Eastern Europe: Misc Musings

The Europeans are quite keen on identifying substances in foods which may cause problems to certain individuals.  The Czech used numbers and the Austrians apparently use codes to identify the substances. Check out the menu to the left. The codes are:

A: Gluten-containing grains

B: Crustaceans

C: Eggs

D: Fish

E: Peanuts

F: Soy

G:Milk or lactose

H: Edible nuts

L: Celery

M: Mustard

N: Sesame

O: Sulphites

P: Lupines

R: Mollusks

 

 

In spite of all of the codes on this menu; the food was very good.  Fortunately, I personally don’t have to worry  about any of this.  Brenda, however, is on a gluten-free died and on this trip the restaurants did a good job of giving her gluten-free meals.

Last night, Thursday, the day  after  our bike ride officially ended, was the highlight of the entire trip for me.  We, actually 17 of us, went to a Mozart concert at  the Musikverein, one of the greatest music halls on the planet.  It wasn’t the music I went for.

• A classical music concert with humor to keep tourists engaged.
• The orchestra was “well rehearsed”; they play the same thing every night.
• I surely could have done w/o the operatic music, particularly the soprano (worse than your fingernails on a blackboard, in my opinion).
• I went  there to hear the concert hall.  It was almost 30 years ago that the Dallas Symphony Association decided  to build a new hall.  The chairman, Mort Meyerson (Chairman of EDS, Chairman of the  DSA and a singer  in the symphony choir) and his committee wanted the best possible acoustic hall.  They went around the world trying to find the best halls and then trying to figure out what made them great. The two best halls to their ears were the Musikverein in Vienna and the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. Acoustics of concert halls is complex but two important characteristics of great music halls is their shape (a shoebox) and size (approximately 2,000 seats).  Meyerson, along with Russell Johnson and his company Artec Acoustic Consultants, achieved their goals. According to Wikepedia  “The Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center is a concert hall located in the Arts District of downtown Dallas, Texas, ranked one of the world's greatest orchestra halls.”  I enjoyed the clear and rich sound of the Musikverein.  Having been a subscriber to the  DSO and enjoying the Meyerson Center for over 25 years it was a treat to be able  to enjoy it’s predecessor.  Now, I think we need a trip to Amsterdam.

The design and building of the Meyerson (pictured below) is documented in a book by Laurie Shulman, “The Meyerson Symphony Center – Building A Dream”.