Dear Friends,
A quick message from Germany, as our Viking cruise takes us to a few more famous sites (Nuremberg, Passau, and the Benedictine Abbey at Melk). Then on to Vienna (which we’re very much anticipating, since it’s a city we dearly love).
We’ll end with Budapest so I can soak up all the Art Nouveau and, yes, stretching even that out a bit with a few days admiring the Art Nouveau in Prague.
And, yes, the trip is beautiful, as spectacular as we thought it would be.
So Andrew and I are happy to send you our best, late-spring greetings, with many good wishes that you are enjoying a lovely day.
We’re docked today at Bamberg, one of the few cities in Germany not destroyed by World War II bombings. While I’m quietly enjoying time on the ship instead of going on one of our excursions, many of our fellow travelers are off exploring what has been called “the largest repository of retained medieval structures in Bamberg’s remarkably preserved Old Town.”
Yes, I am sure it is a remarkable site.
For me, though . . .
Well, I’ll just be quiet and enjoy this beautiful weather and the stunning greenery on either side of the river.
And I’ll use this quiet time to send fellow Americans a special greeting on our annual Memorial Day (with another special day coming up 6 June, commemorating World War II’s D-Day Landings).
Many of you know I am an enthusiast about the history of the Weimar Republic (potentially the one form of democracy that could have been the greatest democracy in history, but sadly result was not to be). Nevertheless, I read a great deal about the Weimar days of Germany, always hoping we in later generations can learn from what happened then.
Likewise, I am a great reader much that’s been written about the various occupied countries during WWII (particularly France and the Netherlands), Again, I try to think about how we can learn from what we read, especially when we find ourselves confronted with some of what’s going on in our own troubled times in our own country, and the similarities we seem to be experiencing connecting us to those earlier troubled times.
Yet there is hope in our memories of what was done for us, And how pleased I am to read something like what I’ve read today in Heather Cox Richardson’s “Letters from an American” column.
Click here to read the heart-breaking (and nevertheless hopeful) story she shares with us in today’s column. Click here to read it: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/may-26-2024
For an optimist like me, I feel hopeful for my friends and colleagues, and for my and their children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, when they hear (or read themselves) stories like this.
Please find time in your Memorial Day Observance to open the link and give thought to what has been done for us.
And let’s all be grateful for what they did, and those who did it.