Epilog

We enjoyed seeing a bit of Eastern Europe on this trip. Several things contributed to our having a very pleasant vacation. The cities were all attractive yet different in several different ways. Nuremburg and Salzburg were relatively small cities whereas Munich, Prague, Vienna, and Budapest were all quite large. Munich, Nuremberg, Vienna and Salzburg were very clean and beautifully restored cities based on a fundamentally Germanic culture, while both Prague and Budapest are non-German cultures and cities where some buildings still show signs of the benign neglect of the Soviet occupational era. That said, each of the cities had really beautiful and architecturally interesting buildings, as I hope you can see in the photographs.

To some extent, however, the charming cities and bucolic landscapes that we saw belie the tortured history of the area. Religious and sectarian war, plagues, and oppression form a large part of the history of each of the cultures we encountered, and I imagine the common folks are grateful to finally live in peaceful times. Prague had an entire museum devoted to the topic of torture and Budapest had a museum about the German and Russian Secret Police that had such disturbing exhibits that the guide cautioned us about going there. We didn't go to either museum, of course, but even when I was carefully listening to the local guides in Prague and Budapest I caught not very subtle hints at the underlying bitterness toward the injustices of the past.

The people we met in all of the cities were pleasant, at least to us, although I was accosted by that black market money changer in Prague and in Budapest by a beggar, gypsy street vendors, and the old crone in the museum. But in some sense the good set of companions we had on the bus was even more important than the folks we met in the cities, mainly because we spent at least one mealtime together every morning and socialized with each other during the bus drive. The people on our bus were so uniformly friendly that by the end of the week we were really getting to know some folks reasonably well despite being natural introverts. I doubt that all bus tours have the friendly social chemistry that we experienced on our tour, but when it happens I think it would make all the difference in the world to how much one enjoys the trip. It probably helps if all tour members have a common language, which were different versions of English (Australian, New Zealand, Canada, and U.S.) in our case. The cultural diversity on our bus was a plus because it led to some very interesting discussions indeed.

The final factor that contributed to my enjoyment, at least, was the wonderful, sunny, bright weather with clear blue skies that we experienced every day at every city. That was totally unexpected as most of the cities had been experiencing cold weather, rain, and even occasional snow showers the week before we came. Both Monika and I had extra sweaters, long sleeved shirts, and coats that we just never used. I was in a T-shirt every day on the tour, and on one occasion got so hot that I had to zip off the legs of my zip pants. But everyplace we drove the spring growing season was clearly a couple of weeks behind the season we were experiencing back home in Virginia, and I am sure that cool, rainy weather would be more normal for that time of year. So we were just plain lucky with both the nice folks on the bus and the weather, but it made a big difference for us.