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.

Dateline – Bratislava, Slovakia

The nice thing about a river cruise is that the hotel basically makes its way from city to city overnight and, as you’re on a river, there’s essentially no water motion to disturb you. Therefore it was another dead to the world for nine or ten hours nights last night. I was up to late for breakfast but even on a river cruise there’s somewhere to find food at almost any hour. I went to bed in Hungary but woke up this morning and woke up in Slovakia (again). This was not difficult as they are opposite banks of the Danube in this stretch of the river. Bratislava is located right where Austria, Hungary and Slovakia all come together – where the river cuts through a chain of hills and out onto the plains of Hungary. I went to the Slovak history museum and now know a good deal more Slovak history than I did this morning.

I have been to Bratislava before. Long term readers of these pieces may recall my last visit in July of 2019 (scroll way down. There are three volumes of The Accidental Plague Diaries in between.) The city hasn’t changed much in 4 1/2 years. Three of them were, of course, a world wide pandemic and sort of slowed everything done. I therefore elected not to join the formal walking tour of the city led by our intrepid Tauck Tours guides and struck out on my own. I wandered through the old city, poking my nose into places that looked interesting, had a cup of coffee at a cafe on the central square and spent a bit of time at the Slovak National Art Museum. (Nothing especially distinguished on the walls). I then decided to venture up Castle Hill, which I had not done on my last visit.

If there is one thing I have learned about Europe over the years, it is that climbing hills and stairs will be involved. All of the castles and other areas of interest are always at the top of the high point due to principles of warfare and defense in the pre-gunpowder era. You have the advantage against an attacking enemy if you’re in a position to drop things on their heads while they’re running uphill in armor. Bratislava castle, which has its origins in Neolithic fortifications, started to take its present form in the 10th century as the kingdoms of middle and Eastern Europe began to take shape around the squabbles of the Holy Roman Empire and the need to defend against the occasional incursions of the Mongol hordes. It was well established by the 15th century and later, the Hapsburgs appropriated it as a royal residence under Maria Theresa and gave it a major Baroque makeover. (Gunpowder and cannon having made castles on hills not so much of a military asset). It was destroyed by fire in 1811 and left a ruin watching over the town as the Austrian-Hungarians changed the name to Pressburg (Bratislava being brought back after the collapse of the Empire following World War I).

It was not until the 1950s that the city set about restoring the castle to its earlier state. The chief restorers were punished by the Soviet authorities for not buying into their ideology that good could only be found in the forward movement of collectivism. The same petty stream of thought that caused Soviet planners to place a Danube bridge and expressway on the site of the great synagogue (destroying it) and across the front porch of the cathedral as a measure of spite for Czechosovakia’s Prague Spring in 1968. But, eventually the castle was restored to glory, the Soviets kicked out after the fall of the Berlin Wall, and Slovakia regained its independence from the Czech Republic with the Velvet Revolution of 1989. The castle is very nice, but there remains work to be done on the interiors and they seem to keep discovering new things as archeological work is done on the grounds. I was most impressed with the grand Baroque stairway. I felt I needed 18th century court costume to walk up and down it.

Back to the old town for a late lunch, more poking around, and then a return to the ship for a nap before dinner as my pedometer was most happy. Dinner was pork tenderloin with apple cobbler for dessert followed by a jazz combo in the lounge who were really quite good, especially the pianist. Not staying up late tonight. Vienna tomorrow. And that’s one of my favorite cities of all time.

Dateline – Komarom, Hungary

Not a lot to report on today as it was spent predominantly on a bus crossing the entire breadth of Slovakia. It was only about 250 miles and I could have done it in about five or six hours driving on my own, but it took us about ten given that a lot of the passengers appear to be a generation older than myself and require frequent pit stops and time to stretch their legs for DVT prophylaxis. Plus a two hour lunch break. The logistics of getting ninety people seated and served rapidly being a bit beyond the abilities of small town Slovakia. Actually, they did rather well given that we were given a relatively full menu from which to make selections rather than an ‘ya eat what ya get meal’.

Up early for breakfast and checking out of the Grand Sheraton Krakow before getting on the bus. The weather was grey but the clouds burned off as the day went along and the temperature warmed making my sweater unnecessary, even in the mountains. The road led South, through the Krakow suburbs and then out into the Polish countryside of small agricultural farms and views of fields and copses. After an hour or so, we began to climb into the Tatras Mountains that cover most of upper Slovakia. Past the Polish ski resort of Zakopane, we crossed the border into Slovakia without my even noticing. (Thanks Schengen Zone). The mountains look a great deal like the Appalachians, reminding me much of all my trips to Southern West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky, only the domestic architecture is mainly Mittel European mountain chalet rather than dilapidated double wide.

Lunch was in the resort town of Dolvny Kubin, which seemed to consist of a lot of winter condos, bare ski slopes, a couple of restaurants, a sad looking souvenir stand, and constant construction. I had the grilled chicken breast on a bed or orzo risotto. It was quite good. (Picture elsewhere). A quick constitutional around the town (which didn’t take long – Pigeon Forge it is not) and back on the bus for a nap. The later afternoon brought us out on the Danube plain with small towns and the remains of Soviet era collective farms, and useless factories and worker housing in the middle of nowhere.

The water is apparently seasonally quite low in the Danube. And, as the next phase of the trip is by riverboat, this was causing some consternation among the tour directors as there are shoals in the Danube downstream of where we were to meet the boat so there was a hasty rerouting of the point of embarkation to Komarom and a bit more time on the bus then expected. Fortunately, the boat did not run aground on its way upstream, the bus did not bottom out on the rough road to the dock and we were able to board the MS Joy in record time and after cocktails and dinner, everyone was in a better mood. (Gnocchi for dinner with lava cake to follow). I am now sitting in the lounge enjoying a Rudesheim coffee, a taste acquired on my last trip on the Rhine and Danube). I knew the bar staff could make it as, as luck would have it, this is the same ship on which I made that journey.

Tomorrow we are in Bratislava. I am going to forego their organized walking tour of the town (been there, done that) in favor of some exploration on my own. If anyone knows of an out of the way sight or point of interest there, drop me a line.

Dateline – Krakow, Poland

I.m turning in relatively early this evening as I have to be up early in order to catch the bus down to the Danube. I don’t know which way we’re going, only I know we catch the boat somewhere outside of Budapest so that involves traversing most of Slovakia. My one kvetch about this trip is that there is no stop in Budapest, one of my favorite cities when we are so close. Ah well, I’ll have to make another trip to pick that up again. I’ve been looking at the river cruise from Budapest to Varna down the Danube and at trips to Croatia and Montenegro so I should be able to add on to one of those.

This morning was a trip to Jewish Krakow. More accurate to say what was Jewish Krakow. In 1939, roughly a quarter of the population of the city was Jewish, about 60,000. Today there are two synagogues with a combined total of less than 300 members. The Holocaust wiped out 99% of the Polish Jewish population – 3 million to about 30,000. And there are cases of the survivors being massacred by their neighbors when they returned to try and reclaim their lands and property after the war. I have noticed that those countries of Eastern Europe I have visited with an authoritarian drift in recent years (Poland, Hungary) have taken to downplaying the role of the native populations and governments in assisting the Nazis, trying to place blame solely on the Germans. The Germans couldn’t have been anywhere near as efficient as they were without local help.

The morning began with a trip to the site of the former Krakow ghetto (made famous by Schindler’s List) where many of the original buildings still stand and the park with the hill from which the Germans watched the liquidation is still very much in evidence. What I had not realized until visiting was the actual geography of events. The ghetto, just across the river from the traditional Jewish quarter, was small, and the thought of 50,000 people squeezed into that urban space designed for about 3500 is discomfiting. The Schindler factory, which still stands, is only a short walk away, just outside of the ghetto borders. (The walls and gates have long been dismantled but there are marks on the street where the gates stood). The factory has been converted into two museums, one about the experiences of war time Krakow (not exclusively focused on the Jewish population and a very good use of multimedia exhibits) and a museum of modern art (which I skipped). The limestone quarry and site of the Plaszow work camp where the survivors of the ghetto were sent under the monstrous Amon Goeth is only about a half mile away, just south of the Park with the hill.

Later in the morning, a visit to the oldest synagogue in Krakow still in use, since the 1500s with some of the original decoration still intact, and its attached cemetery with gravestones stretching back centuries. The walls of the cemetery were constructed in modern times from the pieces of the gravestones from the Jewish cemetery the Nazis destroyed in setting up Plazow where they used the broken pieces for paving. They have been cleaned, assembled into a mosaic of memory and it’s very moving. I then poked around the winding streets for a while before heading back to the hotel for a nap and then drinks with Michele DeVita Goodwin and her husband and sister who just happened to be in town this week as well. Much discussion of Birmingham theater. I then had an early supper of carbonara, tiramisu and red wine before heading upstairs to sack out.

My recent immersion in Holocaust history of course brings to mind the horrific happenings in Israel and Gaza this week. I’ve looked at Twitter and Threads where various pundits are trying to boil down an incredibly complicated and nuanced situation down to absolutes, one way or another. It’s messy. (I smell the fingerprints of the last administration and the likely sale of state secrets behind the scenes). I am no fan of Bibi. I stand with Israel on responding to an attack on their civilian population by Hamas. Hamas, funded by the outside, more or less came to power over the objections of most of the Palestinians and their civilians should not be punished for something they had no hand in. Go after the organization left right and sideways but sweeping the Gaza Strip into the sea, when it’s population is mainly women and children, is not necessarily the way to do it. The Holocaust is still living memory, although the current survivors are now in their 90s and older, despite some political forces desire to rewrite history.

Dateline – Krakow, Poland

There is no rest for the wicked or the weary – or for those booked on European tours. Up early this morning for a walking tour of the old city with an experienced guide who actually knew the stories and the history. My knowledge of Polish history, is hazy at best at baseline, consisting of vaguely knowing of various kings with unpronounceable names and that the country has been somewhat of the piñata of Europe, having been bludgeoned and marched across by various invading powers for a millennia – to the point where it ceased to exist for most of modern European history, having been partitioned between Prussia/Germany, Russia, and the Austrian-Hungarian Empire for most of the 18th and 19th centuries, only coming into being again after World War I. What I did learn today is that Krakow was part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire during this partitioning, and was freer than the rest as the Hapsburgs new they had to allow a certain degree of autonomy to keep such a disparate peoples as the Austrians, the Hungarians, and most of the Slavic states together in a single coalition. I also learned that the city was spared the bombings that ravaged so much of the rest of Mittlel Europa during World War II and that all of the Medieval architecture was indeed original and that the old city still adheres to the plan drawn up after the Mongol Horde sacked the city in the 13th century.

We started out with a short walk along the Vistula to castle hill where Wawel Castle, the royal castle for most of the Polish monarchy sits. It’s a limestone hill with a large cave beneath which was the lair of a legendary dragon (the myth being born out by the discovery of enormous bones in its depths. Modern techniques have shown them to be from mammoths, cave bears, and even a whale rib, dragged there by Neolithic peoples for who knows what purpose. The castle and its attendant cathedral are a mishmash of styles from gothic to renaissance to baroque due to its continuous changing of hands and need for subsequent powers that be to leave their mark. The cathedral is small, as far as gothic edifices go, but richly decorated, mainly with cenotaphs to various important personages and with some rather peculiar baroque chapels grafted on to the main building. The day was cold, gray, and dreary, and it started to rain about half way through our time up the hill so I was letting my mind wander.

Then down the other side of the hill, up the Royal Road into the center of town and a stop at the basilica of the Blessed Virgin. The trumpet of Krakow still sounds hourly from the higher tower, special members of the fire brigade being chosen to play the melody from a window facing each of the four directions every hour on the hour, a sort of medieval smoke alarm continued for tadition’s sake. The melody cuts short of the end; legend being that this is where the watchman, playing the song to warn the town of the impending Mongol invasion, was felled by a Mongol arrow. (Given that this church tower wasn’t built till several centuries after the Mongols, I’m not sure how historically accurate this all is, but it’s a nice tradition.)

After an hour of putting my feet up, it was time to get on the bus to make a visit to Auschwitz. I feel you cannot visit this part of the world without paying witness to the unspeakable for which that word has become synonymous. I know a little about Holocaust history, having done some reading starting at a young age. World War II and its aftermath were the formative years of my parents and I was allowed to look at and read the large Time-Life books about World War II at a very young age and taught to understand what had happened and why. Auschwitz is about an hour and a half out of town in the middle of the Polish countryside, chosen because of its easy rail access and the availability of ready made barracks confiscated from the Polish army. It was grey, wet, the camp streets were full of mud, and it couldn’t have been a more fitting atmosphere in which to walk under the infamous gate inscribed Arbeit Macht Frei.

We spent about an hour and a half at the original Auschwitz camp and then another hour at the nearby Birkenau which was constructed to add significantly more space for prisoners and to function as a death camp for the Jews of Europe. It was dusk when we arrived at Birkenau (we’re relatively far north so dark is coming early) and looking down the tracks through shadows and for to where the selection platform stood was disquieting. My mind was turning another tour group at the far end into a group of SS. I am young enough to have no personal memories of the Holocaust but old enough to have met survivors, to have friends who lost family, to care for veterans were part of the liberation forces and who were tasked with documenting the horrors, and in general feel that it remains part of my formation and life experience. Looking at the exhibits regarding the rise of Nazism and its antisemitism, it is impossible for me not to see the parallels to some of what is happening in modern American politics. The Nazis didn’t start with the Final Solution. It’s where they ended. I wonder sometimes what may happen if certain strains of fascistic American thought continue to grow unchecked. Where will we end up?

One thing I noticed, but I doubt anyone else in the tour group did, was that there was not anywhere in the complex one word or exhibit about those sent to the camps with pink triangles. (In all honesty, I didn’t see everything so maybe there was something I missed). Given the relative conservatism of Polish society (and it seems to be moving in general in the direction of Orban’s Hungary) I wasn’t overly surprised but if the story can’t be told at the foremost site of the Holocaust, where and when can it be told?

After the bus ride back to town, I hot footed it across Old Town in record time to join my church choir director and an old acquaintance for dinner at a very good Polish restaurant. It was a complete coincidence that we happened to be in Krakow at the same time and thought it would be fun to get together. I suggested our next dinner out should be at The Great Wall Chinese place. It’s about 5500 miles closer to the church. Good food and good conversation. And then another trip back across Old Town on foot to my hotel (my pedometer is happy). It was a bit later than I had been on the streets previously and about every 50 yards some young person would sidle up to me and whisper something in my ear as I walked past. Whether they were offering drugs, sex, a combination, or self sharpening Ginsu knives I don’t know as they all assumed I was fluent in Polish. I have no Polish genetics to my knowledge. I’m pretty much 100% British Isles but the locals seem to think I’m a native every time I go into a shop or other establishment. I guess I don’t exude American tourist.

Dateline – Krakow Poland

Ten hours of sleep did much to restore me to my usual state of mind and health and I awoke this morning to a beautiful day. Yesterday’s cloud cover and burned off and the sun was shining but it was still sweater weather with temperatures in the high 50s and low 60s, perfect for city walking. As the organized portion of the tour was not to start until mid-afternoon, I ventured out on my own to explore the Old Town of Krakow on foot. I love European city walking. The old city centers were designed centuries before the internal combustion engine and are very much designed around foot traffic and pace. I had no particular plan in mind, just go wherever the crooked streets looked interesting. My hotel, next to Wawel Castle on the river is more or less one end of the old town, presumably the river port. The old city walls surrounded the medieval fortified town that stretches about half a mile north with most of the interesting sited enclosed within that ring. City walls were made obsolete by gunpowder and most of it was torn down long ago and was replaced by a ring of parkland noted for it’s many old chestnut trees. This being fall, one must dodge the nuts as they come down.

I skirted the castle (a visit is scheduled for tomorrow) and headed up into the center of the old town to the market square dominated by the cathedral, some covered markets, and what I take is the national academy of music. (Live choral and orchestral music throughout the day – they seemed to be doing symphonic arrangements of The Beatles as I was nosing around. Eleanor Rigby is recognizable even with Polish accents.). Some shopping, some marveling at medieval design and architecture (although I think a lot of it is reproduction, replacing WW II damage), some walking. A stop at a chocolate shop for hot chocolate with cayenne and cinnamon. Chocolate bars seem to be as plentiful as coffee shops.

I have not yet figured out the intricacies of the Polish language. Words all seem to have a surfeit of Js, Ws, and Zs, not enough vowels, and the pronunciation seems to have little in common with the spelling. I’m sure there are rules but I’m not likely to learn them in four days. Fortunately, English being the most international European language currently, most things are signed in English as well. I try to see if my in my head translation from the Polish has anything to do with the actual English when I do peek. Perhaps if I start watching Polish TV. I started to figure out a little Hungarian that way,

This afternoon was a new experience, a tour followed by a four course formal dinner 400 feet underground in a decommissioned salt mine. They were actually mining salt here form Neolithic times until they ceased mining operations in the 1990s when they figured out they could make a great deal more money by opening to tourists and have them travel through hundreds of years of mining history and technology carved into the salt deposit. (A prehistoric inland sea that dried up leaving a salt pan that was converted to rock salt over millennia of geologic processes). Many galleries, chambers and steps carved from rock salt, most of what we saw dating from the 17th century but we covered very little of the total despite two hours and several miles of walking. The dinner, in a formal dining room carved out of rock salt with chandeliers decorated with salt crystals was very good.

I lie when I say that the mine no longer produces salt. It no longer produces mined salt but they have to keep pumping water out of it, as all mines much, and as the entire rock structure is salt, the pumped out water is brine. They let that evaporate and harvest that salt for sale and export. Best of both worlds. I have a small bag of it, a lagniappe from the dinner, which I will add to my spice cupboard when I get home. Tommy would approve.