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.

Dateline – Vienna, Austria –

I’m feeling a bit maudlin tonight. Perhaps it’s the autumnal aire tragique of this faded imperial city, full of monuments to what once was. Mind you I’m not recommending the restoration of the Austro-Hungarian Empire by any stretch of the imagination but the city is full of baroque and art nouveau masterpieces of architecture slated to govern far more than modern small and landlocked Austria which seems to revel in past glories, like Mozart, Strauss, and the film version of The Sound of Music. Or maybe it’s the pre-dinner cocktail, the champagne toast, the wine with dinner and the liqueur as a digestif after dinner that are making their presence known. I don’t drink a lot as I don’t like drinking alone. I do however indulge on trips such as this or at all inclusive beach resorts. I do try to pace myself. No one wants to see 61 year old me drunk off is ass it public. It wasn’t a pretty sight even when I was in my 20s. At least I’m a quiet and happy drunk. I sit in a corner somewhere and sing show tunes until I fall asleep. For this trip, this means singing along with the on board piano guy. He tried to hand me a microphone tonight. I refused. I’m willing to sing for him in my slightly inebriated state but not for the passengers at large. That may eventually change, but not tonight and not without a modicum of rehearsal. I am of the opinion that you can improv with spoken word all the time but you should never improv with music – unless that’s what the audience wants.

Where was I? General feeling of melancholy. It will probably be gone in the morning. My moods rarely last long. Usually there’s something unresolved in my psyche that prompts them. I don’t think it’s the dead husbands as my trips to continental Europe have all been either before or after both of them. Maybe it’s work. I’ve tried to leave most of that behind but the occasional person in the system doesn’t recognize I’m seven time zones away and sends a page or a text message to which I tersely reply ‘Can’t help you – ask someone else’. Maybe it’s a bit of twilight of career conflating with twilight of Empire. Maybe I’m overthinking all of this, but that’s one of the things I do.

After breakfast this morning, I tagged along to a rehearsal of the Vienna Residenzorchester, an ensemble that specializes in Viennese music and which puts together ballroom sized ensembles and orchestras for concert in the park performance and the like. They were brushing up on some Mozart and Strauss (and I am very suspicious the pieces the pieces they were rehearsing were chosen with a tour group in mind). It was a 16 piece full orchestra and the rehearsal was in the ballroom of the Auesperger palace which dates from the early 1700s. I looked up the Auespergs. They’re minor Holy Roman Empire princelings from what is now Slovenia so a palace in 18th century Vienna would have been de rigeur. It was all very nice.

Then I set out on foot to the Belvedere, Prince Eugene of Savoy’s magnificent palace on the hill overlooking the central city. I’ve always loved the building (and I am usually not very fond of the baroque but the proportions on this one are just right) and it has been a while since I had been in to see the Klimts. Steve loved Klimt. He had a number of Klimt prints, one of which still hangs on my wall. I really like his stuff to. One of my theater projects that never got off the ground – I was going to direct A Little Night Music and use Klimt as the basis for the visual look, not so much all the gold work but the stylized flowers and trees for the exteriors and the gold spirals for the interiors. Maybe some day.

Then back across town, lunch at the Cafe Savoy and some poking around the Naschmarkt which is the Vienna version of the Pike Place Market only they don’t seem to throw fish at you. The proprietors seemed quite content to let the goods rest on their shelves and in their cases. By this time, I had been walking for about six miles and I was tired so I went back to the ship for a nap before dinner.

Dinner tonight was a grand affair at the Pallavacini palace near the Hofburg. I looked them up to. They were a noble Northern Italian family form around Genoa who seemed to marry up and ended up with various titles from the Holy Roman Empire and at one point in the Middle Ages were running what is now Northern Greece. Anyway, they built their palace in Vienna in the late 1700s and apparently still live there on the upper floors. (The story being that a guest on a prior tour punched the wrong button on the elevator and ended up in their living room rather than the banquet hall). The lower floors with the state rooms are rented out for formal dinners and such so a lovely four course meal accompanied by members of the Residenzorchester from this morning along with some decent singers and dancers in a program of Viennese musical styles – including operetta, opera, lieder, and the usual Mozart and Strauss.

We are now sailing up the Danube and spend tomorrow in the scenic Wachau Valley. I have been told bicycles will be involved. Better take extra Tylenol in the morning.

Dateline – Vienna, Austria

Another day, another country, and only about 30 nautical miles upriver from yesterday. Perhaps the only two world capitals closer in distance are Rome and The Vatican City. Vienna has been a favorite city of mine for decades. On my first trip to Europe (forty years ago next summer) it was the city that most spoke to me. I’m not sure exactly what it was but I think it was the autumnal feeling of lost elegance and the fact that there was live classical music almost everywhere you went. I could see myself living out my days in coffee shops and antiquarian book stores tucked down little art nouveau alleyways but I don’t think I could afford it. Plus my German isn’t all that good. I took a little bit in college and it allows me to make sense of street signs and newspaper headlines but that’s about it. There’s probably some John Irving influence there as well. I read The World According to Garp and The Hotel New Hampshire both right around that time and they probably left a bit of an imprint of literary Vienna on my memories of actual Vienna.

The weather was glorious today. More June than October and perfect for running around the city on foot. A bit chill in the morning requiring a sweater but that was gone by about 10:30 AM. The organized activity in which I took part was a walking tour of the old Jewish quarter. It’s now known as The Bermuda Triangle as there are lots of nightclubs and bars and people head out there on weekends and sometimes aren’t seen for days afterwards. The Jewish community and the City Police are very cognizant of events in the Middle East and, as there have been militant Muslim attacks in the city in the past, security is a bit heightened. The main synagogue was patrolled by armed guards but I saw no signs of any sorts of demonstrations or anger. I’ve been contemplating the role of religion recently. As our unit of evolutionary survival is the tribe (not the individual), tribalism is hard wired into our brains and we sort the world into ‘us’ and ‘them’. As civilization started to take shape and it became necessary for groups of people who didn’t know each other well to trade and cooperate in various ways, mechanisms for overcoming that hardwiring had to come into being. One of the central tenets of all great religious traditions is that of hospitality and welcoming the stranger. Religion, especially the great three monotheistic Abrahamic ones, use this to turn ‘them’ into ‘us’ through shared belief and positive example. Anyone who interprets those doctrines for exclusionary purposes (and there is a lot of that these days) perverts the underlying credo of the faiths. It’s one reason I remain a good UU. We welcome everyone (and we mean everyone). Is that difficult at times, of course it is but no one said life is easy. But enough of that tangent.

The tour was interesting. The guide was knowledgeable about 1000 years of history of the Jews in Vienna and their contributions both to the city and to the world at large. 65,000 of them were murdered in the Holocaust. The memorial is a locked temple made of stone carved to represent 65,000 unwritten books. That’s symbolism I can get behind. When the tour was over, I found a nice sidewalk cafe and had a piece of Sachertorte and a coffee with orange liqueur, both mit schlag, as one must do in Vienna. Then on my own self guided walking tour to the museum district, the Hofburg, the Ringstrasse, the Stadtpark and other destinations.

While wandering around, I passed by the Vienna Staatsoper. I’ve always wanted to attend a performance there (it was somewhere on the bucket list, likely added by Tommy) so on a whim I googled what was happening tonight (as we have two days here so the ship wasn’t going anywhere). Luck would have it that they were presenting a new production of Il Trittico by Puccini and after a little noodling around, I found the last ticket available for on line sale. It was a great seat and I’ve been relatively frugal this trip so I splurged. Then I looked at what I was wearing so I stopped by a haberdasher’s and bought a new summer sport coat off the 75% rack so I wouldn’t feel too slovenly. A quick dinner and off to the opera.

How was it? Musically fabulous. Sixty some pieces in the pit playing Puccini is going to fill any hall with a lush, romantic sound. The singers were all terrific as well. The only one I had ever heard of before was Michael Volle who sang the lead in Il Tabarro. He was apparently a late replacement for someone else who had fallen ill. For those of you who are not opera buffs, I’ll Trittico is a triptych of one act operas that Puccini composed to be performed together. It’s almost never done that way. The pieces, especially Gianni Schicchi, are usually done as stand alones or paired with other one acts by other composers. (Opera Birmingham did a double bill of I Pagliacci and Suor Angelica about ten years ago for which Tommy and I were in the chorus). It’s very rare for a company to do all three together in the way Puccini intended. The evening is a bit disjointed. Il Tabarro, is a dark tragedy on the waterfront of Paris, Suor Angelica, the middle piece is an all female piece of sin and redemption that takes place in a convent, and the last, Gianni Schicchi (which contains the night’s hit tune O Mio Babbino Caro (you know it)) is a farcical comedy involving a dead body, a conniving family and an unscrupulous lawyer. This production suffered from modern European director syndrome. The set was movable walls painted to resemble concrete. Props and costumes were minimalist (other than for the last which was set with the family coming in from a Halloween Carnival) and periods were hard to distinguish. It was also the most successful of the three given the knock about Weekend At Bernie’s comic staging. Suor Angelica was thrown off kilter by some directorial choices which marred the redemptive ending. Il Tabarro was full of supernumeraries who kept marching across the stage for no apparent purpose.

Still in Vienna tomorrow. Not fully certain what I’m doing yet. I’m sure I’ll figure it out.