix that well…) but I just love his attitude and the way he performs.

So you can probably guess just how EXCITED I was to be going to his concert. He was performing with a quartet (Hammond organ, guitar, bass, drums), playing Jimi Hendrix, but with his own twist and loads of improvised passages. SO COOL. If you ever get the chance to see Nigel Kennedy perform, you must go.

And now – I’m in London. Mostly for practical reasons. Kate’s moving out of her flat because she’s about to go travelling and I’ve got piles (and piles…) of sheet music etc at her place, so I have to pack that up and store it at another friend’s place. So I’ll do that, then on Saturday I head over to Ireland for a week, back to London to catch a gig by a friend’s band, then off to Italy…

Will keep you posted 