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.

Passau a Bavarian City on Three Rivers

We visited a peaceful, beautiful city yesterday--Passau. It is situated on three rivers, the Danube, Ilz, and the Inn rivers. It forms a peninsula because of this geography, and becomes an old quaint European city of charm.

The city is at least 2,000 years old, and was founded as much was in ancient Germany, by the Romans. The Celts were here for 4-500 years, and left in 100 B.C. No one knows why--possibly the economy? The Romans left in 480, as Rome was disintegrating, and the outpost was no longer viable.

The current town has a population of about 50,000, and a University with another 10,000 students. The University was founded in the 1960s. The largest industry here is a factory that makes gears for John Deere tractors. It employs about 3000 workers.

The narrow streets house many different high and low end stores, and the shopping is excellent. There is a church here, Saint Stephan's, that was originally built in

850, but it burned twice (1662, 1680) and was rebuilt after that in the baroque style. It is magnificent, and I have included a few photos of it. The interior has elaborate sculpture, and painting that cannot be shown in this limited description. The alter itself depicts the martyrdom of Saint Stephen and graphically, but tastefully shows his stoning. One cannot look at any point in this church without seeing some form of artistic expression of the Christian message. It is awesome! It was mentioned that this town was not heavily bombed in the war, and the Cathedral was only hit by six of seven shells.

Ironically, supporting churches this size takes many Euros, and a tax instituted by (yours truly) Adolf Hitler, helps with this issue. He instituted a "church tax" in

an effort to stop church attendance. It still exists, and is about 8% of your total income tax. It has helped to keep the beautiful churches viable and repaired.

Anne and I found a beautiful local restaurant for lunch, and ate some local bratwurst (lamb and pork), sauerkraut, and a liter (4.5% alcohol) of a local beer. It made the walk back to the ship easier. It was local, as the waitress had a difficult time getting our order. It was worth it!

It should be mentioned that Napoleon stopped by in 1803, and removed all the church rulers and monarchs. He made Passau part of Bavaria. That's why we were drinking so much beer there.