Europe 2024
Thursday, June 27th, 2024A 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.
