European Vacation

After a 14-day journey which took us to Paris, Riems, Luxembourg, several German cities, and Prague, we returned home only to discover that we had contracted Covid. Even a week of illness, though, could not diminish the memories Kathleen and I accumulated while traveling with daughter Kristin and her husband Kevin. We saw incredible works of art and architecture, but also learned quite a bit about the cultures of the various places we stopped.

I won’t bore you with a slide show of “What I did on my summer vacation.” In fact, I left my phone home and didn’t take a single picture. Here are a few highlights though: First, we spent four days in Paris and saw an amazing cemetery in the Montparnasse neighborhood (with the graves of Alfred Dreyfus, Guy de Maupassant, Jean Paul Sartre, and his lover, Simone de Beauvoir, the first modern feminist); ate dinner at several wonderful outdoor cafes; visited St. Denis, the first Gothic cathedral and burial place of most of the kings of France; the Rodin Museum; the Musee d’Orsay with a special exhibition of the work of Edgar Degas and Eduoard Manet, along with many other impressionist works (I even discovered a new favorite impressionist, Gustave Caillebotte, about whom I had known little before); a night cruise on the Siene; and a full day at Claude Monet’s Giverny gardens where he conducted his spectacular artistic experiments with light and color. The Notre Dame Cathedral was under massive repairs following the tragic fire of a few years ago, so we were not able to get inside. The French were working feverishly to finish those repairs and many others in time for next year’s Olympic Games to be held in Paris. In fact, we ran into construction and preparations everywhere we went, and our hotel was host to Olympic committees from countries around the world.

We experienced a minor disappointment because, instead of the rude Parisians we expected to find, we encountered only helpful and pleasant waiters and clerks everywhere we went in the city. Viking picked us up at the hotel and took us by bus to the Rhine on our fifth day. We stopped at Reims to see the incredible cathedral where the kings of France were crowned and, at lunch, we finally met the waiter of those legendary anecdotes. He spoke only French, but took our orders in an aggressive way that left us wondering what it was we had actually ordered. When Kristin tried to clarify her order, he grew angry and began shouting. I’m not sure what he said, but I caught the words “Non, non, non! Imbecile! Vous ne pouvez pas modifier votre commande!” After that, we quietly sipped champaign and cheerfully ate whatever the hell he wanted to bring us, knowing that we had now enjoyed the full French experience. And yes, I still tipped the man far more than he deserved.

More highlights: the American cemetery in Luxembourg, where many of the US soldiers killed in the Battle of the Bulge rest; the city of Trier, Germany, with Roman, Medieval, and Renaissance architecture sitting next door to modern office buildings; so many castles and palaces along the Rhine, Moselle, and Main Rivers that they began to run together in our minds; lunch in Heidelberg with a charming, English-speaking college student; a stop in Nuremburg with the Nazi parade ground (If you have seen Leni Riefenstahl’s propaganda film, Triumph of the Will, you know the one in question) only a short distance from the court building where the war criminal trials were held after the war; a tour of the city of Prague, complete with a naked woman posing for pictures in the Old Town section of the city.

The Viking cruise itself was wonderful, as it has been on all three trips we have taken with them. Kristin and I, the cynical ones, developed nicknames for those on the cruise who annoyed us the most. “Anchorwoman” was the newswoman from Kansas City who brought four suitcases full of clothes so that she never had to wear the same outfit twice (I’m not sure where she kept them in our tiny staterooms). “Sticks,” a loud and obnoxious man, had bad knees and walked with two canes at all times. Yet, as a former marine, he could not admit weakness, so he insisted that he could keep up with the faster walking-tour groups. Thus, we were constantly waiting for him while he leaned on his crutches and lit another cigarette. “The Magpies” were three insufferable women who talked and cackled at great volume at the bar through every speaker’s presentation. Finally, “Single Malt” was the Scotch connoisseur who loudly ordered a “single-malt Scotch” at the bar. We were sitting nearby, and heard the exchange which followed. Jason, the bartender (yes, I was on a first-name basis with him), nodded and said, “Scotch whiskey; yes sir.” The guy said, “No. I don’t want whiskey; I want a single-malt Scotch.” Jason tried to explain that Scotch was whiskey, but the man would have none of it. Jason surrendered the field and prepared to pour the Scotch when the man said, “Mix it with Sprite.” Again, Jason winced and explained that the expensive whiskey is best enjoyed when sipped straight up or with a few drops of water, and to dilute it in such a way would destroy its taste, but the man insisted. Kristin looked at me and whispered, “He will forever be known as ‘Single Malt.’”

I was especially fascinated by the cultural differences we encountered. Visiting Europe, it always boggles my mind to be in one country for a while, with one type of currency, cuisine, music, language, and customs, then, after a short drive, be in a completely different country with a new language, money, food, and culture. The best guides we had wove together historical elements of a particular place or building with explanations of the culture of their country. In Nuremberg, our guide Andreas spoke passionately about the post-WWII years, in which the old guard—some of them former Nazis—still controlled Germany and preferred to brush the Holocaust and Nazi war crimes under the rug and pretend they had never happened. After the global student unrest of 1968, however, a new generation of leaders emerged who believed that all history, good and bad, needed to be taught and understood if those horrors were to be avoided in the future. Today, he said, all German students are required to learn about the Holocaust and visit one of the Death Camps. I was able to have a private conversation with him in which I explained the way in which conservatives in the US are similarly trying to expunge the teaching of the Holocaust or slavery from textbooks, libraries, and schools, under the misguided belief that students should never encounter uncomfortable facts about their history.

I also found the presentation of news in Europe to be interesting. In many places we stayed, and on the Viking ship, the only live, English-language TV shows available were newscasts of the BBC from England. First, it was a relief to escape the daily accounts of Trump’s latest indictments for his never-ending crimes against the people of the US. In fact, they rarely mentioned the disgraced former president. Second, as you might expect, the focus was different—they concentrated on Europe more than the US, the economy, and the Ukraine War. For the economy, I learned that inflation is much worse there than it is in the US. They blamed inflation, correctly, on supply-line issues resulting from Covid and Vladimir Putin’s war which reduced the amount of oil available world-wide and drove up costs of transporting goods. Surprisingly, they also praised Joe Biden’s aggressive approach to reducing inflation and pointed out that the US inflation rate is currently at 4.1%, while in England and much of Europe, it was still twice as high, above 8%.

They talked much more about the Ukraine War than we do, and acknowledged the fact that, should Putin be allowed to annex the Ukraine, there is no telling where he might stop. They regarded Russia’s threat as similar to that posed by Hitler in the 1930s and recognized the need to stop him in Ukraine. They also gave credit to Biden for repairing Trump’s damage to NATO and other alliances and applauded him for making the US and Europe more secure than they have been in decades. Thus, it is interesting that Biden gets more credit around the world for his successes than he does in the media of his own country.

All in all, it was a fun and enriching two-week trip. I might complain about the long, uncomfortable flights and the inconvenience of travel every time we cross the ocean, but I always return feeling grateful that we took the trip. I also begin looking forward to the next journey. Next up: our first ocean cruise with Viking in February, going from Barcelona to Rome.