October 25 - Random Thoughts

It is so nice to be home, but we do miss being on the road in new cities. I guess you can’t have it both ways. One of the benefits of being at home is the ability to look at the vacation as a series of unrelated observations, instead of a succession of planned activities.

First, I must confess that most of the blog was supported by Co-Pilot which is Microsoft’s AI chatbot. I used Co-Pilot to generate paragraphs about histories and locations in the various cities we visited. I then went in and removed adjectives and adverbs that I would never use in everyday conversations and replaced them with descriptive words that I would normally use. It made it feel less of an ad from the tourist bureau.

I then checked for the proper tense of the verbs and made corrections where I felt it was necessary. Then I would add my own knowledge, observations, and opinions. So, I’m going to take credit for the blog and the heck with Microsoft.

So, here are some of our random thoughts.

You know you’ve got fantastic travelling companions when it is been a long time since seeing them and yet the conversation flows like you meeting them at the pub on regular Saturday night.

The weather was unseasonable cool for October. It never once got above the mid-teens, and the north wind made it feel like the end of fall instead of the beginning. Although there were a couple of days of rain, it didn’t interfere with our sightseeing.

The cobblestone streets and walks can be dangerous to walk on. A loose stone or a heaved walkway can lead to disaster. On our first night in Prague, Marg tripped over a raised edge in the roadway that we were crossing. She smashed both knees, both hands, a wrist, received a fat lip and chipped one of her teeth. A week later and her knees are still sore and stiff.

It seems every time I go on a river cruise I come down with a respiratory illness. This trip was no exception. It started as a bad head cold that ran its course after a couple of days. Then as the vacation ended In Berlin, it spread to my lungs, and I’ve been coughing like crazy since then.

This is our third river cruise with Scenic. I can’t say enough good things about this cruise company out of Australia. The rooms, although small, were clean and functional. The food was amazing and service top notch. The locations that were on our itineraries will provide memories that will last us a lifetime. Their entertainment, as the expression goes, was the icing on the cake. Although it costs a bit more than some of the other river cruise, I think it for us it was well worth it.

It can be frustrating trying to reconcile your credit card statement with your receipts. Not only do you have to do a currency conversion, but it can sometimes be impossible to find the name of the merchant on the receipt.

You literally take your life into your hands walking in some European cities. There doesn’t seem to be any consistency as to which side of pathway belongs to bicycles. With the speed which they ride their bikes, you would think the riders believe they are trying out for their national Olympic cycling team. The only safe city that we visited was Prague. That is because the major roads have little or no room for a bike lane because they have two lanes dedicated to automobiles and the wide centre lane is for trams. Of course, you have to watch sidewalks to ensure your don’t trip over a hole in the cobblestones.

Most of the story lines on our tours of various cities had three main themes. They are the history of the city and the effect on the city due to the second world war; how the holocaust decimated the Jewish community in the city; and how the fall of the Iron Curtain shaped the political landscape of the country.

There was little information on the Roman influence and even less on the Holy Roman Empire of the Middle Ages. Both eras were important in the development of the region.

I don’t believe that the traditional continental breakfast exists any longer. Each hotel and the Scenic Ruby had huge breakfast buffets. These breakfasts included cereals, eggs, meats, yogurt, vegetables, baked beans, cheeses, and all types of breads, buns, pancakes, and pastries. There was a variety of coffee and fruit juices to choose from. Getting gluten-free options was not a problem.

You don’t need to worry about carrying local currency. No matter how small the purchase, all the stores and cafes that we visited accepted our credit cards. The only exception was one store that refused to accept Visa. The Europeans are more advanced when it comes to electronic commerce that we are in Canada.

There is something about the water you use to shower with in Central Europe. It strips all the natural hair oils from your scalp. For days after washing my hair, I looked like an unmanageable mop top, which some cynics would say was an improvement.

For data on this vacation, I used a company called Saily to provide Internet data. It was reasonable priced, and it was easy to install their eSim. Their connectivity was stable, with very few dead zones. All the hotels we stayed in had WiFi, so there never was any problem accessing the Internet.

Our fellow passengers, that we usually cruise with, had WhatsApp installed on their phones. It was too inconsistent to recommend. Some people could send/receive messages, while others could not. We used it to talk to Marg’s family in Canada, and it worked fine for her to talk to her daughter and sister, but not her son.

If you want to watch English TV in your hotel room, good luck. Of course, you can’t expect a full slate of English networks, but you’re lucky if you get BBC News or Sky News. We ended up watching Netflix on our small twelve” laptop.

Central European food is the definition of substance over style. All the meals that we had were filled with lots of meat and potatoes. Unfortunately, rarely did you have a dish where there were any spices or seasonings. I think it will be a long time before I have any more schnitzel.

I’ll give them high marks for their pastries though. I think Marg could have apple strudel several times a week, and I loved their chocolate cakes.

Red Bull, the world's most popular energy drink was created by a citizen of Salzburg. If you can find it, it is an interesting read about Red Bull and how in the beginning it went about marketing itself. Its cooperate footprint can be seen all over the city, with its ownership of Salzburg's major sports teams and sporting venues. 

Beer and wine are plentiful in all the restaurants and cafes in Central Europe. I was under the mistaken impression that their wines were mostly whites, but we did have some wonderful red wines. Their local beers taste amazing because they don’t pasteurize their brews. They are poured out of the tap and drank, before they could become stale.

I use a Canon point and shoot camera on our vacations. After this vacation, I’ll be switching to a phone. It seems like the colours are more vibrant when I take a picture with my phone and the software allows me much more flexibility than my camera. The final straw was at the Berlin Cathedral, where I couldn’t get proper exposure in the low light of the chapel. I tried every trick in the book, but I just couldn't get a picture that gave the chapel justice. There was no problem with the phone though.

Over the course of this vacation, we went on three extended bus trips. Except for our trip from Passau to Salzburg, most of the time was spent on major highways. I thought the 401 through southern Ontario was bad, but the traffic on these roads was even more congested. I would estimate that two out of every three vehicles was a transport truck or cargo van. I guess that means the factories are working at full capacity, which is a good thing.

On this vacation we decided to try Uber for the first time. Most travel sites will tell you that taxis are the number one source of travel scams. Uber eliminates this problem because the price is set when you make your reservation. Our drivers arrived on time, and their vehicles were immaculate. The only problem that I had was that each of drivers thought they were Michael Schumacher, they way they raced to our destination.

Berlin is one of the greenest cities that I have ever visited. They have multiple huge parks, with dense forests, meadows, and sports fields. Several of these parks were hunting grounds for the aristocracy. The mass majority of the wide boulevards in Berlin, that we saw on our Uber trips, were lined with tall mature trees that form a wonderful shady canopy.

Germany is just starting to develop its own North Sea oil wells. But like most of Central Europe it gets its oil and gas from various countries, such as Norway. Since it stopped buying its supplies from Russia gasoline risen to $2.85 / litre in some cities. This is more than twice what we pay in Port Stanley.

In Czechoslovakia they only had one toilet paper mill in the country, because the state ministry determined that was all they needed. Unfortunately, there was a fire, and it took eight months before the supply of toilet paper was back on the selves. Our guide in Prague, told us that the best Christmas present the family had ever received was a package of toilet paper from a friend in West Germany.

The Intercity Express trains are marvellous. High speed with a smooth ride and comfortable seats, who could ask for anything more. It is too bad as Rick Mercer says that Canada leads the world in high-speed train studies.

Along the Spree River in the Friedrichshain district of Berlin, you can see one of the longest sections of the Berlin wall still standing. The East Side Gallery is a 1.3 kilometer-long open-air gallery painted directly on a preserved section of the Berlin Wall. In 1990, one hundred and eighteen artists from twenty-one countries painted murals of freedom and hope on the wall.

On our bus trip from Budapest to Prague, we stopped in Bratislava for lunch. We went to a beautiful restaurant overlooking the city and the Danube River. It was next to the Slovakian parliament building. Again, another class act by Scenic.

The Cold War did have its humorous side. Along the border between East and West Berlin was West Berlin’s top newspaper. They erected a large scrolling marquee on their roof, so that East Berliners could see the uncensored news. The East Berlin authorities, then erected three large apartment buildings to block the view. These apartments were designed so they didn’t have windows that faced West Berlin.

Looking back at the blog, I realize how comprehensive this vacation has been. Marg thought the river cruise might have been too busy, as she would have enjoyed more time on the boat cruising down the river with a glass of nice local wine in her hand. Still it was one of the best vacations ever! We enjoyed it so much that in the back of my mind, I'm planning a return trip to Prague, Vienna and Budapest and then taking a river cruise from Budapest Hungary to Bucharest Romania. But that is way in the future.