As I promised last week, here is part two of my account of our recent European river cruise. If you didn’t read part one you can click here to do so.
Be Open To Surprises
This goes along with being flexible with expectations. I have never been on a European River cruise before so I wasn’t sure what to expect. When I looked out our window the first morning of the cruise, I was amazed at how large the river was. I wasn’t expecting that at all. Days later, when we were on the canal part of the trip, we were very close to the tree-lined shore. I did not know that we would be traveling on a one hundred miles long canal that connected the Main and Danube Rivers.
I was also surprised to see so many swans on the river, pretty much the entire trip. They were beautiful. I guess I’m just used to seeing them on lakes. Along the same line, I was so surprised to see a huge flock of green parakeets in Cologne, Germany. That’s something I’m used to seeing here in Florida.
People Can Do Amazing Things
I was amazed by the handiwork of people seen in the structures along the river and at our stops. We saw things thousands of years old, like Roman walls. We saw every type of architecture imaginable; Romanesque, Gothic, Baroque, Rococo, Renaissance, Half-timbered. Dozens of castles perched high on hilltops boggled the mind, especially when you realized they were built hundreds of years ago, without modern tools and machinery.
Two buildings that were particularly amazing to me were the Cologne Cathedral and the Würzburg Residenz. The cathedral was massive. One of the interior columns was the size of a hut. The exterior was covered with intricate carvings in the Gothic style. It took 600 years to complete. As I stood there in the church, I imagined the very first workers laying the very first stone. They had no idea that the work wouldn’t be complete for around eighteen generations.
The Residenz was a palace for the Prince-Archbishops in Germany. A huge fresco dominated the ceiling. The detail was incredible. But the thing that was most impressive to me was the stucco work in an adjoining room. The craftsman was able to make stucco look like draped fabric. The room looked like an iced wedding cake. Surely these men were blessed to have such talent.
People Are Resilient
I mentioned before that my husband and I especially loved all the small German villages we visited. One thing that these quaint villages along the river had in common was that they experienced flooding. Every little town had a flood wall that showed the flood levels in different years as far back as the sixteenth century. But the people clean up and rebuild. In one of the towns our guide told us that today many of the bottom floors are tiled and furniture is limited. The people also have enough warning to move things to higher levels in their houses.
There was much destruction in Germany during World War II. Some of the towns we visited experienced seventy to ninety percent destruction. Some of the towns were left unscathed. In the towns that experienced destruction, they rebuilt. It was nice to see towns, like Nuremberg, rebuilt in the style it was before the war, even though it may have been easier to just remove the rubble and put up something new. It allows the traveler to imagine what a place looked like at another time.
There was also a more painful side to the places we saw. Everywhere we visited had a story of the atrocities committed against people, particularly Jewish people during World War II. Just about every city we visited had small gold “stumbling stones” in the sidewalks to mark the place where a Jewish person had either lived or been killed. On of the most poignent memorials were the bronze shoes on the banks of the Danube in Budapest.
My Favorite Traveling Partner Is Still My Favorite Traveling Partner
The purpose of this vacation was to celebrate forty years of marriage. In these times, I think that is truly something to celebrate. My husband and I spent twenty-one days together, in a small space, pretty much 24/7. I think we were able to do that because we have so many shared interests. We love to travel, we’re not into huge crowds, we enjoy biking, and we appreciate good music and good food.
There is one thing that confirmed just how much I am loved by my husband. On our last day in Amsterdam, after we visited Keukenhof Gardens, we had a few hours left in the day. My sweet husband humored me by letting me drag him to the Rijksmuseum, a tram ride across town. I wasn’t comfortable going alone so he agreed to go with me. If that’s not love . . .
Some Bittersweet Moments
When we booked this trip, my mother was still alive and my father had been gone less than a year. It hasn’t been quite a year since they both have been gone. I thought about them so much on this trip, partly because I know how much they enjoyed traveling in their younger years. It was so strange to go on vacation and not let my mom know where we were going and how long we would be gone. We just left. I felt like I was forgetting something.
I thought about my dad often, particularly when desserts were involved. One afternoon on the cruise, the chef demonstrated how to make a traditional German Apple Strudel. My dad’s specialty was Apple Pie and all I could think of was how much he would enjoy the demonstration (he would probably be helping). One night we had German Chocolate Cake and that is one of the things my dad used to make when he worked as a baker.
I thought about my mom because she loved to travel and instilled that love in her children and grandchildren. I also thought about her as we cruised through the wine region with hills covered in vineyards. I even saw the same corgi on two different days. (Mom said she would send me a sign to let me know she was thinking of me — a corgi). Finally, there was a building in Amsterdam with what looked like the word Mom on its facade.
Usually, after I return home from a big trip, I walk over to my mom and dad’s house, fix a cup of coffee, and tell them all about my trip. It made me sad that I couldn’t do that for this trip. But, thankfully, the good memories of our 40th anniversary trip help soften those sad feelings.
How about you? Have you ever taken a special trip to celebrate a milestone event? Where did you go? Do you ever learn things from your travel experiences? I’d love to hear.
Kim Wilbanks 