September 10, 2022
A day at the Sopron Monastery Hotel (Sept. 10, 2022)
This morning Dave and I laid in our bed in a former Carmelite Monastery and just stared at the ceiling, which was actually worth staring at. The subtle beauty of it, the wonderment of the work that went into its original construction hundreds of years ago, and the cost of the renovation project recently completed just amazed us. Plus, we were thinking about our friend John. He and his spouse Harriet have recently moved from the States to Italy and John’s mom had just died back in the US. Today was the memorial service so we got talking about it and pondering the emotional challenges of a family funeral. We are thinking about you John and Harriet and send you our best wishes and thoughts. (Dave then got a bit creeped out with so much talk of death so we went to breakfast and we canned the philosophical death discussion!)
This place is pretty amazing and a decent value. It's so off the beaten track and obscure and yet so original I hardly know where to begin. Plus, for 200 euros a night we got this huge room (with exotic ceiling), and that 200€ also got us breakfast and dinner. We got our first real opportunity to sample some excellent Hungarian wine with two charming waiters who knew their wine and were excited to share their knowledge. Up to this point, we had only been able to order table wines at our previous restaurants. (And so that we remember, we had an excellent red made from the zweigelt grape). And as opposed to our previous religious-based hotel, this place actually had soap and shampoo for the tub!
On a more serious note, this place is billed as a retreat which meant we had sketchy internet and no TV. With the weak internet signal in our room, we just barely managed to use our tablet to watch Remco Evenepoel win the Vuelta in an emotional Stage 20. The quiet and peacefulness of the place is notable. After breakfast I sat in the interior garden and worked on the journal and Dave rode into Sopron with his camera. Compared to what we've seen in Hungary up to this point, Sopron looked more prosperous and there was a street market which Dave got to explore.
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While exploring the city, Dave clambered up 200 special steps to the top of the 13th century fire tower.
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A collection of stone carvings, some dating from the 3rd century BCE when Rome controlled this area, were unearthed around the city during various excavations.
The hotel has an audio guide which discusses its past, so we were able to walk around and learn about the history of the Monastery. In short, it started as an Order of the Pauline (out of Poland) and then later it was converted to a Carmelite Nunnery. The women lived in total solitude and never saw anyone from the outside world.
World events intervened and at various times the structure was used as a military hospital, and during the communist era it was a social home (the inmates/patients got a shower once per week). In the 2000s a Hungarian businessman bought it, and spent 18 months renovating it into a retreat center. It was a perfect place for a two night stopover and Dave is even getting to understand that spotty internet is actually okay! That’s what I love about bike travel- you grow! (Me too, I hope). (Dave: I'm not entirely sure what putting up with crappy internet has to do with personal growth, but whatever!)
In the afternoon we visited the mysterious soldiers cemetery down the forest road, which looks like it could be a set for a horror film, especially since it’s starting to feel like fall and it was cool & windy. Soldiers from WW1, and WW2 were buried there with their stark crosses all in a row.
We hiked up to the Gloriet Tower, which was billed as a 20 minute walk from the Monastery, but given yet another Google map drama, it took us about an hour to reach it. The hike up included some steep pitches through a lovely forest as well as some marital disagreement as to the correct route. From the tower you can see a large swath of Austria. The Gloriet Tower was built in 1938, we assume in anticipation of hostilities with the west although since everything was in Hungarian, we can’t know for sure.
Tomorrow we do our long push to Vienna in search of an adapter.
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Washington Post yesterday by the editorial board where they implored the EU to punish him.
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