Smoked Beer and the Ghosts of Nuremberg

                           SMOKED BEER AND THE GHOSTS OF NUREMBERG

                                                                 HE SAYS:

After visiting Bamberg yesterday, we have now arrived in Nuremberg where Eleanor and I have decided to pursue  our different interests: she by singlehandedly supporting the declining Eurozone economy by shopping,  while I go on a World War Two tour to visit a number of sites related to Germany’s Nazi past, including the parade grounds where the infamous Nuremberg rallies took place, the Palace of Justice’s famous  Room 600 where the Nuremberg trials were held, and the new Documentation Centre with its museum.

Yesterday, we briefly visited Bamberg, a bustling city of 80, 000 people, with timbered houses, founded in 902 AD. The city had a Jewish community dating from at least medieval times, but it was destroyed during the Nazi era. Today, it has a small Jewish population of 1, 000 people, replenished from Eastern Europe, with a Reform temple and a woman rabbi.

The town is famous for its smoked beer which tastes something like smoked ham. Actually, it isn’t all that bad and has a frothy, malty taste, and after the first gulp it tastes like any other beer. Yummy….

Half of our trip down the Main-Rhine-Danube Rivers through Central Europe is spent in Germany. Therefore, it is entirely appropriate that we visit Nuremberg, one of Germany’s most famous, or infamous, cities. The city was originally founded because of its centrality to trade routes and was the capital of Germany from the 12^th to 16^th centuries. It was also known as an artistic center for the Northern German Renaissance; Albrecht Durer lived and worked here, and his famous etching of the Four Men of the Apocalypse would portend the future.

In the popular mind, Nuremburg is perhaps best remembered for the infamous torchlight Nazi rallies. Less well known it the fact that a young German worker by the name of Eisner attempted to assassinate Hitler during a Nazi party dinner there by blowing up the beer hall. Eisler was immediately captured but wasn’t executed until just before the end of the war. (She says: A plaque was erected in the town in his honour.  Yesterday, a huge bouquet of fresh flowers had been placed right underneath, with a note in German, dedicating them to Herr Eisner with many thanks.)  Prior to the war Nuremburg had a Jewish population of 8, 000, 80% of whom survived. Today Nuremburg is a modern and interesting Germanic city, with severe architecture, and a population of 500, 000 people.

During our World War Two tour in Nuremburg we saw:

O the Zeppelin Field, where the infamous torchlight Nuremberg rallies took place. The Nuremburg rallies fostered and re-enforced a key tenet of National Socialist (Nazi) ideology, namely, gemeinschaft – a sense of community (Max Weber) – and Volksgemeinschaft (national community). These ideas were one of the ideological foundations of German fascism and were re-enforced by folk and popular culture among people who had been atomized and traumatized by the Great Depression;

O The incomplete Nazi Kongresshalle (Congress Hall), which was intended to be the Nazi party HQ and marching field for the party leadership cadre;

O The Palace of Justice, Room 600, where the first and best known of the 12 Nuremburg trials took place. The first trial saw 21 leaders of the Nazi Party tried on four (4) charges, 18 defendants were found guilty of various charges, note below, and 11 were executed. The well- known film, Judgement at Nuremburg, with Spencer Tracey, recounted a later trial of Nazi judges.

O The newly completed Documentation Center with its well curated museum. Some of the exhibitions, such as the original trial indictments, were fascinating.

 O Regarding the Nuremburg trials what is not ordinarily known is that Churchill and Stalin had reached an agreement whereby 70, 000 German officers would be tried by summary court martial to circumvent formal trials. FDR objected and told the US Dept. of Justice to take over the prosecutions; an exiled German lawyer developed the contentious doctrine of crimes against humanity.

Four sets of charges were brought against the Nazi defendants:

O Conspiracy to commit murder;

O Violation of international agreements;   

O War crimes; and

O Crimes against humanity – this as a legal concept, or a criminal charge, didn’t exist until the Nuremberg trials; effectively the Allies made the law as they went. The German defense was that they couldn’t be tried on a charge that didn’t exist (“unknown to the law”) in law. In short, a person can’t be tried on a charge that doesn’t exist, or after the fact. In terms of a formal defense they were quite right in terms of longstanding common law legal tradition. Prima facia the Allied judges violated this precept, but then the victors write history and the law. Legal historians still debate this issue and the propriety of using the doctrine of crimes against humanity at that time before it was incorporated into international law. All the defendants, however, were found guilty on all four charges and executed by hanging two weeks later.

But I am introspective: Today the Zeppelin Field is overgrown with weeds and covered with debris; it looks like a set from a bad western. It has been allowed, deliberately, to deteriorate. The marching field itself has been covered over with concrete with pylons and fences. It cannot be used. The granite review stands which formerly were used by Hitler and Nazi party officials that overlooked the field, today have weeds and small shrubs growing from the stonework. Most of the world’s best rock bands have played here, and on weekends skateboarders and amateur racing car drivers come out. This puts a new meaning to dancing on someone’s grave.

It would be nice to say something profound like, “ashes to ashes”, but the setting is actually quite surreal. And this monument to barbarity which was to survive for a thousand years now seems like Coney Island or a dilapidated theme park. No one really cares any longer what happened here, and that truly is the “banality of evil.”

The erratic and overcast weather that we have been experiencing has now become sunny and 27C - great weather for spending all day tomorrow in Regensburg. The wine and cheese are great on this cruise, as is the cuisine in general; and we seem to have found our social niche with our two Southern Belles two California babes and a really nice gentleman (American turned Australian). Today for lunch we had pasta with three different types of sauce. Mozart wafts in the ship’s hallways with their old maritime maps. Sucks to be us….

Hopefully, the new venues will allow me to focus on and enjoy less weighty subjects in the future.  (She says: I guarantee it.  We’re heading into chocolate cake with whipped cream territory.)

We have just entered the Danube, and our adventure continues….

Urban Renewal and the Graveyard of History

                                              URBAN RENEWAL AND THE GRAVEYARD OF HISTORY     

                                                                              HE SAYS:

Our river boat glides down the Main River as we watch the quiet, green shore line with its overgrown vegetation, occasionally littered with tourist rec vehicles in camp sites. There is a gentle mist falling which will become a downpour. Now, today, the river is, literally, quiet as a grave yard. And the metaphor is all too appropriate as I think about what I have seen.

Some random retrospective and prospective thoughts….

O The Jewish community in Cologne, which we visited two days ago,  was reputed to be the oldest in Europe with a population of about 30, 000 in 1933; at the war’s end the population was only 3, 000. Today, with the influx of Eastern European immigrants, it has a population of 8, 000 and boasts a new (Conservative) synagogue.

O As we left the boat to board our buses for our tour of Koblenz there was a tall, guff gentleman behind me who growled, “Why are we visiting Koblenz?  I thought we bombed it flat.” There is an unarticulated, but real low-key tension between the nominally apolitical tourist experience of most, and the cloud of memory of others, and the historical amnesia of the locals.

O We leave for our tour this morning to Wurzburg, a colorful, small-large town with a mixed economy; however, it is best known for being a university town. The local Franconia white wine was nice, but the town is otherwise non-descript, being a mixture of old timbered houses and post-war modern archtecture. One of our German tour guides says that the town was spared saturation bombing until the end of WW II when it was fire bombed. The woman next to me whispers, “What are they complaining about?  They got free urban renewal.” This tension is glossed over with a benign smile.

O We visited Miltenberg, in Bavaria, yesterday. Our guide, Bridgette, was superlative – knowledgeable, bright and enthusiastic. She knew her local history and had a feel for small town (10, 000 pop) life and politics. She bragged that the mayors in Bavaria, who evidently have a good deal of political power, in the 1930s rejected the lured of National Socialism (Nazis). But even she, who is strongly anti-Nazi, didn’t know that it was the Bavarian Peasants’ Party that threw their electoral support to Hitler so that he could be elected.

After the formal tour she also took us, at our request, to the local Jewish cemetery. Interestingly, it was desanctified in 1904 (yup) after the entire Jewish community left for some reason; it was never used again. We contemplated this experience over a beer in Germany’s oldest beer hall.

At the beer hall another person who knew the local scene told us a blood curdling story. A few years ago her then teenaged daughter found out that there was a group of students and townspeople getting together for a meeting, but she wasn’t invited because she was of a mixed marriage, and wasn’t considered to be fully German. As it turns out, this group of students, adult townspeople and grandchildren of local Nazis had dug up Nazi paraphernalia that had been buried after the war and were now having Nazi marching drills in a cellar. As well, there had been a large and unchallenged neo-Nazi demo in this town only a few years ago.

This is the ugly underbelly of the new Germany. Notwithstanding denazification, and saccharine platitudes, Germany still suffers from historical amnesia, as do the Austrians and the Japanese. The recent historiography on German fascism has emphasised how the Nazi movement took root  in small towns and tries to answer the questions: Why did people support the Nazis? and, why did people follow orders? The most cogent study in this genre is Ordinary People by Browning.  And what this study shows, simply, is that ordinary people did unspeakable things in the name of security, employment, community, and ideology. But historical amnesia leads to the graveyard, both for victims and victors.

My lengthy op-ed piece in The Ottawa Citizen (Aug 28, 2011) demonstrates that genocide is an old as human history, and that no one group, religion or ethnic group has a monopoly on misery or being victims; we should honour all of the victims of genocide throughout history. Promo Levy, the famous Italian writer and holocaust survivor, wrote a New Yorker Magazine piece a few years ago trying to explain the dynamics of racism, and said that “Everyone wants their Jew. Now the Israelis have the Palestinians.”

We all make a mistake if we think that it can’t happen again, or that the most overt symbols such as torchlight parades or black jack boots are necessary to announce the arrival of fascism. And we should understand that fascism doesn’t have to be racialist. It was Mussolini who once said that, “We are not anti-Semites, we are fascists.” In short, fascism has many faces.

ROLLIN' ON THE RIVER

ROLLIN’ ON THE RIVER

She says:

After 6 days on the boat, we all seem to be falling into a comfortable routine…not too difficult to do, since the Andrew, the Program Director, and his staff make it so easy for us.

Every evening just before dinner, Andrew holds a quick briefing in the cocktail lounge to give us an outline of what’s in store for the following day.  When we get back to our cabins after dinner, there’s a copy of the “Viking Daily” on our turn-downed beds that gives activity times on one side, and a brief description of the shore visit we’ll be making on the other side.  I don’t agree with my esteemed co-author that we’re over-regimented, and that we’re sometimes like rats in a maze trying to find some free time.  There’s no Day-Trip Nazi with a clipboard making sure we follow a tight schedule; if we choose to sleep or read all day we’re welcome to, but if we want to be occupied, there’s a lot to keep us entertained. 

Every day, there’s an excursion of some sort on shore.  So far, most have been in the morning, which means getting up earlier than we usually like to on holiday, but since we’ve had to adjust to a 6-hour time difference anyhow, we decided we’d be able to adjust to a 6:30 wake-up time as well, and so far we’ve been  on time every day.

A typical day goes like this:

For early risers, there’s a light breakfast in the lounge (coffee, juice, and pastries) starting at 6 AM and continuing till 11 for those who sleep too late for the fabulous dining room breakfast that runs from 7-9.   In the dining room, there’s a buffet: fresh fruit, yogurt, steel-cut oatmeal, muesli, cold meats and cheeses, fabulous breads, rolls, and pastries, and a hot table with scrambled eggs, bacon, sausages, home fries, baked mushrooms, baked beans, etc.  There’s also a chef at the buffet who makes omelettes to order, and if you don’t see anything you like, you can order from a menu that includes pancakes, French toast, and Eggs Benedict.  We aren’t worried about the calories because, according to our waiter on the first day, there are no calories in any of the food served on this trip.  If you can’t trust your waiter to tell you the truth at a time like this, who can you trust?

They tell us that at 7 AM every morning we can go to the upper deck (or to the library if it’s raining) for Qi Gong exercises.  What’s that, you ask?  How the heck would we know?  Who’s awake enough to exercise without coffee?  But I’m sure it’s healthy.

While shore excursions are usually walking tours of towns, cities, World Heritage sites, or castles, and are usually led by local guides who really know their subjects, occasionally we’ll meet in the lounge and be briefed by a local expert beforehand and then go ashore on our own with a map to explore.  There’s always plenty of time after a walking tour to do some more wandering on our own, whether it’s to shop, visit a museum, or hunt down a local pub and sample the local food or drinks.  Throughout the trip, there are also optional tours with an additional cost that people can choose to take: bus trips to other towns, pub crawls to sample local beers, a classical concert in Vienna, etc.  Shore excursions can last anywhere from 2 or 3 hours to half a day, depending on the attraction we’re visiting. 

Back on the boat, there’s plenty of time to sit and watch the river going by, to read, or to sit in the lounge and sample the cocktails.  Often, local people come on board to speak or perform.  So far, we’ve had an expert on the old dykes and windmills at Kinderdijk, a man who talked and answered questions about Germany today, a talented trio who played the works of several German composers, and a glass blower who entertained the group with entertaining running commentary as he demonstrated his skills at the front of the room, making glass figures and candlesticks. 

Lunch can be eaten in one of two places.  The lounge serves soup, salad, sandwiches, and a few surprise items in a casual setting.  Yesterday they announced that it was German street food day and served sausages, pretzels, meatballs, German potato salad, berliners (jelly donuts), fresh German peaches, strawberries, plums and apricots,  tray after tray of desserts and all the beer we could handle.  The dining room is more formal, with a salad bar, breads, pasta, local pates and cheeses, and a changing daily menu that offers regional specialties like Dutch veal stew or roast German pork, and hot sandwiches.  We quickly learned that the dining room has a huge advantage over the lounge for lunch: it serves free wine, and the wine’s delicious.  It’s also the best place on the ship for great coffee.

At 3:30 there’s usually coffee with a sampling of regional desserts.   A couple of days ago, the chef gave a demonstration on how to make Rudesheimer coffee, a process that involves melting sugar over a flame, pouring German brandy over it, adding it to hot coffee, and topping it with a mountain of cream.  Delicious, but potent stuff!

6 PM is the start of the cocktail hour.  Near the lounge, there’s a wall of machines that serve free coffee, espresso, cappuccino, latte, hot chocolate, and tea 24 hours a day.  There’s always free bottled water available, as well, and generous quantities of good-quality wine are free at lunch and dinner in the dining room.  All other drinks must be paid for.  When we came on board, we were introduced to an optional plan that provided all the drinks you wanted for 2 weeks at a low price: 299 Euros (about $375) for the 2 week cruise.  We decided that we’d never be able to drink that much, so we pay as we go, but this is the time of day when it’s easy to see who opted for the plan and is working hard to make its cost worthwhile by working their way down the list of available cocktails. 

At 6:45, the Program director goes through the next day’s itinerary and then the chef runs through the evening’s menu and the accompanying wines of the day, and we all rush into dinner as if we hadn’t been eating all day.  To start, the menu will have 2 or 3 appetizers, plus a soup and a salad.  Memorable examples: wild mushroom soup, lime-marinated jumbo shrimp with mango salsa, and the best crab cakes I’ve ever tasted.  Main courses usually consist of a meat or poultry, a fish or seafood, and a vegetarian option: seared scallops, roast duck, macadamia-encrusted black cod, to name a few that I’ve enjoyed.  Desserts include fruit, ice cream, sorbets, and regional specialties like plum cake and nut pudding.   As the chef (who looks as if he loves his own creations) always says in his nightly briefings, “Yummy, yummy”. 

Dinner ends around 9, and then it’s back to the lounge where Konstantin, the pianist, usually entertains as we sit and talk to our fellow travellers.  At least, that’s how it starts.  Then he’ll play a familiar song and people start to sing along to the Beatles or other ‘60’s songs.  Then a few will dance, and Konstantin encourages participation with a few more familiar songs.  One advantage to being on what a certain cynic calls a floating geriatric ward is that we all enjoy the same music...and I’m not talking about Bach or Beethoven. One night we had a silly trivia contest before the music started, dividing into teams and trying to answer tough questions like “How many 2 cent stamps in a dozen?” or “Why can’t a man living in the US be buried in Canada?”  Andrew told us in advance that the questions would require thinking outside the box.  You know me; I LIVE outside the box, so I spent the night telling my team members they were trying too hard.  There are 12 of everything in a dozen, and men who are living anywhere can’t be buried because they aren’t dead.  What was the US president’s name in 1980?  Well, what was YOUR name in 1980?  He was Obama then, too. We came second.  Our downfall was this question: How many animals of each sex did Moses take on the ark?  We brilliantly said there was one of each sex, but overlooked one tiny detail:  it was NOAH who did all that; Moses didn’t have an ark.  Doh! 

Of course, not everyone participates; some go back to their rooms to watch CNN or a movie on tv.  Whatever we choose to do, most of us feel we’ve had a fun, busy day, and go to sleep happy, ready for whatever adventures the next day will bring.

Dutch Gin and Jelly Donuts

DUTCH GIN AND JELLY DONUTS: CATCH UP BLOG

HE SAYS:

We are now sailing down the Rhine after a lovely afternoon of castle watching. This allows me to put together this catch up blog, and to expand on a number of meandering thoughts. A stream of conscious approach will capture my mood.

Time moves on. In Holland, Amsterdam has been transformed from a nascent capitalist economy based on the early frenzied speculation in tulip bulbs to the leading major economy of the 18^th century.  Subsequently, continental countries such as Germany and France surpassed Holland, and Europe’s history was sealed. The late US president John F. Kennedy went to the Berlin Wall and pronounced, “I am a Berliner.” The Berlin citizens cracked up  because in slang what he had said was, “I am a jelly donut.” He certainly caught the spirit and absurdity of the Cold War.

As we make our way through the Dutch canal system towards the Rhine and Main  Rivers I am struck by how industrialized both countries are along this waterway. On one side of the river there is lush vegetation and rolling hills, and on the other side many modern factories and a railway line. What is interesting is that there isn’t a clear or decisive break in the geography and flora between Holland and Germany. It is a rolling continuum. The silence of the scenic countryside is only broken by the sound of a speeding freight train.

Viking Tours is marvellous and has thought of all the mod-cons. The meals are haut cuisine with great regional wines; quite to my surprise I learned that Austrian reds are robust and bold, while their whites are smooth and rounded to the tongue. Their cuisine is as good as or better than Beckta in Ottawa, and we’ll be offered this 3 meals a day for 14 days.

Our Viking river boat, the Prestige, is 132 m long and 12 m wide; it holds 190 passengers and costs a cool E 28m. This is a far cry from the 30 foot barge tour with 30 vacationers that I remember in central France in the late 70s. Our state rooms are in a modern Scandinavian style. Being in steerage class and below the water line, it is an eerie sensation when one sees that the river is at the same level as the large porthole in our wall.

All that said, the demographics of our fellow passengers is of interest .There is a decided feeling by some unnamed cynic that this is a very elegant and expense floating geriatric facility. The one drawback for this guy is that I feel over-managed, and that everything is too scripted. I desperately need some time to myself !!! Crowds always bring out the misanthrope in me. As a good friend said before we left, “remember who your fellow passengers are.” In general they are very well- heeled, and hail, “you all”, from Texas, Florida or California, are former corporate executives and are Republicans; the average age is probably 75-80. We do not talk about health care. Definitely my type of folk.  Blessedly, we have met a group of about four women who are sympatico.  (She says: and Richard seems to enjoy being the only male at a table of six!)

Our first port of call after we left Amsterdam was Kinderdijk, which we went ashore to visit. This world heritage site is a quaint community of about 20 ancient windmills. They are operational and have families living in them; they are rented for E100-200 per month. Notwithstanding the quaintness, there was a certain theme park quality about it all. That evening we had a lecture on Dutch cheese and Jinever, that is, Dutch Gin. This clear sterno-like liquid was enough to wash away the day’s weariness, even of this cynic. (She says: And after three shots of Jinever he had enough energy to hang out in the lounge to listen to the pianist play old ‘60’s tunes, and even danced!  I keep threatening to buy some of the stuff when we get home and hold regular Jinever and dance evenings.  We’ll dust off the Rolling Stones CD’s and party!)

Yesterday we spent the afternoon in Cologne. It was largely destroyed during WW II, with the notable exception of city center with its large cathedral.  Its famous Cologne Cathedral is a massive structure which took 800 years to build. Its architecture is dark, brooding and uninspiring, enough to turn the most faithful into non-believers. Its Romanesque architecture is the antithesis of inspiring the English and Spanish Gothic church architecture, with its upward lines, that sing the glory of His Kingdom. The cathedral is considered to be Germany’s main tourist attraction and some 22, 000  people visit this church every DAY! Clearly, the God business is profitable.

Today we had a morning tour of the Koblenz castle which was built around 1230 AD and which, over the years, was owned by a number of noble families. This afternoon we continued our journey, and almost relaxed, going down the Rhine River looking at lush hills (and expecting Heidi any minute to yodel), vineyards planted on sharply sloping hills and watching more castles pass by. Most of these castles date from the 13-14^th centuries. Ho, hum…. Sad to say, no matter how spectacular they are, by the end of the afternoon, their sightings become commonplace, and we stop running from one railing to another to take photos.

The date of these castles, of course, reflects the extreme regionalization and fragmented nature of social stratification in Germany until it was unified under Otto Von Bismark.

Tomorrow we continue our voyage down the Main River, with its vineyards and 60 some odd locks. Thankfully, we have had a chance to sleep in before we go off on a well-managed tour to see the countryside and, of course, another castle.

A Riverboat Fantasy

Day 1Amsterdam

Arrive in Amsterdam, capital of the Netherlands, and transfer to your ship.* After boarding, the rest of the day is yours to relax or begin exploring the city on your own.

She says on behalf of both :

Our big adventure is now underway!

I guess before I write about the cruise, I should summarize the trip from Canada.  My Facebook friends will already know that I suffered a major setback in my packing and organizing the night before we left.  Traumatizing, it was!  I was sorting out things to go in my purse.  I picked up my leather passport case  and decided to check one more time to make sure I had my new passport and not the recently expired one.   The case was empty.  No problem; it had to be there somewhere nearby.  I cleared off the desk it had been on, and then the bed where my packed suitcase and carry-on bags were sitting.  Nothing.  Under the bed?   No. I dumped out my purse, then my carry-on.  Still no luck.  Finally, in the middle of unpacking my suitcase and frantically trying to remember when I had last seen it, I remembered that the previous day I’d scanned it and sent myself a copy so if it got lost or stolen in Europe, I’d have the information I’d need to get home.  Problem was, I’d stupidly left it in the scanner.  Thank goodness I checked when I did.  Somehow, I don’t think I would have made it very far by presenting an empty passport case to the airport security guys!

We travelled Swiss Air.  Since they don’t fly out of Ottawa, they provide a coach transport from the Ottawa train station to PET airport in Montreal.  We’ve done the transfer on past trips and it’s never crowded, but this time we were the only passengers, so we had our own private chauffeur and plenty of room to stretch out for the 2 hour trip.  That almost made up for the way Swiss Air packed us into their plane.  We’ve done Air Transat excursion trips to Cuba and the Dominican, so you’d think we’d be used to tourism togetherness, but this plane must have broken the Guinness Record for sardine packing!  But the food and the service were fine, we made our connecting flight from Zurich to Amsterdam by the skin of our teeth after another trauma at security, and the Viking people were there to meet us and transfer us to the boat, so it was all good.  (I won’t get into the security trauma except to say that Richard’s magnetic personality always sets of security alarms, and that he now knows the ins and outs, so to speak, of a full body search.)

It’s been my experience that the brochures don’t always reflect the reality, so it was a lovely surprise to see that this boat really does look the way Viking advertised it.   It’s a year old and beautifully maintained, and the staff are incredible.  We arrived mid-morning, and knew before we arrived that people from the previous cruise wouldn’t be leaving until noon, and we wouldn’t be able to get into our cabins until 3 PM, but the lounges began to fill early with jet-lagged, grubby travellers anxious to shower and change, and staff members did everything they could to make our wait bearable.  They fed us a wonderful buffet lunch, made sure we knew where the toilets and bar and coffee dispensers are, and took care of our luggage so we could wander around the city while we waited.    They also offered a walking tour of the downtown area of Amsterdam.  Our original plan had been to walk to the train station and take a hop-on, hop-off boat tour of the city but it was pouring rain and we were exhausted, so we talked ourselves out of that idea and convinced ourselves that it would be better to stay dry and sample the food and drinks on board while getting to know some of our fellow travellers.

At 3 on the dot, we received our keys and were shown to our cabin.  I think we were too tired to appreciate how bright and well thought-out the place is in a sleek Scandinavian style, but we were happy to unpack and shower and have a chance to lie down for a bit.  We’d been told that there was an introductory get-together at 6:30 that we should attend so we could hear the plans for the following day, so we made sure we were awake for that, but being a practical, self-disciplined pair, we decided that we’d come back to the cabin right afterwards and skip dinner; we needed sleep much more than another meal, after all.  But during the meeting, such delicious smells wafted through the room that we agreed that perhaps we should go into the dining room for a bowl of soup or a light snack before turning in.

Then they brought the menu.  Hmm….lobster bisque sounds nice.  Oh, look!  Surf and turf with king prawns.  Then the gooey chocolate dessert for me and the cheese plate with assorted Dutch cheeses for Richard.  And, of course, the complimentary wine that accompanies lunch and dinner, and the great-smelling coffee, and two hours later, we rolled back to the cabin and I swear we were asleep before our heads hit those cloud-soft pillows.  Heaven!

                                            

WALTZING DOWN THE DANUBE: HISTORY AND MORE

                       

HE SAYS:  

A few introductory remarks are in order before we push off on our latest globe-trotting adventure. By popular demand we will retain our HE SAYS/SHE SAYS format for its well- known insight and wit; it goes without saying that I am right and she is wrong.  (She says:  Smile and agree.  We know the truth, though, don't we?)

Travel lust, it seems, has triumphed over lust and common sense. Summer is upon us again and after about six months of planning we have decided to fulfil one more bucket list dream of doing a river cruise of Central Europe, starting in Amsterdam, going down the Rhine into the Danube from Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, to Hungary. The high points will be Vienna, Prague and Budapest, the land of my forebears. Others with less restraint might say that the high points will be the cafes and pastry shops.

Contrary to the advice of some friends who suggested a major cruise in a floating city, we have decided to approach things on a smaller scale and in a more civil fashion by opting for a floating restaurant and hotel with about 150 people to see the gorgeous countryside. Funny, in the mid-1970s, in another life, I took a barge trip through the Beaune region of central France. I’m told that prices since that time have gone up by a factor of seven. We look forward to a relaxing and enjoyable time with haut cuisine and the occasional glass of wine.

This trip has many dimensions and has many elements, as well as having a certain sense of trepidation and unease about it. Unlike most of my forays to unknown worlds where I have spent extensive, some might say excessive, time preparing for the trip by reading 30-40 books on the history, culture, literature, economy and local flora and fauna, this time I have shown real restraint and have limited myself only to 11 + books (the + is still being read as I wait for the taxi). Fortunately, I know the Central European classical music repertoire fairly well, and I have always enjoyed Liszt (Hungary) and Dvorshak and Smetana (Czech). Vienna is of course, synonymous with the classical music tradition – in particular, Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Wagner, and Bruckner; for those who enjoy watching the ink dry on a musical score, there is always Mahler.

Some elitist music critic once said, “There is German music and then there is other music.” Alas, that is probably true; but then there are those unnamed people, with their unrefined (if not peasant) tastes who can’t bear to listen to violin music. Being a warm sensitive type of guy I won’t inflict Gypsy – Roma music on anyone, but we do have tickets for a Mozart and Strauss recital.

For myself, my one serious indulgence will be to spend half a day at the Vienna state art gallery. With its eight halls it is reputed to have one of the finest art collections in the world, although The New Prado and The V & G in London are probably my favourites. In order to accommodate travelling companions with short attention spans, I have reduced things at the state museum down to 3 halls and 6- 8 major paintings.

For this consideration, certain compromises were extracted from me (but a contract under duress is no contract). Two are most notable, namely, in the first instance we hit 4 – 6 cafes in Vienna. She who thinks she must be obeyed has declared this. And who am I to object to about 6!!!! different types of frothy, whipped cream topped Viennese coffees (count them), and so many mouth-watering pastries that heart disease and obesity are the national sports. On a more serious note, in terms of the social and cultural history, what is interesting is that since the late 1880s Vienna’s cafes were notable for their cultural and intellectual life and every major historical luminary had their favourite café, like a British pub but with coffee  rather than beer. Café life flourished. Some cafes are famous for their pastries, others for the coffee, and one for the hundreds of international newspapers. The Café Central is perhaps considered to be the most famous and at any moment I will expect to see the ghosts of the great men who went there such as Freud himself, Lenin (that’s VI, not Harpo), and Trotsky selling shares in an ice pick company.


But She Who Knows No Restraint drove a hard bargain. Not only are we forced to do the cafes in assembly line fashion, we are forced, like peasants, to sample the infinite number of delicious schnitzels with their various sauces, along with the waist expanding pastries. Ah, life is tough…Especially, when we are told that there is a 6 am !! exercise class on the river boat. FAT chance….

All that said, there are, on my behalf at least, some very real personal reservations and a constant unease, like walking through a graveyard. It is well established the Central and Eastern Europe since the 1890s has been a cauldron of politics - ethnic and ideological. One of the great turning points in Western European history was the dissolution of the Habsburg Austro-Hungarian and Romanoff Czarist dynasties as a consequence of the First World War.

Europe witnessed the rise of fascism in the 1930s. The history of Red Vienna between 1918-'34 and the February 1934 uprising against the Austrian Nazis by the Schutzbund are a source of inspiration.  What is not usually appreciated is the fact that many countries had their own historically independent fascist and anti-Semitic movements, quite separate from Germany’s. Significantly, and what is not ordinarily known, is that the Austrians, Ukrainians, Estonians and Latvians and Lithuanians did the Germans' dirty work for them in the death camps. The Soviets had quite real and legitimate scores to settle. In the post–war period the Germans have done much more in terms of accepting culpability, re-education, and engaging in national introspection than have the Japanese and Austrians. The Austrians and Japanese, unlike the Germans, have never confronted their history.

Deep, down, I have never forgiven the Germans for World War Two, not even after the passage of 60 years. And this has nothing to do the Holocaust. About 45 million people died during WW II, 25 million Soviets, 15 million Chinese, and about 6 million Jews. No, the real issue is: Have we learned anything from the Second World War? Or, did we merely continuing eating our schnitzel and stuffing our faces with pastry? The grim fact is that social and intellectual historians for years have studied and questioned how and why people were turned into beasts. We are no closer to any real answers.

And it can happen again. Look at the current political situation in a number of European countries, including some that we are visiting, and you see the contours of the past and of things to come. Look at the rise of the Arrow Cross right in Hungary, the neo-Nazis in Austria, the Golden Dawn in the recent Greek elections, and the rise of the right in Britain and Norway. It would be a great mistake to ignore these groups and what is happening. Fascism provides people with stability.

Sinclair Lewis in his novel, "It Can’t Happen Here", postulates that a native fascist government can be elected in the US. Those will be some of the things that I will think about as we sail down the Rhine and I sip on my German wine, all in good style of course; and as I go into a fitful sleep I hope that the noise outside isn’t the muffled sound of jack black boots on the cobble stoned streets of these beautiful cities.



SHE SAYS:

Just 3 days to go before we leave for Amsterdam, and I’m exhausted already!  Watching Richard prepare for a trip would tire anyone out, believe me.  For three months at least, he’s been reading all he can get his hands on about the five countries we’ll be visiting.  He now knows almost all there is to know about each country’s art, music, history, economics, and politics.  I say “almost” because he has one book left to go: a long, plodding tome covering the history of Hungary from the instant that homo became erectus to the present day.   It’s a slow, dry read,  he’s starting to worry that he’ll run out of time before he runs out of pages, and he says he won‘t go if he isn‘t done.  I‘ve pointed out that if he doesn‘t finish it, the Tourism Police in Budapest won‘t refuse him entry as long as his Visa card is still in working order; this is not a university course with required reading and a final exam.  But he’s too busy reading to appreciate my logic.  I think his plan is that if our tour guide suddenly develops laryngitis mid-trip, he‘ll be able to take over at a moment‘s notice and lead us through the rest of  Central Europe.

In every other way, though, he’s ready for the trip.  Except for his razor and comb, he’s completely packed!  His credit card companies and the newspapers have been notified, bills have been paid in advance, the people looking after the house have been given detailed (trust me!) instructions about what to do and when to do it, Euros and other currency have been bought, and in his spare time, he’s written a 10,000 word article for a book that isn’t being published until next year.  He’s booked tickets for a concert in Vienna and a walking tour in Prague (thanks for the link, Sandy!)  In fact, if it wasn’t for that last damned book, he’d already be sitting on his suitcase by the front door calling me to hurry up.  This is not normal!  It’s Wednesday and we don’t leave until Saturday.

 If you asked him, he’d probably tell you that I’ve been slacking off and leaving things till the end, as usual, but I’ve been working hard, too!  I’ve made a list of things to do, and tomorrow I‘ll start checking things off.  I’ve caught up on lunches with different groups of friends that I won’t be seeing for a month.  I remembered that the wheels were dying on my suitcase after 5 years of hard travel, so I spent a day shopping for a new one, and I was practical enough to buy one with a peacock feather pattern that‘s so colourful  I‘ll be sure to spot it on the luggage carousel from the other end of the terminal.  Then I spent another day shopping for comfortable shoes so I can walk comfortably on cobblestones and sandals that will go with the dressier things I need to take for dinners on the boat and for  the concert in Vienna, then a couple of days hitting the sales to make sure I have enough clothes to go with the new shoes, and a few hours at the drugstore making sure I have a month‘s supply of toiletries.   Now that I'm shopped out, I guess I have to stuff it all into my suitcase.

The bed in the guest room is piled high with things that are waiting to be packed, and to the untrained eye (aka Richard) it may look as if I‘ve just dumped everything I own in a huge jumble, but a lot of deep thought has already gone into my packing.  There’s the “must go” pile that at the moment is still surprisingly small.  The larger pile is the “make up my mind” pile: if I take the black and the beige, do I need the navy as well, or should I forget the beige because it gets dirty too quickly?  And if I take navy capris, do I need the long navy pants, too?  Should I take that extra skirt?  The third pile is the “conditional” pile: if I decide to pack the navy, then I’ll need this top, but if I stick to black and beige, I won’t.  These things are important!   The last pile is for things I don’t really need but if there’s room after all the other considerations and deliberations, I’d rather have what I don’t need than need what I don’t have.

A certain nagging person has pointed out that we’ll be stopping in a different city every day so if I’d just get busy on my list of things to do and call Visa to let them know I’ll be travelling in Europe, I could travel light and buy what I need as I go, but that’s just silly.  Airlines keep statistics;  if we all travelled light, they’d  conclude that their  luggage  weight limit is overly generous and they’d reduce it, causing untold hardships for the tourists of the future.  I refuse to be responsible for that!   I’ve informed that nagging person that despite his scepticism, my 50 lb. suitcase and I will be ready to go when the taxi ( which he booked last Tuesday and is sure to call to confirm on Friday and will be timing with his stopwatch on Saturday)  pulls up at the door.

But I worry.  If he doesn’t finish reading that book, my brand new suitcase and I may be making this trip alone.

THE RETURN OF THE NATIVES: HOME SWEET HOME

THEY SAY: After 5,400 kms or 3,400 miles, and after nearly 5 weeks of touring England, Scotland, Ireland and Wales, we have come full circle. We returned to London on Wednesday and flew home on Thursday. It is hard to believe that this magnificent, but tiring, trip is over, and it will take a while for life to return to normal. It has been a once in a life-time opportunity to experience the “real England”. By that phrase people usually mean seeing the rural – and green – England, rather than confining ourselves to the large, urban cities with their Karl Marxy smoke-stack reputation.

For both of us, having experienced Britain in very different personal lives in the mid-1970s and early 1980s, travelling or studying, we can unreservedly say that England has changed, and undoubtedly for the better. Today the so-called mod-cons, wine and coffee bars, restaurants, culture and so forth are marvellous and meet the highest international standards, which was not necessarily our earlier experience.

Hopefully, there will always be a Britain. There is much to admire about this country, including its value system and its fundamental sense of fairness, propriety, and decency. Less admirable however, has been its historical elitism and social stratification, chauvinism and colonial policies (domestic and international). But then what would the world do without a good pint, whisky, or football (soccer) match, or literate newspapers?

In our last day we lazily travelled through the English countryside (with Richard appreciating the Gainsboroughesque fields and counting cows instead of sugar plums, and Eleanor drooling over the masses of wildflowers and the gardens overflowing with roses and making plans to visit the garden centres as soon as we’re unpacked). We all began to wind down from our adventures as we headed eastward towards one of the most hyped archaeological sites in Britain: Stonehenge. Stonehenge is that odd mixture of fact and fiction. Evidently it was first constructed about 5,000 years ago and has gone through a number of basic structural changes and refinements. Part of the mystique is that no one really knows what it was used for: religious purposes by the Druids, human sacrifices, celestial navigation, an agricultural calendar, or as some ancient type of status symbol?

The vertical stones themselves seem much smaller than portrayed in the conventional TV documentary, which was quite surprising to us. The site itself is literally in the middle of nowhere, or more accurately in the middle of a vast field on the Salisbury Plain, which makes them appear even smaller and diminishes their alleged mythical and mystical character. The average stone in reality is about 15 – 20 feet tall and weighs 5 – 20 tons! Richard maintains that the similarity between Stonehenge and the megaliths in Brittany (France), those we saw in the Orkney Islands, and others that exist throughout England and Scotland, suggests that they all served a common purpose, whatever that was, and should therefore be studied together.

Determining what our favourite region or cities might be has generated a lot of discussion between us. For Richard, the Orkney Islands (northern Scotland), the Lake District in central England, and Wales were the most memorable and scenic areas, while his favourite cities are London, Dublin and Bristol. It was no historical accident that Fredrick Engels, Marx’s co-author, used Glasgow (and Manchester) as his stereotypical English city for his indictment of nineteenth century British capitalism.

Richard, as might be expected, was captivated by the universities he saw, especially Oxford , the city of Spires, immortalized in CP Snow’s novel, The Masters. St. Andrews and Edinburgh universities, alas, stand in dramatic aesthetic and architectural opposition. At St. Andrews every effort has been made to maintain the integrity of the campus by maintaining the same coloured sandstone and general design of the new buildings thus integrating the campus, while Edinburgh, the renowned 18th and 19th century university of learning which set the standard for philosophy, economics and medicine, is a horrific stylistic mess with differently designed modern office-like buildings covered with posters and graffiti - a blight on the old charming campus.

Eleanor, on the other hand, enjoyed London and Edinburgh, but still feels that except for a few spectacular historic sights like Edinburgh Castle and the Tower of London, if you’ve seen one city, you’ve seen ‘em all. For her, the highlights of the trip were the picturesque villages and the rural areas, particularly the mountains and the seacoast. She agrees that the most beautiful places were Wales and the Orkneys, and with a little encouragement, would happily pack up and move to escape the Canadian winters forever. If we ever decided to move to Britain, Wales would be her first choice because it’s further south and therefore milder, with more winter daylight. Since we don’t speak Gaelic, there could be a slight communication problem in parts of Wales, but why let the reality of their version of bilingualism interfere with a good dream?

Before we sign off we are, again, compelled to heartily and genuinely thank our tour guide, Dylan J, and our bus driver, Neville P, of Insight Travel for their professionalism, decency, good humour, and vast store of knowledge. They made this trip a real pleasure in so many ways. Even if we had been brave enough to rent a small car for a month and risk driving on the wrong side of the road, we would never have had the courage to negotiate some of the narrow mountain roads that Neville managed in a gigantic coach, we’d never have learned so much about the history and the people, and we’d never have found a guidebook that would lead us off the beaten track to many of the interesting places that Dylan introduced us to. Thank you, guys.

For ourselves we have learned a lot from our Australian friends: a chook is a chicken Who'da knew??); 10 C is their idea of cold, but they easily tolerate 40+ C summers that would frazzle us; kangaroos and koalas are commonplace, but squirrels are exotic creatures that deserve photo ops; nobody in Australia drinks Foster’s beer-they just export it; their off-beat sense of humour is much like ours, and although we share the same British history and traditions, in many ways they are more British than we are. Since it takes about 26 hours with stopovers for them to get to London, many people we travelled with have plans to visit other parts of Europe for a few weeks before they head home.

For us, 5 weeks away from home is definitely enough. As much as we enjoyed our trip, we’ve learned that in the future, a two week bus tour is pretty much our physical limit before terminal fanny fatigue sets in and the novelty of living out of a suitcase wears a little thin. There is much to be said for sleeping in one’s own bed and not having to wake up to an alarm clock at dawn every morning…at least until the next attack of wanderlust strikes.

As you read this we have already returned to Ottawa to pick up the strands of our lives, so this is obviously our last blog concerning our British trip, but we will add photos as promised, so check back in a week or two and nag us if we put it off too long. We hope you've enjoyed our account of our adventure. Any feedback is appreciated.

After our regular winter escape to a warmer Caribbean climate (probably Cuba), hopefully with our respective children and grandchildren this year, we will resume our globe-trotting -- and start a new blog -- probably from a beach on the Algarve in Portugal, where we’ll be studying the different types of vino verde. Alternatively, we may do a river cruise down the Danube and visit various European venues to enjoy their pastry and chocolate shops and the occasional art gallery or Mozart concert. We’ll unpack and tackle the dirty laundry and the garden before we start arguing about which one comes first.

Until then, Happy trails ….