Time in Kleinmutschen

Well, this is the third attempt at starting this.
Third time's the charm? Tell you about that later.

My concerns about arriving in Oberpullendorf, near
Kleinmutschen, with no one to meet me, were resolved
in Vienna. As I was about to board the bus, an
attractive young blond lady asked me if I was Dick.
Since I was, I said yes. Turns out she's Pamela, the
granddaughter of Stefan Meiszburger, the relative I
planned to visit. She works in Vienna, and takes that
bus home every nite. I guess my aborted phone call
the nite before wasn't aborted after all.

Stefan is in the hospital, though. He was transferred
today to another hospital about 200K or more from home
for heart surgery. They specialize in the surgery he
needs there. The surgery was this afternoon, but as
he'll be sedated for nearly two days, I won't know
anything for a while. I'll call his son tomorrow to
find out how the surgery went. (I'm in Bratislava now)


He was up and around while I was there, and we had a
lot of time to get to know each other. He's pretty
sharp. I was trying to remember the name of my
grandfather's club in Indiana, and he popped up with
the answer, St. Anthony's. Hopefully, the surgery
will go well, and he will recover and be fine. Say a
prayer or two.

His family treated me like royalty while I was there,
his son, Rudi, Rudi's wife Traude, their daughter,
Pamela, and even the golden retriever, Memphis. I had
a wonderful time.

Pamela was the only one who spoke much English, so she
acted as my guide. The others, including her
boyfriend Rolf all spoke better English than I do
German. Rolf spoke rather well, but was too shy to
try much.

I saw a lot of the center of Burgenland while I was
there. The birthplace of pianist Franz Liszt, the
burial place of composer Josef Hayden, the geographic
center of Burgenland, the Esterhazy Palace in
Eisendstadt, on and on. We took a boat ride on the
Neuseidler See, both walked and drove into Hungary.
On the drive, we went to Sopron, Hungary which would
be a nice place to spend more time in.

The highlight was a trip to a castle (sorry, my notes
are in the hotel, I don't remember the name). It was
what I expected a castle to be. Turns out there are
two German words that translate into Castle, Schloss
and Burg. We decided that Schloss's are castles for
royalty, with all the fine things, and Burgs are for
the knights and other fighting types who defend the
villages. This one was a Burg. The Esterhazy Palace,
mentioned earlier was a Schloss.

For the Schreiner relatives on my mailing list, I got
the entire family tree for the Schreiner's from my
grandfather down. This came from Fredi Czizmazia,
grandson of my grandfather's sister. I'll make copies
for anyone who wants when I get home, particularly
Brandie. Someone please forward this to her, as the
last two I sent her didn't go through. Earlier ones
did.

I learned that what my grandparents spoke wasn't
Austrian as I thought. Not Hungarian, either, although
Kleinmutschen was part of Hungary when they came to
the US. They spoke Croatian. It seems a lot of
Croatians settled in that area. It's still spoken by
many of the people.

The trip to Vienna on the train was pleasant. I
talked to a couple from Hillsboro, CA. (LaRita,
didn't you live there?) They also had an experience
with a pickpocket in Prague. Fortunately, he realized
it in time, and didn't' loose anything. They were on
the way back to the US after a three week trip.

Pamela and I rode the bus back to Vienna this morning.
She headed off to work, and I to the train station
for the trip here. Uneventful, except for a delay of
1/2 hour at the border. Don't know why. A couple in
the compartment with me were more travel naive than I
am, if you can believe that. They didn't't know
they'd need passports to cross the border. They
weren't the cause of the delay, though.

I learned three more lessons in the first 3 hours
here. First was in language. Found the WC, but there
were no pictures, so I had to wait until someone went
in or came out. The men's starts with W and the
women's with Z. The second is to save a draft of your
e-mail frequently. I was about to hit SEND on a
previous version of this when the computer re-booted.
That is how I was informed that my hour was up. And
no refunds. The third is that there is yet another
keyboard to contend with in Europe. I hope the
apostrophes come through.