Summing Up A Trip Down the Rhine and Danube

Home now, but what a trip. We spent 16 days on these rivers visiting towns all along the way. The inconsistent availability of the internet, and my general business on the tour prevented me from recording all the towns and cities we visited. I felt it best to summarize the last few places on the trip.

We spent a couple of days in Budapest, and it was, again, an old and impressive city. It was in Budapest (two cities across the Danube from each other, Buda and Pest!!),

that I saw my most poignant image of WWII. It was a touching memorial to Jews executed on the  bank of the Danube river. . They apparently were told to take off their shoes, and were then summarily shot and dumped in the Danube. The memorial is a "statue" of the shoes of these helpless victims. For some reason, this site aroused more emotion in me than all the other memorials on the trip. Notice the
little shoes in the picture. Those are the ones that really hurt!

Budapest has beautiful buildings with many, many statues all over those structures.

I can't show you all of them, but will include a few. I don't have space to mention Slovakia. It was part of Czechoslovakia until about the 1990s when they had a velvet revolution, and separated. Now they are big hockey rivals, and indeed, the world championship is just going on, and the Czech Republic  won the game. I'm certain it was exciting. Isn't that a better way of using up aggressive energy? You betcha.
That night picture is a bridge in Budapest. They light up much of the town at night.

Next, it was a bus ride to Prague for three days. Prague also, is a beautiful. It

has it's famous castle (from around 700ce). It also has a tumultuous history that represents most of eastern Europe. Taken over in WWII by the Germans, then by the Russians in 1946. It has changed hands with the tides of political power. The Communists left in 1989, and they had their first free elections in 1990. They are about 80% non communist and 10% communist government representatives now. Our guide hated the communists. She said that the communist government is for "stupid and lazy people." It seems that they had a large weight lifted off their backs when the commies left.

Some general thoughts about the trip as an experience.
First, traveling on a boat is the best. No packing and unpacking. Just leave it in the room and the cities come to you. I don't think there is a better way to travel.
Next, one cannot travel to those areas of Europe without thinking about the war. Each city you wait to hear what happened there during the war? How much of it was destroyed, and how much was rebuilt? What happened to the people in the town during the war? I guess we are too close the that experience (65 years), and it will take a few generations for those questions to fade away.

Next, I got the feeling of eastern Europeans as being conquered by the "power of the month" and it would get awful tiring for someone new to come into town and change everyone and everything. That's why many of them came to the United States. They were just tired of that history.

Finally, I find it hard to believe how cruel and nasty people can be to each other. We worked ourselves up into a frenzy during those years so that we could drop bombs on each other whilc the citizens were just trying to have a nice quite evening and enjoy life. It's good that this history does not die. We need to remember. By the way, it's against the law to make a Nazi salute in Germany. You can be put in jail.

Nurenberg and The War Crimes Trials

Visited Nuremberg on Saturday. It turned out to be a wonderful visit mainly because it supplied much information about WWII. I have always wondered how the German people could have gone down the Hitler road, and a visit to the Documentation Center supplied many answers to this question. This museum is a place of learning as many Germans go there. Just as important, German soldiers go there to learn their history. It surprised me that the whole episode is laid out clearly in this museum: the politics, the brain washing techniques, the concentration camps, the loses at the end of the war. Importantly, they do go into the failings of the Weimar Republic, as contributing to the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party.

This Documentation Center is built in the amphitheater that Albert Speer designed to help spread the propaganda of the Nazi party. It was huge and designed based on architecture of the Roman Coliseum. Built to sit 50,000 people; it had no electricity. It was to have a glass ceiling to let light in over the podium from which Hitler was to speak.(All the focus was to be on him.) It was never finished because of the War. Near by, in the Zepplin Field Hitler held many of his massive rallies. All of this architecture was designed to make the individual feel insignificant, and to gain strength from the massive crowds. It was essentially and "architecture of intimidation." Intimidation of the individual, forcing him to become part of a massive movement.

Hitler was presenting himself as the savior of Germany. It was an incredible propaganda machine that he wanted to present through the architecture and history of Nurenberg-- his favorite city. On January 1-2, 1945, 90% of the old walled city was destroyed by RAF incendiary bombing.

Hitler was a reaction to the Weimar Republic. He gave the people hope to grow out of their economic depression (there was 30% unemployment then), and to become a great nation again.

Very near this proposed amphitheater was the was a massive parade ground. In some movies, the  massive swastika on the  roof of this field was destroyed by the allies at the termination of the War. Another significant place in Nurenberg is the court house. This is the place where the war crime trials were held at the end of WWII.

Apparently, it was the opinion of the U.S. legal team, that these trials should establish principles for the future of international was crimes. Our tour leader told us that the Russians wanted to hang all of the 31 defendants, but the U.S. felt that that would undercut the credibility of the proceedings. In the end, three of the defendants were let go, and many were hanged or received life in prison. Goebbles, a prominent Nazi leader, committed suicide just prior to his hanging. No one knows how he got the cyanide, and it may or may not be a coincidence, but the guard of his prison cell ended up with his watch! It was humbling to stand in the very court room where this famous trial was held, and it appears that the U.S. team's ideas prevailed and have been perpetuated in such trials held at The Hague.

The rest of the day, we walked around the city. It's special. Beautiful square, and

churches. Had a lunch in a local restaurant of bratwurst, sauerkraut, and beer (bad for the arteries, but tasty). We sat with a couple of German's and one of them suggested a desert shop that we must visit. That topped off  our lunch with a scrumptious desert.

Cologne Germany

In the morning, we landed in Cologne, Germany. Germany is an interesting country. A bit smaller than the state of Montana, it has a population of 82.2 million people, and it is an economic powerhouse. Germany is one of the top five economic powers in the world, and Cologne is the forth largest city in Germany and a significant reason for that economic success. Located on the Rhine river, Cologne has been a transportation center for the shipment of goods (a source of much of its economic power).

It's current population is around 1 million residents. Prior to WWII it's population was 800,000 shrinking to 40,000 after the war. With the allied bombing, over 90% of the center of Cologne was destroyed by war's end, but it has essentially been rebuilt since that time.

The most incredible structure in Cologne is the Cathedral. This building (picture nearby) was begun in the 13th century, but was not completed until 1880 (union job). There were numerous delays, the longest from 1560 to 1842 when Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia laid the ground stone to finish the building.

Incredibly, this structure was not destroyed during the allied bombing in WWII. Numerous explanations are available, but the most convincing seems that the American's did not want to damage it because of a "deal" with the Germans not to bomb St. Paul's Cathedral in London.  (Our guide told us that he had talked with American Veterans from WWII, and they confirmed this story.) Almost as plausible is the thought that the two spires were good land marks for the pilots, and they did not want to lose them. As one might guess their is also a theological explanation which I won't go into.   On our trip we saw photographs of the rubble in  this city and around the Cathedral after the war, and either way, the Cathedral's survival was certainly a miracle.

This city is well known for German beer, and for lunch, I stuffed myself with wienerschnitzel (fried pork), potatoes, and German beer. It was excellent, but quite filling--ruined my "diet" again.

Probably the most interesting thing for me  about this city--I am interested in strange things-- is that everywhere you look there are people and families enjoying life together. Children playing, young people in love, middle aged folks sitting and talking about the events of the day and the month, and shoppers. Isn't it true that we all want to do these things--have a good time and "connect" with each other. It is difficult to believe that merely 70 years ago our United States was bombing and killing all this human joy. Don't get me wrong, I know these are  complicated issues, but none of us like it. Do we? How can we continuously get ourselves into situations where we justify these kinds of depraved activities. Apparently, it is not the people that do this, it is the governments. I know that sounds idealistic, but if no one makes these kinds of statements, we are doomed to continual violation of our fundamental and, as I believe, innate instincts as people: "love one another," isn't that better?

The Anne Frank House-Amsterdam

Want to go somewhere that will move you? Go to the  Anne Frank house in Amsterdam, Holland. Anne had to hide with her family upstairs, in the back of a house in 1942. They hid there for 2 1/2 years. They were Jewish, and the Nazis had taken over The Netherlands.

Anne wanted to be a writer, so she began to keep a journal. When she heard over the radio, that the Americans were bombing Germany in 1944, she believed she would publish her journal after the war ended. Unfortunately, someone (we still don't know) turned them in to the Nazis, and all in her family,except her father,  died or were killed in the concentration camps. Anne was about 15 when she died.

Anne died from starvation and disease about 6 weeks before the camp was liberated.  Her father, who survived, had her Diary published.

The house has been returned to its original condition, minus the furniture at her father's request. Going through the house with it's movies, documents, experiencing the space she lived in before they were "taken" sends shivers down one's spine. Hearing the "rumors" of the death camps and living in fear of discovery was not fun to experience, but it filled me with emotions of dread and fear that she must have felt, magnified one hundred times. Seeing the movies again of the"selection" at the camps, and watching movies of the prisoners waving goodbye to friends as they pulled away in the open boxcars recalls once again in me a deep feeling and realization of what people can do to one another. We know their fate now, they didn't.

That entire episode of human history is a scar on all of us. It is scar on the German people (I am part German). It is all well documented in the Anne Frank house, and stands as a testament to our potential for cruelty to one another.

I haven't read the Diary of Anne Frank, but I downloaded a copy of it for my Kindle, and will give it a go. I probably should have read it 60 years ago when I was young,  but let's hope it's never too late. Her book is her legacy. Even at such a young age, she has much to teach all of us.