Although loved ones didnt succeed entirely in wresting FB from my cold dead hands over the holidays, some of you may have noticed I havent been as much around the old FB neighborhood over the last couple of weeks. No one likes to hear/read about what a friend did over the holidays as much as the friend is to tell/write it, and if you are not so much interested, you should stop reading right here. Judi and I, along with dear friends Beth and Bud Warner, just got back from a Rhine River Christmas Markets cruise. We began in fascinating, bawdy, beautiful Amsterdam. In Germany we visited the massive gothic Cologne Cathedral, the most substantial architectural non-casualty of massive WW 2 bombing in retaliation for the bombing of London; and we walked the picturesque streets of quaint Heidelberg, imagining the legendary student prince and the barmaid he loved but had to give up to go home and rule. In France, the lovely Alsatian city Strasbourg, home to the European Parliament and other important continental transnational institutions. Although our cruise ended in Basel, Switzerland, we continued on by bus, staying two nights in beautiful Lucerne and ending in Zurich, where we attended a standing-room-only 10:00 PM Christmas eve service at the massive Protestant cathedral. We flew home from Zurich the day after Christmas. Although these were all countries Judi and I had visited at some point in our long lives, many of the places we saw were new to us and definitely of bucket list quality. Some of our favorites were the lovely villages, most notably perhaps Riquewihr, France, which glittered with its Christmas lights, and the pristine medieval Swiss village Stein am Rhein. Although we couldve used some new-falling snow, especially when we arrived at the Swiss Alps, our weather was really as nearly-perfect as it could possibly have been for a European trip in December. (We hear that 16 inches of snow fell on western Switzerland and Germanys Black Forest on the day we left for home). And the natural scenery was breathtaking; notably, a boat ride on Lake Lucerne and what we saw of the snowcapped Alps as we ascended Mount Rigi in the cog railroad. Although we were aware that Debra and John Lee and Jane Ellis were on similar cruise ventures in the area we visited, unfortunately our paths did not cross in Europe. But we were so happy to visit with friend Stefan Dick, who took a train from Berne to have dinner with us in Lucerne on December 22. Now a teacher of English and comparative religions at a college in the Swiss capital, Stefan spent a year as an Assistant in the German program at PC in the early 1990s. We missed having family time with loved ones back home, but are so grateful for this opportunity to see the things we saw, to be with good friends along the way, to meet some very interesting fellow travelers from around the world, and especially for our safe arrival home.
Posted on: Sun, 28 Dec 2014 12:25:48 +0000
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