I am writing this in my usual position, propped up in bed with my laptop balanced on my lap. I hadn’t been able to do that for a few weeks as the tip of the power cord had broken off inside the socket and gotten firmly stuck there. It has now been repaired and my trusty laptop, on which I have written pretty much all of these musings, is back in service. It is now five and a half years old, about as long as a laptop lasts. I shall replace it next year sometime when I have a little extra money lying about. I need something with a bit more memory as more and more of the ephemera of my life becomes digitized and needs somewhere to repose until such time as I can sort it all. I keep threatening to do that but other things keep getting in the way.

Thursday marked the 25th anniversary of my first day of work at UAB. A quarter century. Coming up on a third of a century in geriatrics as a whole. (That date will be just a little less than a year from now 10/31/24 to be exact – which will be the 26th anniversary of the day Steve and I arrived in Birmingham to begin a new life). I always assumed my career in medicine would span about 40 years – that anniversary is either August of 2024 if we use the day I began medical school or June of 2028 if we use either the day I graduated from medical school or the day I began my residency. No matter how you slice and dice it, I’m looking towards the end game after a life time of saving the world, one patient at a time. Do I end with a bang or with a whimper? Do I continue to tilt at the windmills until, like Don Quixote, I drop in harness? Do I just get up from my desk one day, square my shoulders and walk off into a glorious technicolor sunset while the music swells in the background? I haven’t figured that part out.

I am keeping my head above water at work. It isn’t easy. On the UAB side, my nurse practitioner has departed and it will be some months before we can find and hire another one and I’ll have to cover more than usual in order to keep everything going the way that it should. On the VA side, the leader of our department for the last seven or so years is moving up the ladder and we are uncertain how that will shake itself out. The administration at the VA has been known to make some very odd decisions when it comes to organizing senior leadership and we’re all crossing our fingers that someone who knows nothing of the eldercare world is not installed at the top. My current plan is not to change anything appreciably in 2024 presuming life doesn’t throw me a curveball. Knowing my past history, that may be too much to ask for.

I had first read through on my next show today. It’s a scabrous holiday dark comedy by the same author who wrote the Reindeer Monologues. This one is called ‘Seven Santas’ and it has, for the first half, the same monologue format with different aspects of Santa filling the audience in on the more sordid details of the goings on at the North Pole and then, in the second half, there’s a significant battle of the wills between the various aspects of Santa, Mrs. Claus, and the whole thing becomes a demented twelve step meeting. It’s the sort of entertainment you need after one too many Hallmark Holiday movies with Lacey Chabert. It should be fun. There’s a couple of people in it with whom I have worked before but most of the cast is new to me and I always enjoy getting to know new folk in the theater community.

I’ve had a head cold the last couple of days (home Covid test negative) so I’ve been taking it easy this weekend and not doing a whole lot. I’ve been working on some PR for the book. (It’s available Wednesday but you can preorder on Amazon now if you so choose). There should be a couple of local signings and readings over the next few months. If you have contacts in easy to reach places like Atlanta or Nashville or Chattanooga or New Orleans or Memphis that would like a reading or signing, send them my way. Further afield and I’m happy to do it by zoom unless someone is willing to pick up the travel tab. Several people have suggested that I should concentrate on travel writing for my next project. If you can find someone who will fund the travel, I’ll be more than happy to send a daily stream of travel columns back to the source. I wonder if Conde Nast has an opening.

I am here through Christmas other than a very brief trip for Thanksgiving. Give me strength and memory capacity to learn my lines for this show. At least the next one is going to be easy…

It is finished. Today really needs to begin with a biblical quote. After three and a half years of writing, editing, agonizing, and anemic sales, I signed off on the final proof of the third and final volume of The Accidental Plague Diaries and told my publisher to flip the switches and send it out through the usual channels. It should be up on Amazon by the weekend and I’ll let everyone know when I spot it there. But is it really over and done? I have to get off my butt and see if I can gin up some interest and see if I can get some copies sold and make my publisher happy. I’ve never been good at PR and selling myself. I’ve always kind of hoped that if I do good work, people will notice but that’s really not how American culture works with its emphasis on hype and media attention. It’s no accident why we hear about some things and not others. There’s a multibillion dollar industry out there devoted to making sure we hear about whatever it is their clients wish us to. I’m not part of that landscape. I’m not sure I want to be. I decided a long time ago that I might not mind being famous for having done something of import but I’ve never had any desire to be a celebrity in the modern sense of the word. I prefer to do my grocery shopping without creating a mob scene.

Although the books are done, there are a few more things still to be considered. Putting out an e-book version for Kindle. Doing an audio version (and I would need to do the narration- the material is too personal for an objective voice). The man I sold my Forest Park house to is a professional audio book narrator. He converted Tommy’s wig studio into his workplace where he records audiobooks for a living. I might be able to get a deal on studio time. But I don’t know a thing about editing or distribution to Audible or other platforms. And there’s still the thought about turning some of the material into a Spalding Gray type theatrical monologue/one man show. I have a director who has expressed some interest in shaping the material. Now that I can breathe, I’ll take him to dinner and we can start discussing what would have to happen for that to take shape. Great – another monologue to learn. And one of about ninety or a hundred minutes rather than ten.

This weekend was about children. I got up Saturday morning and trudged out to one of the suburban high schools where I was a judge for the annual Trumbauer competition. It’s the state of Alabama’s annual competition for high school theater students in both performance and technical categories. There aren’t enough theater teachers in the state to act as judges for all the entrants so my theater teacher friends are always reaching out into the local theater community looking for adults with experience who will give up their day to judge. I try to do it every year unless I have something else going on that day I can’t get out of. I usually end up judging a musical theater performance category (although one year I was given classic dramatic monologues – lots of mangled Shakespeare). This year it was dramatic musical solos from the modern literature (1980-2016). The Disney shows were big. Lots of ‘Anastasia’. Lots of ‘Dreamgirls’. A few who didn’t understand the assignment and sang from ‘Godspell’ and ‘Seven Brides for Seven Brothers’. There were some very talented kids. And some… not so talented. But we’re not supposed to say ‘Have you considered a career in construction?” But rather give them encouragement and constructive criticism and focus on what they are doing well. Sometime’s it tough when they’re singing a song from ‘The Hannah Montana Movie’ in a dialect where every word is unintelligible. I and my judging partner did our jobs, passed the worthy on to the state finals, and ate too many chocolate muffins.

I also got up Sunday morning (thank you time change), this time to make it to church and pinch hit in the elementary Sunday school class after service. I’m on the teaching roster but was supposed to be off this week but they were one short so I did my Good Samaritan turn for the week and showed up. (The lesson was actually on the parable of The Good Samaritan and its implications – at least for those 8-10 years old). I enjoy teaching Sunday school. It gives me kid time that’s strictly time limited. At 12:30 PM they are no longer my responsibility. We have a very strict rule at church regarding children. Any activity involving those under 18 must have a minimum of two unrelated adults present to prevent any sort of inappropriate behavior or allegations and we are all background checked. I think that’s pretty standard in Unitarian Universalist congregations and I’ve never heard of the grooming and predatory behavior that seems to happen with great regularity in more conservative denominations happening. This means we always team teach and I am usually paired with someone who has kids or a background in childhood education of some sort.

When I’m working with the kids, I try to remember how I was parented and bring some of those things forward. I encourage them to think through things. I tell them to look things up. I give them suggestions of things to read. They’re sponges at this age, very bright and often come up with some very insightful questions where I have to think a bit about how to answer them with concepts that they can understand. I often do that through storytelling (it makes me feel like a tribal elder). Some of them are from literature or myth. Some from my own experience but they can get the gist of what the concept is from the story and we talk about the meanings of such words as metaphor and allegory. I worry sometimes about what the congregation thinks of the sixty something year old gay man working with kids but I’ve been around so long, they’re used to me and know I’m pretty harmless. One of them asked me yesterday how old I was so I told them. They were surprised. They had decided I was in my late 40s. I was gratified. At least they’re seeing me as a parent figure rather than as a grandparent figure.

I’ve been told I’ve been cast in a holiday show so that will give me something theatrical the next couple of months and I know already what I’m doing in January/February and in April so the season is pretty full. Further details as I know them. Will the books being done leave a hole that needs filling in life? I don’t know. I’ll have to see how it feels over the next couple of months. If anyone wants to introduce me to a literary agent, that person might point me towards something that may sell. I don’t want to get rich but it would be nice to know that people enjoy what you labor over.

Tommy’s father passed away in the early hours of Halloween morning. It was unexpected, as he had not been particularly ill recently, but not a shock as he had not been in good health for some years and was well into his 80s. He was very much an Alabama country boy, from a coal mining Walker county family. He loved his cars, and was an expert restorer of classic models, working with his hands, and his family. I first met him when Tommy was moving out of his previous domicile and back to his parent’s house before he moved in with me some months later. We were dating at the time, but hadn’t yet become serious. Louie Tommy Sr., or LT eyed me a bit suspiciously at first but started to warm up when he found out I was a doctor. It was the beginning of a relationship of mutual respect. He respected me for my accomplishments. I respected him for his integrity and for having sired and raised Tommy.

To this day, I have no idea of how Tommy with his love of music, performance, visual art, cooking, and understanding of systems – human and otherwise, emerged from his family of origin. His family had moved down the hill from Walker county to Forestdale where Tommy grew up and went to Minor high school. As the family were Church of Christ, his coming out as a young gay man in his early 20s sent shock waves through his parents that took some time to heal but people were getting along relatively well by the time I came along some fifteen years later. I guess his parents figured out that I was the type to be in it for the long haul and would be able to support him in his various enthusiasms. His father never did quite figure out what choral music and opera and theater were all about but he would dutifully show up when asked and seemed to enjoy himself. He and Tommy just happened to be two completely different types of people, despite sharing the Sr./Jr. name.

I learned how to interpret LT’s jokes, how to bounce them right back at him. How to make him feel important and how to help him not feel steamrollered by the sometimes forceful personality of Tommy’s mother. Ultimately, I ended up getting along better with Tommy’s parents than he did and have continued in the family circle even after his death for holidays and family dinners. I’m going to miss the old guy but know he was ready to go as his health conditions were precluding his being able to get out in his garage and tinker with the eight or nine cars he had out there in various stages of restoration. Tommy’s brother is going to have to figure out what happens next in that department.

There is a family visitation tomorrow. I shall go to honor and pay respects. It’s going to be a bit rough for me, going back to that same Jasper funeral home for a family gathering in a time of sorrow that I had to go to five and a half years ago after Tommy’s sudden and unexpected passing. He will be laid to rest in the family plot in Parrish where Tommy lies. I shall not lie there when it is my turn. I don’t want to be buried. Feed me to the flames and transform me into ash and wind and water vapor. If someone wants to come along and scatter a bit of me there and a bit of me with Steve in the Ania-Borrego desert, that would be OK. Perhaps there will be a third husband who will require more of me still. I’m not holding my breath.

Rest well LT. See you on the other side.

I’ve been back for a week and you think life would be balancing itself out again, but it hasn’t quite worked out that way. First off, this was rehearsal week for the Alabama Symphony Orchestra chorus. This weekend’s Masterworks concert included the Faure Requiem. It’s not a difficult sing and, with the ASO chorus, the Samford University Chorus and the UAB Chorus all in the choral balcony at Jemison concert hall, my puny contributions weren’t going to amount to much at either sotto voce or full throttle. Two hundred voices is about as big as we get and when that many people belt out Dies Irae at fortissimo, it will make your hackles go up the way they should. I’ve now sung most of the big orchestral/choral Requiems. The one I’m missing is the Britten War Requiem which I imagine they’ll program some time in the next couple of years while I’m still an active singer. It did occupy every weeknight this past week on top of trying to catch up at work which made for some long days.

I am pretty much caught up at work. It took some doing on the VA side as I had several days of not being able to connect properly to the computer system from my home office. We all still have to work from home as they still have not completed the repairs to our building from the flood of several months ago. The rumor is that we will be back in place the second week of November but I learned long ago to distrust rumors in health care settings, especially when federal agencies are involved. I’ll be back at my desk when I’m back. I can’t say I particularly mind working from home as it’s only the paperwork part that has to be done here. My field visits continue as normal. The computer glitches did put me behind a couple of days but I think they’ve all been worked out. The magic solution was to carry my laptop into a VA facility and let it connect directly to their wi-fi. Apparently some needed patch or update sprang out of the ether and into its little electronic brain which could not be transmitted across my home network.

Reintroduction to UAB work life was a little smoother but it didn’t take long for the various pieces of the system to figure out I was back in the saddle and the inboxes, physical and electronic started to fill at a rapid pace. On line portal communication with ones provider, now an industry standard, is a mixed blessing. It really wasn’t used that much prior to the pandemic. The pandemic shifted everyone’s ability to visit healthcare in person and set up a reliance in patients on electronic communications systems – the ease with which this works from the patient end has changed behavior. In the past, patients and families would save up all their questions and concerns for the next appointment and they would come in and we would run their list. Most of the things on their list were usually not particularly worrisome but until there was the imprimatur of the doctor on the answer, it would be a concern. Now, as a question occurs, they fire off a portal message. I sometimes get three or four a week from the same household. Each one must be read triaged and. If it cannot be handled by staff through protocol, sent to me. I read them all – call sometimes, write answers (as succinctly as possible) sometimes, or give instructions to staff how to answer sometimes. It takes a while. The trouble is that most people seem to think that when they hit ‘send’, the message is downloaded into my brain automatically and that they should receive an instantaneous reply. And they send repeated messages when they don’t hear back right away. I will answer, but I may be busy with other patients, out in the field with the VA, or taking a bathroom break and will get to it when I get to it – which is often late in the day. As a tech savvier generation continues to age, this is only going to become more voluminous.

I have no artistic obligations set the next few weeks. This means I can finish reviewing the proof copy of Volume III of The Accidental Plague Diaries so we can announce a publication date. I’ll be glad that the project is done but in some ways, the writing of the books seems easier than the selling of the books. My publisher wants to see if we can move a few, now that the pandemic is starting to be visible in the rear view mirror of societal consciousness and we can read and think about it with less of an immediate negative emotional response. So, if any of you have connections in the book/literary world and want me to do a podcast, book discussion with a book club, interview, signing event, or anything else of the type, slip into my DMs as the kids say. Still don’t know what comes next.

Trying to track what’s happening with Covid in real time has become more and more difficult as fewer and fewer media outlets of any stripe are providing any coverage. I’m glad we all feel that the long nightmare is behind us but I remain unconvinced that we’ve heard the last of Covid. It continues to develop new variants. For the last couple of years, they’ve all been subspecies of omicron but that could change. The most recent variant, HV.1, is spreading rapidly as detected by wastewater surveillance. It doesn’t seem to be causing more virulent disease than other omicrons but every time a new variant emerges, the gods roll the dice and humanity will eventually fail its saving throw. The issue with HV.1 is that it seems to be pretty nimble at evading vaccination immunity from the older immunizations and boosters. The current booster, which became available in late September, seems to do pretty well against it but only about 3.5% of the US population that could benefit from it has gotten it. The expiration of the emergency has thrown back manufacture and distribution on the usual systems without governmental interference and they seem to be working as well as everything else in the health system. If we get a variant that causes really serious issues, we may only have weeks to get an updated vaccine in place and the politicization of immunizations will almost certainly prevent that from happening in our current political climate. People will get sick and die who need not. It’s all very depressing when I think about it too much.

Dateline – Berlin, Germany –

And so another adventure draws to its inevitable conclusion. Just when I’ve adjusted to the schedule and the time zones. One of these days I will be retired and can take more than two weeks or so but that day is not yet. I technically have one more day but as that is again devoted to three flights, four airports and 24 hours of discomfort beginning at 2:30 am local time when I have to have my luggage ready for the bellman so that I can be picked up at 3 AM for my 6 am flight which is the first stage of the long journey home. I should be home late Saturday evening Birmingham time giving me a day to sleep and adjust before hitting the ground running on Monday morning with all of my usual. I’ve decided, as I have to be up in four hours anyway, that I’m not really going to bed tonight. Hopefully that will allow me to sleep some on the transatlantic flight and give me a bit of a head start in terms of adjusting.

The weather remained rotten today. Cold and wet and gray with that damp chill in the air that makes it seem much colder than it actually is. After breakfast, and some more puzzling through Aida and still not understanding some of the more outre directorial and design concepts, it was time for a tour of World War II and Cold War Berlin. As noted yesterday, the city seems to be trying to remove all vestiges of the Cold War as rapidly as possible but there is still one portion of the wall preserved which we saw (not as big and imposing as I had believed it to be but then again there’s no no man’s land around it these days). Other stops included the museum of German resistance, housed in the building in which Stuffenberg planned his Valkyrie plot (and in whose courtyard he was executed), the site of the former SS headquarters (destroyed in the war and not rebuilt and now home to a museum about the excesses of the SS, SA and Gestapo called Topography of Terror, the old Tempelhof airport due to its importance with both the Nazis and the Berlin airlift, and the site of Hitler’s bunker, now a ramshackle parking lot. What is it with autocrats ending up under car parks? Hitler, Richard III. I suppose they’ll discover Julius Caesar under a parking structure off the Palatine next.

The afternoon was unstructured. I started with a walk in the Tiergarten (cut short as it was just too danged cold), a trip to the art museum to see some of the painting collections, and then a nap before dinner. Dinner, as it is the last night, was a highlight. We were bussed to the Reichstag (not really necessary as it was all of about half a km away but when you have a number of guests in their 80s, I can see why they do it). Into the building, after passing through security (all too necessary for symbolic public buildings these days) and then up the elevator to the roof. When the building was rebuilt after reunification (having been mainly a ruin since the infamous fire in 1933), most of the original facades were kept. The original dome, was not salvageable and there was discussion of reconstructing a fascimile of the original or doing something new that evoked the past. This is the idea that won out and the new dome is an engineering and architectural marvel made of glass and steel, open in some ways to the elements, funneling natural light into the parliament chamber through mirrors, and easily toured through a helical system of ramps on the inside. Spiraling up to the top and then down again for the views and then to dinner in the restaurant on the roof of the Reichstag. (Dinner at the Reichstag was not on my life goals bingo card but I can now say I’ve done it). Four course meal with multiple wines. Most of the food was very good other than than a second course of gnocchi with pumpkin that was definitely overcooked. I ate it anyway.

Berlin has made me want to breathe life back into Politically Incorrect Cabaret. It’s 20th birthday is this coming April and maybe we should do an anniversary show of some sort. If it’s going to continue, however, it needs some new blood. The original cast of zanies has aged into middle age and beyond and a few of the key folk have departed to the next realm as well. It needs to be handed over to some energetic folk in their 20s and 30s with an interest in street theater and satire and improv and Berlin Kabarett forms. If we were to do a 20th anniversary edition, I would love to construct it as a passing of the baton to a new generation. If anyone knows some Gen Z type that would be interested in continuing this type of work, send them my way.

This is more or less the end of this particular travelogue. There will be more but I don’t see myself doing anything terribly exotic travel wise for about a year. I’ve got a book to get out, a play, a musical, an opera, and a couple of symphony concerts between now and the spring and maybe even a couple of other surprises which I’m remaining mum about until things become firmer. So there should be something to write about. See y’all on the other side of the pond, If you don’t, all I can say is that there will be several Birmingham cultural institutions who will find themselves with improved cash flow.

Dateline – Berlin, Germany –

Today is Lotte Lenya’s 125th birthday so how apropos that I spend it in Berlin, considering my long association with Brecht, Weill, Berlin Kabarett forms, and other artistic expressions of the Weimar Republic. I will admit to humming some of Pirate Jenny at breakfast. The waitstaff were mystified. But then they all looked like they were born after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

After breakfast, it was out into a cold, dreary day with low cloud cover and occasional drizzle. It couldn’t be more Seattle if it tried. Fortunately, the first bit was a bus tour of the city for an hour or so. I hate seeing cities by bus but it is useful to get oriented and a feel for distances and how the various pieces relate to each other. And it was certainly warmer than walking the streets of Berlin. The city gives me the vibe of New York, had New York geography allowed it to spread sideways rather than ascend vertically, or perhaps Philadelphia (although I haven’t really spent enough time in Philly to truly understand that city and its moods). It’s modern, efficient, full of people intent on getting somewhere quickly.

I had expected the city to be still scarred by 20th century history but it doesn’t really give that vibe at all. Germany is prosperous enough that in the former West Berlin, damaged monuments and imperial buildings have been reconstructed and in the East, they’ve wasted no time pulling down the ugly Soviet style blocks and redeveloping with more classical streetscapes. As a matter of fact, it strikes me that the good Berliners are on hyperdrive to erase the physical signs of East Germany as fast as possible and, in another couple of decades, it will be gone. The wall is fully gone at this point. There’s a decorative cobblestone pattern that traces where it ran through streets and neighborhoods and there’s a recreation of a Checkpoint Charlie guardhouse for tourist photos but that’s about it.

After the bus ride, we ended up on Museum Island with a visit to the Pergamon which has an amazing collection of Babylonian, Hittite, Sumerian and other near east ancient civilization antiquities. This was followed by lunch at a Hofbrau consisting of beer, bratwurst and sauerkraut. I did not eat this last. Cabbage and I don’t agree with each other. I was then cut free of the group and, as it had warmed up a bit, I spent a few hours walking around and taking in the sights.

Then it was time for another impulse visit to the opera, this time the Berlin Staatsoper who were doing Aida this evening. Again, like in Vienna, musically sublime but suffering from modern European director syndrome. I have no issues with non traditional stagings and designs but they need to clarify story and theme, not confuse it. This Aida featured was staged in a white box with various carefully chosen colored fabrics which became flags and such. There were projections ranging from Sinking modern cargo ships to a midcentury American supermarket full of frenzied housewives. (No, I don’t know what they were supposed to mean). The chorus were at times abstract, and then showed up in full 1860s Victoriana for the triumphal scene. Perhaps the hoop dresses were on special at the local department store…. Then there were the clowns vaguely styles on Ronald McDonald. During the boudoir scene, the whole female chorus put on clown faces and long blonde wigs. At another point, at the end of Act II, the chorus produced what I think were supposed to be happy meals and threw them at the audience.

I shall have to think about this one…. But I think I prefer my Aidas with elephants and the occasional diarrheal camel.

Dateline – Berlin, Germany –

Welcome to Berlin. I am a camera. Unfortunately a far more talented writer than I used that metaphor many years ago but I will have to admit that the stories and memoirs of Christopher Isherwood of 1930s Berlin and all of the works derived from them over time have been running through my mind all day. The vamp to Wilkommen being particularly strong in my head as our train arrived at the Berlin Hauptbahnhof (which looks nothing like the opening sequence to the movie version of Cabaret).

The day did not start out in Berlin. It was supposed to start out in Regensburg but low water in the Danube prevented the ship from getting that far upriver. We instead had to get up and packed and off the ship an hour earlier than planned to be transported from whatever little Danube hamlet we could dock at by bus up to Regensburg. Like Passau, I had been to Regensburg before. While Passau is a baroque town that survived World War II relatively unscathed, Regensburg is more gothic having been around since the ancient Romans. (Part of one of their gates to their fortified camp on the site still stands.). It became an important trading center in the later Middle Ages due to its proximity to the Danube and due to their having built one of the few bridges across the river (still in use 800 and some years later). Much of the town center dates from about 1350-1550 and, unlike most other German cities from that era, was pretty much untouched by World War II as it was a provincial backwater in the 19th and early 20th centuries, despite the presence of the Princely House of Thurn and Taxis (who had become and remains exceedingly rich through the invention and maintenance of a reliable postal service in the Middle Ages – their current money comes from brewing).

I did a walking tour, poked my head into the cathedral (one of the towers is covered with restoration scaffolding. Tis the season I guess), and did a little shopping. (You can’t find good advent calendars in the US these days but they remain very popular in Bavaria and I was able to find an attractive selection at the bookstore on the cathedral square.). It was also a bit nippy out with temperatures in the 30s and low 40s so I found a coffee house and had a very good bowl of cream of potato soup and a large latte in order to warm up again.

Then it was time to herd the cats once more and get us to the Regensburg train station in order to catch an express for Berlin. German trains aren’t particularly luxurious and this one was 20 minutes late but it stuck to schedule and got us to central Berlin in five and a half hours after quick stops in Nurenburg, Erfurt, and Halle. Our hotel is the Adlon, famous from pre-War Berlin. Not the original, however, as it was flattened as was most of the city in the closing days of World War II but built in the 90s on what was no mans land outside of Checkpoint Charlie, just yards from the Brandenburg Gate. I can even see the sculpture on the top of the gate from my room window. It was pushing 8 pm by the time I was settled and, as we had no activities tonight, I wandered down Unter den Linden and through the general vicinity looking for something to eat. I found a little Indian place and thought it might be a nice change from schnitzel and fish. It was the blandest Indian food I’ve ever eaten. I don’t know if that’s a German thing or it was just an off night. Up tomorrow to see the city.

Dateline – Passau, Germany

Thank you to those of you who have inquired. I spoke to my father this evening and he is feeling much improved so he should be out of the hospital and back to his usual environs shortly. My brother and sister whom are both Seattle based have everything under control. I would like to be able to check on him in person when he is feeling poorly but 7500 miles makes that a bit impractical. Heck, even the usual 2500 miles is an obstacle.

Today was a relatively slow day. I woke up this morning to chilly temperatures (mid 30s) and put an extra layer on. One of the benefits of a Seattle upbringing is that I always pack for a sixty degree variance in temperature no matter the destination or time of year and can layer up or down for pretty much any climatic shift. We had arrived overnight in the small river city of Passau where three rivers, the Danube, the Inn and the Ils all come together to form the major channel of the Danube on its way downstream. I have been to Passau before, most recently on my Rhine/Danube cruise in 2019. It’s not very big and I figured it hasn’t changed that much in five years (heck I don’t think the historic center of Passau has changed much in the last three hundred years) so I again decided to skip the walking tour of the town and instead boarded a bus headed out into the Bavarian forest.

There, fifteen or twenty of us intrepid souls, went on a nature hike through a Grimm’s fairy tale woodland as designed by Eliot Porter and had a lovely time walking for a couple of miles through the trees, complete with a stop for a schnapps tasting in a closed for the winter beer garden. It was all quite nice. I arrived back at the ship around one and took myself on a walking tour of the town. The weather, which had cleared up for the nature walk, started turning ominous again so I stuck my nose into the cathedral (full of scaffolding as it is undergoing a major restoration/renovation), the town hall area, and my favorite German language antiquarian book sellers on cathedral square. i bought a small early 19th century print of a barber surgeon for my art collection. Then it was time for a nap before dinner.

Cocktails before dinner, wine with dinner and an Irish coffee with the chocolate buffet after dinner put me in a good mood so I finally broke down and agreed to sing with the lounge pianist toward the end of the evening. I sang a few of my karaoke standards and then we dusted on ‘Your The Top’ which was somewhat hysterical as he didn’t really know it and his trying to read rapidfire English lyrics when his first language is Portuguese led to some malapropisms of which Cole Porter would certainly have approved.

We get off the boat in the morning in Regensburg and at some point get on a train to Berlin. As Princess Gloria of Thurn and Taxis did not respond to her invitation to my last birthday party, I’m not sure how much attention I’m going to give the town.

Dateline – Linz and Salzkammergut, Austria –

I was awoken early this morning by the ding ding ding of my phone text alarm. My siblings were communicating back and forth about the health of my father. He is in the hospital but it doesn’t sound overly serious and even though he turns 91 in a matter of weeks, he’s in the right place and in good hands and there’s not a lot I can do from 7500 miles away other than offer kibitz advice when asked. He was improving at last check so I’m hoping for nothing but good news moving forward. I may be a geriatrician but this does not mean I have discovered the fountain of youth for mine or anyone else’s aging parents. So don’t ask.

An hour and a half later, the planned alarm went off and I got up and breakfasted and looked at the weather. We were docked in Linz, close to the border of Germany, and a city I have not been to before. It’s mainly an industrial town so it’s not on the usual tourist itinerary. It was cold and foggy so I put on my winter jacket before getting on the bus and heading south towards the Alps. Most tour companies make the ninety minute trip to Salzburg (a place I have been before but not for some years). Tauck instead opted for us to go to the Salzkammergut, the countryside in the Tyrolean Alps outside of Salzburg centered around a series of Alpine lakes wedged in between the mountains. They made a wise choice. While Salzburg tends to be full of tour busses attending to Mozart and The Sound of Music, the small towns of the Salzkammergut were relatively free of tourists being late in the season.

We started in Attersee (on the lake of the same name). As we pulled into town, the morning fog bank was rapidly dissipating and although it remained nippy in the 40s, the sun was coming out and promising a beautiful day (it did not disappoint). On to a small touring boat for a five or six mile cruise down the length of the lake, with each view more heartbreakingly gorgeous than the last. Then off the boat at the little town of Unterach and back on the bus to wind around the base of the Schafberg to the town of St. Wolfgang. More incredible views including a mountain valley that I recognized immediately as being one which had decorated by 9th grade school binder. I remember wondering when I bought it just where those mountains were. Now I know…. The mountains, the lakes, the meadows, the small farms, the chalets, the onion dome churches. It wa like riding through the opening credits of The Sound of Music and I kept expecting to hear the overture piped in over hidden speakers.

The town of St. Wolfgang, on Wolfgangsee, was lovely and we had a couple of hours to explore the church, the winding streets, and even take a peek at Hotel Weissen Rossl (The Whitehorse Inn famous in the world of operetta), finishing up with lunch in an Alpenhaus restaurant that looked straight out of Epcot. The food was reasonable, especially the cherry chocolate cake for dessert. Then back on the bus and back to Linz past the Mondsee (where the Von Trapp villa scenes were filmed), arriving late afternoon, allowing a couple of hours to explore downtown Linz. (Large baroque central square and a couple of churches).

For dinner, it was the chef’s night to show off with a fixed menu (smoked duck and scallop appetizers, an amazingly good halibut, and a lovely chocolate mousse type dessert) before a musical entertainment in the lounge as we continued our up river sale. The musical entertainment was a salute to Austria. It was cute, but it wasn’t good. We’ve had goo music on this trip in general, but this one needs some help, or some additional rehearsal.

We’re in Passat tomorrow, our last full day on the river. I was also given notice that I have to be ready for my ride to the airport at the end of my trip by 3 AM. I’m thinking, as I will be in Berlin, that I just won’t bother to go to bed that night and sleep on the flights back.

Dateline – Wachau Valley, Austria –

I was right. The melancholia was gone this morning when I got up. Perhaps it was the boat sailing out of Vienna in the night. Perhaps it was the metabolism of last night’s overindugences. Perhaps it was just my brain chemistry going through its normal cycles. Suffice it to say that I arose to greet the day cheerful and back in my usual frame of mind. Overnight we had ascended the Danube from Vienna into what is known as Lower Austria and were docked in the riverside down of Krems. Actually, we were docked in Stein,the town next door but the two have grown together over the years into a single metropolitan area. It’s an Austrian college town of about 25,000 people and 15,000 students at the University of Krems (which seems to be an Ag school specializing in enology). Krems is the downstream end of what is know as the Wachau Valley, the place where the Danube cuts through the Bohemian massif on its way to the Black Sea. (The Alps are in its way to the South preventing it from flowing towards the Mediterranean.

The Wachau valley has been inhabited for about 35,000 years (the Neolithic peoples having been chased down there from the Alps by the various Ice Ages). There were Roman border forts on the South side of the Danube 2,000 years ago to hold back the Germanic tribes (ultimately a failure by the 5th century). The Germans marched through on their way South to despoil the Roman Empire but future generations started to settle more permanently founding the current river towns starting around 900. Krems is one of these. It was never bombed and the only significant battle in the area was one from the Napoleonic wars in the early 1800s and it was out in the countryside. The city therefore is in pretty much the same shape it was in when it became an important river port around 1200 with buildings and streets all higgledy-piggledy as they were more or less thrown up where anyone thought about putting one. It reached it’s zenith in the 17th and 18th centuries so most of the medieval buildings, still standing, acquired baroque facades.

I had a pleasant walking tour through the historical quarter followed by lunch. There was a stop at the city museum but the highlight for me was just wandering the crooked streets and looking up at the equally crooked buildings and feeling connected to folk who had been doing something similar for a millennium. After lunch, it was time for a bit of exercise. Those of us on the tour under 75 (about 1/4 of the total) took to bicycles and cycled up the Wachau Valley on the handy bike paths. As they are paralleling the river, they’re fairly flat. Europe, like America, is creating more and more paved bike/hike trails. Supposedly it’s now possible to bike from the North Sea to the Black Sea. That sounds like something my brother and his family might do some day. I’ll stick with river cruising.

It was about a two hour trip from Krems up through the town of Durnstein (site of Durnstein castle, now a ruin hovering above the town). This is where Richard the Lionhearted was imprisoned for ransom by Duke Leopold of Austria on his way back from the second crusade. (The cost of the ransom and the burden it caused to the ordinary folk of England is what gave rise to the Robin Hood legend). It’s while he was imprisoned here that his faithful minstrel Blondel sang the call and got the response from the castle that let the English know where the Austrians had hidden Richard. Many years ago, I saw a not very good musical in London about Blondel with lyrics by Tim Rice. The best thing about it was a quartet of monks singing in close harmony and acting as a narrator/Greek chorus. I still have the album somewhere. My biggest issue with all of the Richard I legends is how they leave out the most important figure in them, Eleanor of Aquitaine, his mother. She was the real power in the kingdom at the time of his absence, not Prince John. Damned patriarchy.

From Durnstein, more biking up the valley through the vineyards for which the region is known and eventually into the town of Weissenkirke where we said goodbye to our touring bikes and rejoined the ship. I will admit I sang some of ‘Doe a Deer’ while biking through Austria but, alas, I was not wearing the curtains while doing it. The next organized activity was a wine tasting but, as I have been drinking wine all week, I did not participate. I read and took a nap instead until dinner. (Barbecued ribs – let us just say that Austrian chefs need a trip to Alabama to learn a bit more about how to do those…). Then cherries jubilee, complete with flambé.

Heading up towards the Alps tomorrow. It was significantly cooler today. Low 60s rather than high 70s which was comfortable for the bike ride. I hope that continues and that it doesn’t rain.