By breakfast time, the boat had docked at a long quai in Vienna which included several Viking River Cruise ships and  others with Swiss, Italian and French companies.  The Danube doesnt run through the city center, so in late morning we  were bussed downtown, divided into groups by differing mobility capacity.  Jan and I were led through the crowded streets listening to a guide’s halting comments through a radio earphone.

As our procession arrived at St. Stephen’s Cathedral the morning’s rainshowers were giving way to a brilliant sky illuminating lacy patterns  of light and shadow on the stone.

Inside the dark interior, Jan discovered a  tucked-away portrait of the structure’s 1513 architect she identified by his square and compasses, Anton Pilgram.

The cathedral plaza extended pedestrian walkways in several directions surrounded by elegant 19th century buildings.

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Guided by uniformed employees of Viking Tours through the transfers at Heathrow in London and at Budapest we arrived at the Viking Gullveig in time for late afternoon lunch buffet, nap and dinner.

Entering the dining room we noticed four jolly looking folks sitting together, one sporting a bald head and an impressive lumberjack beard, and sat down at their table. Ice was broken with the discovery that they were Canadians–residents of the Maritime province of New Brunswick but familiar with our second hometown in British Columbia.  They all were or had been involved in secondary education, one about to celebrate retirement, his wife still teaching, another a high school principal, and her husband, a former teacher who became a nuclear power plant operator and spent time at Diablo Canyon in San Luis Obispo.  We shared many onboard meals with these people and a couple more who joined the table.

The boat itself was sleek, elegant and comfortable, graced with well appointed lounges, restaurants and outdoor deck space in high style Scandinavian taste,

decorated with visually arresting, and aesthetically pleasing prints and paintings,

The most notable was the wall size painting at the top of the main stairway portraying the ship’s namesake, Gullveig, a goddess associated with the love of gold, with magic and sorcery, and with the ability to return to life after being burned to death three times. This figure in Norse mythology seemed appropriate to the Viking company and to the city of Passau we visited, home of a German literary version of those stories, The Nibelungenlied.

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———- Forwarded message ———
From: Louise Blight <[email protected]>
Date: Thu, Jun 27, 2024 at 9:46?PM
Subject: Message for Steven Marx
To: <[email protected]>

Dear City Farm SLO,

Would you mind passing this on to Steven Marx?

Thanks very much.

Dear Steven,

I recently came across your Flickr photoset about Lund and The End of the Road, and was immediately transported back to the 1970s and the Lund Farm Day Camp. I attended for two years in a row, an experience that was – unsurprisingly – unlike anything I had done before, and a transformative time for me as a nerdy and introverted kid. It was a great thing you did there, probably for everyone who attended. So after all this time I wanted to say thanks to you and Jan for running it.

It appears that the two of you continue to do great things with your community in California, so thank you for that also.

Louise

Louise Blight, PhD

Adjunct Associate Professor,

UVic School of Environmental Studies

and Principal, Procellaria Research & Consulting

Salt Spring Island, BC

[email protected]

Dear Louise

As you can imagine, it was a great treat to receive your email with its blast from the past.  Another example of the internet’s annihilation of space and time, it came to me and Jan while on a river cruise on the Danube in Austria the week after we concluded a difficult process of selling the property we’ve owned in Lund to our ten-year tenants, Tai Uhlmann and Theo Angel, the couple who we worked with to organize the Lund Reunion memorialized in the Flickr photoset you found, which itself was the climax of the great film they made about the place: “The End of the Road.”  (available here https://www.amazon.com/End-Road-Ronnie-Uhlmann/dp/B07WP6TKY6)

Another connection your message awakened was an article written by one of your fellow campers, Anna Gustafson, published in the Lund Barnacle p.32

Your note strengthens the collective memory of that mythic place and era.  I do remember you as a quiet and serious but very curious kid, and it’s wonderful to learn that you grew up to become a professor and entrepeneurial scientist. I’d love to learn more about your activities than what I gleaned from a google search.

Jan and I returned from Lund to California in 1979, where I finally completed my abandoned PhD dissertation and she became an attorney and elected official (among other roles). In 2012 I retired from teaching English and Environmental Studies at Cal Poly University and returned to an endeavor much like Lund Farm Day Camp, CityFarmSLO.org.

We continued to spend time in Lund every year with our two kids and 4 grandkids until 2023, when we all felt the need to move on.  But your message reignites the old flame, and I feel deeply grateful for it.

Yours,

Steven

Hello Steven,

Thank you for your warm reply. The rivers of the past seem to be converging on the present. I was just in Lund last month, for the first time in about 35 years. I was there doing fieldwork with a couple of colleagues, censusing the gull and cormorant colonies of the Salish Sea: we started our field season in Desolation Sound, and launched our boat at the Lund ramp. It stirred up lots of memories for me; after I finished high school I moved to Lund (in 1981 I think) for about a year and was the baker at the restaurant for much of that time. I lived with my then-boyfriend in the first house on the boardwalk past the parking lot, long since torn down and replaced by Nancy’s Bakery. (After that I followed my dad to Victoria and started university.)

Then the other day I actually saw Gerry Kariaganis, who is married to an old friend from undergrad days that I have just reconnected with after about 20 years. I remembered him from Powell River days as my parents also knew him; this week he told me a story about going home to his cabin on your farm one day and finding the door open and a sheep in his bed.

And of course we drove past your old farm last month too. I had no idea that you two had continued to own it for so long.

You asked about my activities. I mostly study birds – mainly marine birds over the years, but various species these days – and work in conservation. One of my main roles these days is co-chairing the birds specialist group of COSEWIC, the scientific body that assesses threatened species in Canada. https://cosewic.ca/index.php/en/about-us/cosewic-members.html

One of the places I’ve worked a lot in my career is Antarctica, and I’m just finishing a book manuscript about that. A couple of years ago my partner Iain and I moved to Salt Spring Island, so we’re settling into the community and our garden here. I’m so impressed that you’ve created Lund Farm Day Camp writ large in San Luis Obispo.

Jan, good luck on your reelection. If we lived in California I’d volunteer for your campaign.

Louise

A year ago we had to cancel “Romantic Danube,” the Viking Tour Company’s River Cruise because we came down with Covid a month before departure.  With the travel insurance money, we went on our own to England, Holland, France and Germany, our journey chronicled here.

That experience motivated us to try again to squeeze a trip into the two-week interval between Jan’s City Council meetings.  An injury to her “good” knee  during a December workout at Gymnazo required her to walk with a cane, which made the prospect of a cruise especially appealing.  But we agreed to spend a week following the river trip on our own in Salzburg and Munich.  Before departure we reserved lodging and concert tickets and read in books about the river and its cities, including Carl Shorske’s Fin de Siecle Vienna, Politics and Culture, Stefan Zweig’s The World of Yesterday, The Danube, A Cultural History, by Andrew Beattie, Mozart, A Life by Paul Johnson.  And we watched films set in central Europe, including The Third Man and Museum Hours

The weeks before departure concluded several open-ended involvements: the sale of Knoll House–our Canadian property since 1995–to Tai and Theo, our ten year tenants and lifelong friends,  our grandson Ian’s passing his qualifying exams as Airline Technician, our grandson Lucas’ acceptance in the five-month  Grizzly Academy boot camp, our daughter Claire’s promotion to full-time employee at the Cal Poly Food Service, Jan’s organization of. her campaign committee after a long-pondered decision to run for re-election, and completion of my Prefumo Creek Restoration and Enhancement Project.