Austrian "Prison House" on Horror Highway

Voyeuristic visitors flock to see where the latest twisted family tragedy took place

Some people travel to look at places where bad things happened -- some large-scale and public, and others once private: Pearl Harbor and the watery grave of the battleship 'Arizona,' the site of the World Trade Center in New York that became known as Ground Zero, concentration camps in Germany and Poland, New Orleans' still-devastated lower Ninth Ward, the Federal Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam, the Texas School Book Depository and Dealey Plaza in Dallas where JFK was assassinated, plus assorted decommissioned prisons, jails and dungeons all over the globe all come to mind, as do the creepiest, bloodiest displays in wax museums. The latest tourist stop on the horror highway showing man's inhumanity is the house (left) in Amstetten, Austria, where Josef Fritzl imprisoned his daughter in a cellar and kept her as an incestuous sex slave for nearly a quarter of a century.

"Two weeks ago the small town of Amstetten, with a population of 23,000,
was a tranquil place where little of note ever happened," the Telegraph reported.

"But the town, formerly known only for its apple wine production, has been
suddenly put into the spotlight after it was revealed that one of its respected
citizens, the retired engineer and property developer Josef Fritzl, 73, had
imprisoned his own daughter Elisabeth, in 1984 and kept her as a sex slave,
producing seven children with her.

"Two weeks after the story broke, residents are now complaining about the
"ghoulish tourism" that is developing around the Fritzl family house in 40
Ybbstrasse. People are travelling from neighbouring countries such as Germany
and Hungary to visit the street and have their picture taken in front of the
house. According to reports, the three-storey house facing one of Amstetten’s
main roads has also been put on the route of a sightseeing bus tour which now
routinely stops in front of it.

"'It is bad enough that journalists and TV crews have beleaguered our town,
but now there is this ghoulish tourism with people coming to Amstetten just to
see the house in Ybbstrasse. It is appalling, we just want to be left in
peace,'" said one Amstetten resident.

"The house is guarded by police around the clock as over 40 forensic
experts are investigating its interior. One of the officers on duty outside the
house said: 'People are coming especially to have their picture taken in front
of the house. It has become a sort of pilgrimage site.'"

The idealistic side of me would like to think that people come to pay their respect and to memorialize victims of horror and tragedy, but the realist in me knows that, sadly, much of it is prurient interest at best and titillation at worst.

Airline Gains and Losses for Denver

Southwest to add more Denver Flights; Lufthansa to cut back

Good news for travelers to, from and through Denver International Airport is that Southwest Airlines is again adding more flights. Southwest Airlines is adding five new nonstop flights to Sacramento, Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood, New Orleans and Phoenix beginning August 4. From just 13 daily flights a bit over two years ago, the low-fare airline currently operates 61 daily flights and will be shortly adding those above.

Elsewhere in the Rockies, Frontier Airlines' new routes connect Denver with Colorado Springs, Aspen, Durango and Grand Junction, CO; and Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Missoula, Montana; Fargo, North Dakota; and Bozeman, Montana. Some routes are already being served; the last will be Bozeman's Gallatin Field on May 22. Republic Air and Lynx Aviation, a Frontier subsidiary, are flying these regional routes.

Meanwhile, Lufthansa has announced what it currently is calling seasonal suspension of its Denver-Munich non-stop late in October. It is planning to resume service in March. I am not sure how many Coloradans or other Westerners would be traveling to Germany in winter 2009-09, but given the strong euro and anemic dollar, I imagine that many European skiers will be traveling to Rocky Mountain powder -- and for them, the loss of this service is unfortunate.

DIA, the State of Colorado and the Metro Denver Economic Development Corporation provided a $2 million "incentive package" for Lufthansa to inaugurate Munich-Denver service, which started only last year. I don't know what contractual strings we might have attached to the German airline's presence here, but I guess it wasn't enough. Meanwhile, demand for service between Germany and Asia is accelerating, which trumped our incentive payments.

Innovative Service for Internet Addicts Like Me

Service offers combination of connectivity and mobility for travelers

Shortly before I left for Britain, I learned about RoVair, a service that offers wireless mobile broadband (WMB) access. I have no idea just what aircards, datacards and evdo cards are, but as one who now drags her laptop around the globe, I do know what a hassle and/or expense it can be to find WiFi or Ethernet connections while traveling. I have struggled with Internet access at sea, because many cruise ships seem to have Internet centers with painfully slowly service via satellite at dial-up speed. I have paid through the nose in fancy hotels, where you would think that WiFi would be as much an included amenity as it is in many mid-range properties. My laptop and I have camped in hotel lobbies where that was the only place with WiFi service. I have driven for miles and paid usurious per-hour WiFi fees and otherwise sacrificed time and comfort to check E-mails or do some timely blog posting.

Therefore, RoVair's explanation that it is available anywhere there is a cellular signal seemed like a traveler's dream innovation ("hundreds of thousands if not millions of hotspots," the company says). As I understand it, you get a datacard and then use a "day pass" that is activated all the time -- or maybe the datacard and the day pass are the same thing. There are all sorts of other bells and whistles (including a price break for multiple cards and the ability to "light up" other devices elsewhere, which I probably don't need but might be useful for people traveling on company business).

Currently, you order your day pass for a certain number of days with a three-day minimum and return it to the company in provided packaging when the time is up -- sort of like NetFlix. "Soon," RovAir says, "day passes will be available from handy kiosks at airports, hotels, train terminals, shopping malls and other convenient locations."

In any case, card rental starts at $5.95 a day with a multi-day purchase, which made RoVair sound really, really, REALLY good. I was ready to sign up. Unfortunately for me this time, the service is currently available only in the US and perhaps Canada, but not in Europe or Asia.

To read about our trip, see my postings between April 26 and May 7. If RoVair had been in Britain, I could have dealt more easily or inexpensively with these specific situations:

• Lack of Internet access on trains, which was a bit frustrating, because there was an outlet and a table a each seat, which would have made good use of travel time
• The Famous Wild Boar Hotel in the Lake District has no Internet service. We didn't have a car, so took a taxi (£6 each way) to Bowness, where I found a cafe with Internet access at £3 for 30 minutes. We took advantage of being there to wander around Bowness and stay for dinner, but we did have to lug the laptop around.
• In Carlisle, one of the two hotels we stayed at had WiFi only in the lobby at a cost of £5 per hour. The second hotel had no Internet service at all.
• In Edinburgh, we lucked out at a B&B that had free WiFi in the rooms -- the only one of the five places we stayed with such an amenity.
• At the Sheraton Skyline near Heathrow Airport, Internet service was available in the rooms for £5 per hour or £15 for 24 hours. Gulp!

Therefore, I cheer: Go RoVair! I look forward to trying it in the US next time I am on the road, but more significantly, I hope the service is available in Europe next time I go overseas -- which, come to think of it, might be a long time coming given the state of the dollar.

And for anyone who has not yet navigated the rocky shoals of traveling with a laptop but wants to, the Independent Traveler website recently published a primer of what's out there, what you can expect and what you should take with you.

2008 is the Year of the Volcano in Chile

Two major volcanoes eruptions since January impact national parks and resort towns

In January, the central Chilean volcano called Llaima began breathing fire, sporadically emitting lava flows that turned the snow that covered upper slopes into steam and sending an ash column more than 10,000 feet into the sky, as was dramatically captured in filmed reports from National Geographic and CNN. The 10,252-foot volcano is reportedly one of the country's most active, having erupted as recently as 1994. It is some 422 miles south of the capital of Santiago. The nearest town, Melipueco, was evacuated, as were visitors and rangers in Conguillio National Park.

Chaiten, some 400 miles farther south near the Chile-Argentina border has been erupting since May 2, forcing evacuations first from the nearby eponymous town of Chaiten, then the larger and then more distant community of Futaleufo and even moving out military personnel. This was far more surprising. "The long dormant 3,280-foot (1,000-meter) Chaiten volcano began erupting on Friday for the first time in thousands of years, and the huge plume of volcanic ash is clearly visible on satellite images cutting a swathe across South America's southern tip," according to a Reuters report. Airlines have canceled flights to southern Patagonia, because of the potential danger of volcanic ash being sucked into jet engines.

Chaiten's eruption is still going strong (NASA satellite, photo right). It is located in what vulcanologists refer to as the Andean Arc that stretches from Chile, Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. "It is home to 2,000 volcanoes, 500 of which experts say are potentially active. Around 60 have erupted over the past 450 years," Reuters noted. While Argentina is not usually listed as part of the arc, ash has been reported in the Argentine resort of Bariloche in Nahuel Huapi National Park and even as far away as the capital of Buenos Aires. The region is famous not only for skiing at Bariloche but also for Tahoe-blue mountain lakes. As ash, which soared into the stratosphere, continues to fall over a wide region, it could impact the ski season that begins in June, and the lakes might no longer be so pristine.

Britain Travel WrapUp

Northern England and Scotland, on a budget but home with an emptier wallet

I've been a negligent travel blogger. I actually started this wrapup of our week a bit in Britain at the Sheraton Skyline at Heathrow Airport, but I didn't get a chance to finish -- but now I am. We took full advantage of the flexibility of our BritRail passes. Our only pre-planned time was in the Lake District, and after that, we tried to go where the rain wasn't. This was easy call, because it rained and rained and rained in most of the British Isles during our time. We had lots of clouds and a few sprinkles and one true sunny day in Edinburgh.

Here's where we went and what we did -- some of which I have posted here or on my Nordic Walking blog and on my food/dining blog:

Windermere/Lake District - April 23 (afternoon) to April 26 (morning)

Walked private trail on property belonging the the Famous Wild Boar Hotel.
Hiked from Ambleside to Troutbeck over a mountain called Wansfell with extremely limited bus service from Troutbeck to the highway at Troutbeck Bridge, we walk an additional 2 1/2 miles down a lovely country road to catch the bus back to Windermere, from where we walked an additional 1 1/2 miles or so back to Bowness.
In the process, explored the towns of Windermere and Bowness -- and a bit of Ambleside.


Carlisle - April 26 (afternoon) to April 28 (morning)

Guild Hall
Tullie House Museum & Art Gallery
Carlisle Cathedral - evensong rehearsal in progress when we visited
Hiked along Hadrian's Wall


Edinburgh - April 28 (afternon) to April 30 (morning)

Edinburgh Castle, including the Honours of Scotland (Scottish crown jewels), National War Museum, the Royal Scots Regimental Museum and
Museum on the Mound (Royal Bank of Scotland museum)
National Museum of Scotland
St. Giles Cathedral
City Art Centre
Ad hoc sightseeing bus ride (public bus, not tourist bus) that including a good look at the Royal Yacht Britannia, albeit from a distance
Sir Walter Scott monument and
The Royal Mile

We spent the last night at an airport hotel, the four-star Sheraton Skyline, which we booked at a good rate via priceline.com ($125 plus assorted taxes and fees). This American-style hotel is complete with expansive lobby, conference facility, swimming pool in a covered atrium, over-priced restaurant and somewhat less overpriced sports bar -- from which we watched Liverpool and Chelsea duke it out to face Manchester United in the upcoming European Football Championship. The Sheraton was the only hotel we stayed at that did not include breakfast. The add-ons: 24 hours of Internet service for £15 (that's almost $30) and airport shuttle for £4 per person (£8 for the two of us -- or more than $15.

Bottom line is that our trip was more expen$ive than we had anticipated. We tried to be thrifty, but due to the dismal state of the dollar, even thrift was not enough. We had a fine time and saw a lot that neither of us had seen before. We're glad we went, but we'll have to think out our destinations more carefully until the dollar begins to rebound against other currencies.

Security Procedures at Heathrow

Airport security is so annoying and probably so flawed that all I can do is blog about it to vent. While we were in Britain, we heard the news report about a 73-year-old man who managed to drive through a security gate at Miami International Airport and ended up on one of the main runways, fortunately, not when a plane was using it. Authorities speculated that he may have been disoriented. Duh!

With this in mind, we steeled ourselves for the security gauntlet at London's Heathrow Airport. Fortunately, there were no lines on Thursday morning, because if there had been, the many redundant procedures would have taken forever.

1. Before we could enter United's check-in area, someone examined our passports.
2. The counter agent who gave us our boarding passes and checked our baggage also looked at our passports. She also asked whether we had packed our own bags, whether our bags had been in our control since we packed them and whether anyone gave us anything to take along -- particularly pointless questions that are no longer asked in the US.
3. At the main security screening area itself, where two more people checked our passports and our boarding passes, we were astonished that we did not have to take our laptop out of its case nor did we have to remove our shoes.
4. But wait! There was more. We went from that screening area to a second screening area where we again had to show our passports and also to remove our shoes. We sent them and them alone through another device that might have been another Xray or perhaps some kind of explosives sniffing instrument.
5. Somewhere along the line, someone asked us whether any stranger had given us anything to take on the flight -- airport shop personnel presumnably excepted.
6. When we entered the waiting room for our United flight, we again had to present our passports and relinquish our boarding passes, which only returned to us when the final multi-phase screening took place. We again had to remove our shoes, which a security agent turned over to look at the soles. Was she checking whether we might have stepped into something unpleasant? Then we were frisked, not just a casual wanding but a real, hands-on pat-down. And then screeners unzipped every compartment of our carry-on bags and riffled through them. Finally, we were handed our boarding passes and permitted to wait until it was time to board the plane.

Some of these steps are standard and have been for a long time. Others might be required at all Heathrow terminals, or perhaps only for international flights, but I suspect that the final step is special treatment accorded to passengers bound for the US. I'm trying to remember the details when I flew out of Heathrow on British Airways last fall. I am quite sure that there was no separate shoe screening -- and I don't recall quite so many steps in the final pre-boarding security check. Then, the big deal was that the British Airports Authority was claiming to permit only one carry-on per passenger, but that was not enforced and has since been dropped.

When we landed at DIA, cleared immigration, finally got our bags that were so slow in coming up that they must have been put on the conveyor by a one-armed baggage handler and passed customs, we entered the main terminal. There was that recorded announcement from the Transportation Security Agency alerting everyone over and over and over that "the security level has been raised to orange..." blah, blah, blah. I think it's been perpetually on that announcement since the color-coded system was introduced -- except shortly before the last election when it was raised to red.

Four UK Hotels -- Rooms and Bathrooms

A first-hand report on four three-star hotels in three places: Windermere, Carlisle and Edinburgh

We are near the end of a wonderful but dismayingly expensive trip to northern England and Edinburgh, Scotland. We tried to be thrifty, using trains, staying in three-star hotels, going for long walks, rationing our museum admissions and not going overboard for dinners. But with £1 = $1.90, everything is expensive. I think even backpackers' budgets must be strained.

We knew we wanted to spend a few days in the Lake District, but beyond that, we traveled free-form, going where the weather promised to be non-rainy. After the Lake District, when we were deciding whether to go north (English border towns, Scotland), we went north, and when we were deciding between Glasgow (west) and Edinburgh (east), we went east. We lucked out and experienced little rain, despite dreary Britain-wide forecasts, but traveling without much of a plan does carry its financial costs.

Just as a frame of reference for the modest hotel report that follows, five-star hotels are luxurious by international standards, and four-star properties are luxurious by most people's standards. Three-star hotels should be beyond basic and more than merely comfortable.

All our rooms have private bathrooms (called "en suite"). In all four hotels we stayed at, the plumbing was downright bizarre. Sometimes the hot water is on the right, cold on the left -- and sometimes vice versa. In virtually every hotel bathroom, it takes a turn or two of the handles or knobs for any water to come out of the faucet, Speaking of faucet, every sink has one hot and one cold. The British plumbing industry seemingly hasn't figured out that mixing hot and cold in the tap is a good idea so that people can adjust the water temperature on a cold to hot continuum.

Whether firm or semi-firm, every pillow on every bad was flat. Not lumpy, but flat. Some people ike 'em flat; some like 'em fluffy. Flat-pillow fans will be happy in Britain. Bed linens were generally smooth and seem to have a fairly high thread count. Hot-water heat prevailed, with individually adjustable radiators in all rooms we stayed in.

All properties included breakfast, and both English breakfasts and Scottish breakfasts, which are virtually interchangeable, can fuel a tourist well into the day. The whole cooked-to-order meal consists of eggs, bacon (like our Canadian bacon or grilled ham) and sausages, perhaps grilled tomatoes and mushrooms and toast, toast, toast. In addition to (or instead of) these hot breakfasts, every place offered fruit juice, two or three self-serve cereals with milk, sometimes yogurt and usually some kind of cooked, canned or sugared fruit.

Every room had a small television -- often with very few channels but always with good color and crisp picture. Every room comes with a very efficient electric pot for heating water coffee and tea, generally with small cellophane packets of cookies.

Generalities aside, here are some specifics about breakasts, details about our rooms and bathrooms, how much they cost and how we found the four places where we stayed:

The Famous Wild Boar Hotel, Windermere

Rambling country inn full of warmth and charm. Located on more than 70 acres with private walking paths, skeet shooting, pond and other amenities. Access to spa and pool at Low Wood, a sister property, several miles away. Acclaimed on-site restaurant and bar. Not convenient without a car. Several miles from Windermere and Bowness (£10+ and £6+ each respectively by taxi). The bus only runs past the inn two days a week -- at least at this time of year.

Breakfast: Real breakfast menu with good choice of hot items, plus cold buffet with self-serve juices, cereals, stewed fruits, cheese, pastries, sliced meat. Good selection of hot breakfasts, including English breakfast and other dishes. Toast. Coffee ( including espresso drinks) and tea.

Bedroom: Room 24 is a very small room dominated by a very large bed. Pretty garden view.

Bathroom: Long, skinny and windowless with a fan that made a terrible racket. Open the door, and there's the toilet, next to which is the only shelf in the room (that's where the liquid soap, bath gel and shampoo dispensers are inconveniently placed). Separate soaking tub and shower. When water is let out of the tub, however, it bubbles up through the shower drain. It could be worse. The hotel makes commendable efforts to be green and save water -- but requiring three or four flushes to get paper down is going too far. We used a toilet across the hall for anything more than paper. It didn't have such a restricted flush.

Booked through: Visit Cumbria.

Cost: Starting May 1 and running through the summer, rates for a "house room," which is what I think ours was, starts at £34 nightly per person. If ours was a "classic room," the per person nightly rate will soon start at £39. For anyone not on a B&B plan or not a hotel guest, breakfast is £10.75 additional per person.

Contact: Crook, near Windermere, Cumbria LA23 3NF; 08458 509 508 (reservations within the UK) or +44 (0) 1524 844822 (outside the UK).

Lakes Court Hotel, Carlisle

Great location in the center of town, right next to the railroad station. Gracious public spaces. Very expensive (30 minutes, £3) WiFi in lobby and bar only. Also, restaurant in hotel.

Breakfast: Crisply set tables. Self-serve juice, cereal, stewed fruit, packaged pastry. English breakfast. Toast. Coffee and tea.

Bedroom: Room 119 sized like a regular US motel room, but with long vestibule. Simply furnished. Front of hotel, so noisy on Saturday night when all of young Carlisle is out, about and loud. Promotional literature proclaims "romantic" hotel; our room not one of them.

Bathroom: Functional, but bizarre retrofit. Walk into the bathroom at bedroom floor level and step up onto a platform (about 12 inches high) to tub, sink and toilet. Potential booby trap that in the US would be lawsuit waiting to happen.

Booked through: Walked in.

Cost: Sign outside said "Rooms from £90." I asked while my husband waited with the bags and was told we could have a double for £70. We took it.

Contact: Court Square, Carlisle, Cumbria CA1 1QY; +44 (0) 1228 531951.

County Hotel, Carlisle

Old center-city hotel. Great location. Creaky, quirky and kind of shabby, but picturesque.

Breakfast: Self-serve juices, cereals, yogurt, stewed fruit. English breakfast. Coffee and tea.

Bedroom: Smile-enducing Room 112. Enormous and yet sparsely furnished in sort of a bordello style -- red velvet and all. Floors creak. Small distant TV and small refrigerator.

Bathroom: Booby prize. Inside bath room with neither window nor vent fan. Stale swampy-smelling air. Brackets for shelf over sink, but no shelf. Pretentious but ill-fitting mahagony panel fronting tub. Possibly the worst caulking job I have ever seen with thick, wavy line of bright white caulk between tub and dark red tiles. Do they allow kindergartners to caulk tubs in Britain?

Booked through: Walked in.

Cost: Double room, £50.

Contact: 9 Botchergate, Carlisle, CA1 1QP; +44 (0) 1228 531316.

Sonas Guest House, Edinburgh

Charming, whistle-clean B&B on a quiet south-side street, just a few doors from an arterial well served by many buses, including routes directly from the old city and the railroad station. Free WiFi.

Breakfast: Serve-yourself juices, cereals and (hooray!) fresh bananas and apples. White and brown toast. Selection of several hot breakfasts, including Scottish breakfast. Coffee and tea. Fresh flowers on the breakfast table.

Bedroom: Room 4 is lovely, bandbox near but very tiny (about 8x10), plus a small vestibule and a bathroom that is just about 5 feet square.

Bathroom: Tub/shower combination. Nicely tiled. Clean and modern. No window. Good, clearing tilting mirror that accommodates all heights. Vent fan a tad noisy.

Booked through: VisitScotland's Edinburgh tourist information office on Princes Street, above the railroad station.

Cost: "Special rate" of £27 nightly per person in a double. Booking agent said it's normall about £35. Booking fee of £4, but most convenient for afternoon arrival in a large city, where the only hotels near the railroad station are luxury leaders, way beyond our budget.

Contact: 3 East Mayfield, Edinburgh EH9 1SD; +44 (0) 131 667 2781.

Summary

Best Room: Sonas.
Smallest room: Sonas.
Biggest Room: County Hotel.
Best Ambiance: Famous Wild Boar.
Most Convenient: Lakes Court and County Hotels, both in the center of Carlisle, steps from the railroad station.
Least Convenient: Famous Wild Boar -- unless you have a car.

Conclusion

Three-star lodgings bring cost of a trip from the stratospheric to the affordable (with prices, if not plumbing, comparable to a high-end motor inn or even a good hotel booked via priceline.com or other discounter in the US).