MESSING AROUND WITH RHINE MAIDENS AFLOAT…
(or The Complete Idiot's Guide to Rhine River Cruises)

OK, this is a letter (of sorts, since it does appear a bit 'chatty') that I recently sent to my circle of intimates, albeit a bit expanded in the form you see it in here. Those of you who don’t remember what a letter is, well, that’s what Wikipedia is for, isn’t it?

It’s the 31st of October today and we can likely expect streams of not-so-bright urchens not long from now who can’t quite make the connection between a totally dark, un-illuminated house and a 'trick-or-treaters NOT welcome message'. Sad to think of us hiding pathetically somewhere in the bowels of the place, but we do: collateral casualties of the now highly secularised festive religious event where sociopaths not infrequently compete with each other to poison candy and slip razor blades into apples (does anyone actually hand those out any more?).

Wifie and I just returned from an 8-day Viking cruise of the Rhine River, heading west from Basel (Switzerland) to Amsterdamnit (Nederlands), our point of departure for home again, and frankly I feel like liquid baby s*it as I type these words. We flew Lufthansa (flights subcontracted to United) on a Boeing 767-900 from the Dutch capitol to Dulles (Wash DC), then boarded a United 737-800 for the Dulles-to-Suckatomato leg. The initial stage lasted 7.5 hours and subsequent final stateside stage took 5.5 hours. Both flights were of the proverbial ‘flights from hell’ variety, since we had the full complement of congenital idiots, mindless yahoos, thoughtless nincompoops and screaming infants aboard…in addition to plenty of those passengers obviously suffering from severe head-colds…to keep things prickly. This last group of thoughtless bastards mercilessly hacked, coughed and sneezed their way throughout the durations of the flights with an obliviousness of minimal health & hygiene standards that would have made a research historian of the European ‘Black Death’ of 1347 proud!

In my case, we had a fellow and his wife on our cruise who were obviously afflicted with a particularly virulent variant of this respiratory creeping crud and they must have been the source of the raging cold I am presently coping with. Needless to relate, beset with this nasty head-cold, all the many cabin pressure changes experienced during ascents & descents wreaked hell on me (and those of us with URI-compounded sinus problems) and by the end of the flight to Sacramento I was a real mess. Couldn’t hear properly, felt physically nauseous and was barely able to crawl off the plane. I glanced pathetically at the stew as I deplaned, but she was merciless, refusing to just kill me and end my misery.

Yes, I am well aware of the fact that there are many far worse things to suffer through in life than a mere cold, but at my age, a bad head-cold IS a significant annoyance…especially when my medical advice nurse informs me that there’s absolutely nothing modern medicine can do for me (other than the usual ineffective OTC palliative therapies) and it will likely take about 3 weeks for the damned thing to run its course.

So here I sit, trying to cope with a rampaging nose that has developed a dark, evil perversity of its own and is post-nasal dripping totally out of control. Welcome back to the state that nature is trying to incinerate totally and where we can only hope (vainly, I might add) that Jesus will appear in a cloud of righteous wrath and smote all the rabidly progressive liberal progressive politicians in California with terminal diarrhea! (I swear all my fellow Rhine cruisers smiled cynically when I told them we were from this wretched state, on our trip!)

[My train of thought is here derailed by a small disturbance from the kitchen, where wifie has stumbled over the rubber mat on the floor in front of the sink and taken a tumble, accompanied by small (albeit restrained) screams of bruised dignity. Several minutes ensue of making concerned, husband-like tsk-tsking noises while placing cold-packs on her knees (which, if not for numerous bruises, are actually pretty cute ones!), where she seems to have acquired a habit of taking small hits every now and then (under similar circumstances). How ironic to think we made it through 8 days of rambles on land, through castle torture chambers, endless fortress stairways, on hikes, bicycle rides and even dodging clumps of debauched drinkers at local German gaststube, only to finally arrive home and take a fall. If this is what the last years of life are all about, who needs it?!]

At any rate, the trip started smoothly enough when we decided that, since we had thoroughly enjoyed a somewhat similar Danube cruise back in 2017 (from Passau to Budapest), we would take a river cruise in the other direction (east-to-west) starting at Basel and terminating in Amsterdamnit.

Since we had used the Earthbound Expeditions group for the Danube trip (and been extremely well-pleased with the result), this time we chose an alternate line, Viking Cruises (mainly because of all their high-visibility publicity and promotional marketing blather, which is considerably evident just about anywhere you look these days).

After our return and due reflection, I must concur, all in all, that Viking admittedly did a pretty good job of handling all the details, air-connections, itinerary, excursion options and logistical details of our holiday. There were only a few minor deficits I could cite and they were mostly mere inconveniences, rather than genuine problems of significance.

The flights over from the US were (again) ‘flights from hell’, since today’s economy class commercial air travel is not dissimilar to being loaded into a cattle-car with the local dairy herd for tea & biscuits at the friendly neighborhood abattoir’s processing plant. The seats are confoundedly small, the space allotted per person extremely cramped and when the fellow in front of you decides to put his seat back, you quickly develop a rising urge to throttle the inconsiderate bastard! E.g.: On the initial flight over we had the unique please of sitting directly in back of three blowzy, middle-aged blondes who indulged in non-stop drinking during the entire duration of the flight. They were ill-mannered, not very proprietary, boisterous and extremely noisy, the one in front of me putting her seat full-back as soon as we lifted off and not returning it upright until we began our final descent to the Munchen flughof. Arrrrgh! Good thing I’m not normally given to homicidal rages!

The cruise itself was relatively uneventful, since most of our travel actually ‘on-river’ was done at night. There’s not much to see along the upper Rhine, immediately below Basel (unless you like oil & chemical plants), a condition extending pretty much to that Lower Rhine section that is called ‘the scenic Rhine’ (with all the castles, the Loreley Rock, et all).

Here and there we’d stop for the various shore excursions offered, as is the custom on these river excursions. These typically include a visit to a Black Forest village (Breitnau, which a regular junket stop for tours such as ours, featuring glass-blowing, cuckoo clock and 'Schwartzwalderjuchen' making demonstrations), the medieval village of Colmar, ‘Highlights of French Strasbourg’, a short jaunt up the Neckar River to Heidelburg, dinner & wine-tasting in beautifully quaint (and heavily over-touristed) Rudesheim, a visit to excellently preserved Marksburg Castle, a walking tour of historic Cologne, and a final excursion to the windmills and cheese-making operations of Kinderjijk (Nederlands), before flying back to the states.

Even if one is not well-versed in European history, it quickly becomes apparent that the catastrophic religious wars (Catholic vs. Protestant, most perfectly characterised by the infamous 30-Years War savagery that ripped the continent asunder from roughly 1618 to 1648) and equally merciless political conflicts (notably those between the German States and the French Empire) that ravaged Europe set a high standard for the later carnage of the two world wars. Surprisingly, in view of the thoroughly intermixed territorial swapping that so affected this part of the Rhine Valley (in which, for example, Alsace could be German one week and French the next, etc.), there remains a strong and very palpable anti-French sentiment evident among locals. And in fact, the main reason why the Rhine Valley is so heavily visited not with castles, but with 'splendid castle ruins' is that the French made a point not just of overcoming and supressing German fortified strongholds, but totally obliberating them (only one small example may be found in beautiful Heidelburg, whose Schloss ruins are now described as archetypically 'romantik'). I am reminded of two things, as we are continually made aware of this lingering bitterness by our youngish 'local' tour-guides(according to one recent survey, over 37% of all Germans are either athiests or committed agnostic sskeptics): 1) Wars are  terrible enough, without people slaughtering each other over whose imaginery Supreme Deity is the 'one true god'; and 2) I've never really cared much for the French, anyway (except for their women: oo-lala!); bloody Frogs!

[I am reminded here that an interesting hypothesis came to my attention during my investigations of the 30 Years War (conducted after we returned from the trip, by the way). Obviously, a great many people, scholars and writers principally, who try to explain the seemingly heinous disregard Germany exhibited for captured nations and people that came under its control during the Third Reich Years, refer to the by-now stereotyped cold indifference for the very tragic human plight of its victims exhibited by Germany. Many have openly wondered what exactly it is about the so-called 'German personality' that allowed them to brutally subjugate prisoners and inhumanly condemn hundreds of thousands to extermination during the war.

In possible answer to that question, one academic writer proposed the theory that this German 'insensitivity' may have its roots in the extreme violence and unspeakable brutality that the German people suffered themselves both during the 30 Years War and later during the French occupations (under Bonaparte). It is a fact, well-documented but not generally well-known by most unstudied people, that so intense was French hatred for Germans and Germany's subject population that criminal brutality of almost unimagineable nature was experienced under the French occupations. Whole pillages and regions saw their women, children, infants exterminated by French troops (and Protestant Catholics). Atrocities were the order of the day, back then, with no mercy given or taken by the participant armies and so appalling were these depredations against civilians that THIS may possibly help explain the fact that Germans over time developed a sense of intense emotional distancing from such extreme inhuman behavior as a means protecting themselves from the unimaginable horror of having experienced such atrocities. By the time the balance of power had shifted (and Germany under Hitler gained the upper hand over its traditional enemies in the 20th Century) Germans had developed a sort of insularity to extreme human suffering (so this theory goes) that eventually permitted attrocities on the scale of the Jewish 'final solution' to be carried out without much second sight (or regret) as to the actual scope of the outrages being committed. This remains an interesting theory, but the link to prior history of national antapthies & religious violence remains nonetheless palpable and credible.]

Since we booked an October passage, I expected far fewer tourists than is normally the case in the prime summer season, but was somewhat surprised by the profundity of Japanese tour groups to be encountered this late in the year. Fortunately, most of the highly professional pickpockets who are a real plague during the summer had already headed south to sunnier climes by this time, so we had no trouble at all from them.

We were traveling, incidentally, with a couple of good local friends, Randy & Cathy, who were making their very first European trip (in fact, they first approached us and asked if we wanted to 'do a European river cruise' with them), so as a well-traveled visitor to Europe, I anticipated a few mild exasperations from the obligations of ‘guiding’ them. Fortunately, they adapted themselves quite well and it was a pleasure to have their company on this trip.

Speaking of the traditional French/German historical antagonisms, our cruise passed through the historic Alsatian city of Strasbourg, which is now politically 'owned' of France (despite its being the official seat of the entire European Union). Despite my mild antipathy of Gallic attitudes, I must admit that the two cultures are so thoroughly admixed there that by this late date most of the past's political divisions of the Alsace region have long since been buried in the bourgeois details of modern commercial and economic life that allow little wiggle-room for old grudges and arguments. Strasbourg is, therefore, quite an interesting mix of the two national cultures and is consequently most enjoyable to experience.

Overall, the Viking tour line can be justly complimented for the excellence of both the high-quality culinary experience they provide and the superior caliber of their employees. The staff on the boat were great fun, very helpful and definitely contributed substantially to the overall enjoyment level we experienced on this trip. The food was (as is usually the case on such trips) nothing short of phenomenal, with almost peerless excellence apparent in the selection of cuisine and its preparation, menus and related gastronomic logistical dining considerations, all being accomplished expertly.

As someone who doesn’t normally eat a lot of food, it was hard to not gorge myself silly, such was the quality (& quantity) of the Viking dining experience. But, somehow (it must be a miracle) I only gained 3 pounds on the entire trip! In particular, Viking takes some pain to provide a stable of excellent wines to imbibe, this being a trip through the best German (and exceptionally good French) wine growing regions. Although I am not much of a white wine drinker (and the Rhine Valley features some of the very best white wines available anywhere), I myself prefer medium dry, medium bodied red wines, with especial favorites that include most of the Rhone Region’s fabulous reds (Swiss Dole and Gamay/Pinot Noir blends in particular) and Viking offers more than a few such delightful vintages. In fact, the Viking red ‘house wine’ is none other than the Heinrich Vollmer ‘Meisterstuck’, available in bottlings dating to about 2013 or so, and they are excellent, to say the very least! I am told they sell for about $6-8 Euros a bottle in Europe, but seem to be largely unavailable here in the USA, much to my regret.

If you are familiar with California's Apothic red blend, or the imported Australian ’19 Crimes’ red blend, you get a faint glimmering of what we’re talking about here. Swiss Rhone Dole (my absolute favorite), sadly, is almost impossible to find anywhere outside of the Canton of the Swiss Valais (Wallis, auf Deutsch) and certainly not on the river boats (tut mir leid!).

Despite the fact that we took advantage of the option offering paying all gratuities ‘in advance’, we still found we needed a pocket full of 2 Euro coins at all times to ‘thank’ the local tour guides, bus drivers and so forth. Not a huge dent in the pocket, to be sure, but an unexpected logistical consideration, since European tourist catering businesses don’t wish to deal in chump change (they prefer payment in currency bills), so you’re constantly having to use ATMs to get coins for use as gratuities. And speaking of the tour guides, they were all excellent and most enjoyable. Multilingual (as you would expect), they were recruited locally and most had been born and raised in the regions they guided us through. Although most are young (often local graduate students in their late 20s & 30s), one of our guides in Cologne (Wolfgang, 74) was raised in the ruins of post-war Cologne, which suffered terribly throughout the relentless Allied bombing campaigns of the war, and his stories, recounted with a unique mixture of exacting fact, mild irony and dry humor, were both sobering and illuminating.

He shared with us a story about him and his childish playmates finding a stash of German stick-grenades on one occasion that they used as baseball bats, not knowing they were explosives; fortunately a friendly GI, who was horrified by the catastophic potential implicit, quickly informed them and disposed of the lethal weapons. As a result, neither Wolfgang or his friends are today walking around with less than the usual complement of arms, legs, fingers, etc.

We Americans, spared from catastrophic world-wide conflicts and their wide-spread, often tragic consequences for innocent civilians as we are by our natural ocean barriers, haven’t a clue as to what genuine suffering and misery is, of course, and the contrast there is remarkable and worth more than a little passing reflection. Typically, Americans abroad = total naifs!

One of the interesting sidelights of the cruise was having the opportunity to spend some time on the bridge of the river vessel we were on (in our case, the Viking River Cruiser ‘Hlin’ (who is the Norse goddess the Norsemen credit with the power to protect & shelter humanity), where those of us who are interested in technical details were able to gain some interesting insights into exactly what the skills required to pilot and navigate a fairly lengthy but shallow-drafted river boat are on a shallow and often treacherous river such as the Rhine.

The Hlin (it's pronounced 'LIN'), our boat, drew only about 7-8 feet of water and accommodates 190 passengers in three classes (on three different decks). These river cruisers must be fairly shallow in draft so as to get around the river during drier seasons. On the top deck, next to the bridge (which can be hydraulically raised or lowered as required by bridge clearances) is the observation deck and there is a rather commodious dining room and guest lounge, in addition to the staterooms. Ours was a ‘French Balcony’ room, which is barely big enough for a king-sized bed but has a large, full length window, opening onto the river. That’s the ‘mid-class’ of accommodation. The First Class accommodations have a small veranda outside the window, where you can leisurely sit, sip your Schloss Vollrads vintage and view the boat’s passage along the river. There are two luxury suites (very costly), also (at the very stern of the boat), that cost considerably more, as well as a limited number of cabins along the waterline that have only small windows (think ‘steerage class’ on the Titanic). Most people opt for the French Balcony, since they give you the best bang for your buck.

Our vessel was built in 2014 and belongs to a modern class of river boats that number about 10 under Viking management (Viking operates a total of about 62 or so river cruisers, altogether). All are quite comfortable, as would be expected. Instead of a main (central) conventional propulsion system, these state-of-the-art river boats are all equipped with very agile propeller thruster pods that are situated both fore and aft. They can be turned 360 degrees for very precise navigating ability (in the 4-6 mph current) in any direction and at first it is a bit of a surprise to find your boat traveling alternately forward and backwards at times (depending upon the maneuvering required), as well as sideways! Quite an innovative & novel arrangement, in my opinion, and perfectly suited to the not-insignificant challenges of river travel on Europe’s inland waterways.

The Hlin’s bridge is further interesting, having the nautical equivalent of what the ‘glass cockpit’ is to modern aircraft, and the ship is steered not with a  ship's wheel but with a sort of joystick by the Captain from his seated position on the bridge. Radar (several different types and classes are edmployed) are also used to navigate, proving particularly vital at night and when visual daytime conditions are marginal (during fog, foul weather, etc.). Accommodations for passengers, as said,  number about 195, with a typical crew complement of about 50 on the standard length of boats of the Hlin class (overall length of these vessels is about 450 feet). Further, specific navigational certification is required for each of the European rivers (one license does not cover all, given the marked differences each river features).

Not surprising is the fact that accommodations aboard the Viking river cruise ships are rated as 4-to-5 star and based upon all I have experienced on our most recent cruise, this claim seems perfectly believable. Thus, if your criteria for an enjoyable Euro holiday allows for a somewhat superficial and condensed understanding of the regions you are traveling though and a desire to do so amidst relatively high standards of catering and accommodation, river cruising does have a few strong attractions.

OK, now for the inside, lowdown poop (wherein yer friendly, curmudgeonly, Rick Steves Travel School dropout unloads all his crankier observations about this most recent trip).

I can start by saying that despite the growing popularity of European river cruises (vice ocean cruises), I’ve never been a big fan of cruising vacations. I’ve never, EVER enjoyed being crated up with a passel of other folks and transported anywhere and that includes on boats, ships, aircraft and buses. [The one exception for me is rail-travel, since I greatly enjoy slow or moderate (leisurely) travel by train.]

That said, travel of any extent by commercial aircraft these days absolutely stinks (unless you’re flying first class, but even then, the hassles of customs, TSA screening and all of the attendant annoyances are still signal detractors; nevertheless, we economy class ‘cattle’ generally enjoy smiling cynically at first class passengers when we remind them that first class fliers are ALWAYS first at the scene of any aircraft accident!). Journeys of any length by bus are also a pain and (to me at least) cruises on ocean liners have the least appeal, since you‘re jammed into a floating city with several thousand other annoying people (yes, I readily admit I am probably equally as annoying as any of them, of course, so the antipathy is likely mutual).

As for dining companions, it’s always a matter of pure chance whether you sit down next to a descendent of the notorious Kallikak family or a Nobel Prize nominee (since dinner seating is unassigned), and sometimes making small talk against the background din of noise that characterises most such common dining areas and lounges can rob such encounters of even the slightest vestige of pleasure.

At one dinner, for example, I found myself seated next to a dried-up little wizened East Indian fellow (he had the appearance of Ghandi's younger and thinner brother) who I came to learn is a structural engineer. He had about as much small-talk ability as a door-post and remained absolutely expressionless throughout our painful, introductory ‘Howdy! How’re you/where are you from?’ type conversation. On another occasion, we sat next to two PhDs from Cornell University, a husband and his wife, the former of whom we came to learn had actually been nominated for a Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking researches in chemistry. To his credit, he was very personable (“Call me Jim”), despite having a severe hunchback type spinal deformity, but his wife was about as socially engaging as a dessicated Egyptian mummy. Their daughter was equally ‘lifeless’.

Then, also, there were numerous sick people on our trip, merrily spreading their illnesses amongst the rest of us, so I’m sure that if it wasn’t the specific dimbulb I suspect of having given me his cold, it could easily have been any one of at least 12 or so others. Sigh! Masses of people = masses of problems. If you don't have a current flu immunisation and travel during flu season with large groups, be prepared for the possibility of something like that which I seem to have contracted

The excursions we took were all rather interesting, but again they all involved being crated up and transported to the site of interest in buses…not one of my favored experiences. One complaint I had throughout the trip is that there was never enough time to squeeze everything in and still feel as if we were able to relax and enjoy things. There are thousands of things to see and experience along the fabulous Rhine River and these trips are only a ‘quickie experience’ at best. Too many deadlines, departure times and such to facilitate much satisfying, languid serenity. Yes, it’s nice to have a chance to visit beautiful old ‘Romantik Rudesheim’ (one of the most quaintly preserved towns along the Rhine today), but the hustle & bustle involved in getting there, eating, drinking and such, really extracted a large degree of pleasure from the experience. Ditto for most of the other excursions, with the exception of the visit to the Kinderjijk windmills and the nearby daily farm/cheese-making dairy operation, which was quite interesting. I suppose I should say also that the weather was reasonably good throughout the trip (highs in the high 60s), with only a slight touch of rain at the beginning.

The Kinderjijk windmills are truly amazing, of course, and they are (about 19 in all) subsidised by the Dutch government, but 'rent' out to private families that wish to live in and help maintain them. The internal living space available, despite their imposing external dimensions, is actually quite small and it is hard to coinceive of a miller, his wife and his 13 children shoe-horned into such an edifice! Today, most dike operations (water pumping) are carried out by virtue of modern wind-turbine installations, but these old windmills remain a signal landmark of 'old Holland' and are visited & viewed by millions of tourists (like us) per year.

There was a movie made back in 1969, coincidentally, titled ‘If it’s Tuesday, This must be Belgium’, which quite whimsically portrays the frenzied shuffle of American tourists being shunted from place to place in Europe with only a very limited chance to see anything. It was quite a hit back in those days, but it’s still just as apropos today as ever!Unfortunately, these capsularised, 'quickie' condensed tours of more than 2000 years of rich history are all that too many Americans benefit from (no wonder we understand so little about other countries and their peoples!).

Of all the excursions we went on, probably the least enjoyable was the dinner & drinking experience at ‘Romantik Rudesheim’ one evening; since I am unable to drink more than a small glass of wine these days, the animated enthusiasms of my fellow passengers for copious drink FAR exceeded those of my own by the time the Germanic flavored conga-line started careening recklessly through the confines of the gaststube we had a ‘typical German dinner’ in!

In direct contrast, I found myself far more enjoying the guided tour through the ancient ruins of Heidelburg Castle, since although I’ve visited Heidelburg many times in the past, I never before took the official Schloss  tour (or actually viewed the colossal (221,726 liters...that's an almost unimaginable 58,574 gallons!) Heidelburg Tun wine cask (world’s third largest, built in 1751, and indicative of just how much the ruling princely Palatinate Elector Karl Theodor enjoyed his fermented grape juice!). It was so large that Karl Theodor had a dance deck built on top of it for his guests to enjoy as they quaffed gallons of the potent stuff!

The keys to the immense wine vault containing this monolithic curiosity were held by a Tirolean dwarf (Clemens Pankert) whose popular name was 'Perkeo'. The name arose due to his common response, when asked if he cared to have a glass of wine: "Perche no?" ("Why not?", hence 'Perkeo'). It is said that he drank between 6-8 US gallons of wine each day and imbibed no other fluid (including water). Legend has it that at the end of his life, his doctor forced him to drink water. He died the following day!

It's certainly true that both Old Heidelburg and the ruined Schloss are among the world's most romantic locales, but be prepared for a glut of tourists just about all the time (Heidelburg began it's American daliences in 1945, when the US Army made the city its headquarters and it's been a popular US stomping ground ever since. [Note: If you are, like me, appreciative of the fascinating history of the University and its famous student 'Burschenshaft' (fraternities, buth dueling and non-dueling), don't miss the two traditional student drinking establishments: 'Zum Seppl' and 'Der Rotes Ochen'. Stepping into them is like entering a time-portal to the past glory of historic German student days; back in 1983 I carved my initials into the wooden walls of Der Rotes Ochen, in a dark corner of the lower room there, as was the time-honored custom. They remain there as a reminder of my own early youthful days!

Whereas our former cruise on the beautiful Donau (Danube) back in 2017 was delightful in almost every way, our fellow passengers on that cruise were kindred classical music fans like ourselves, giving us all a much more intensified commonality to enjoyably share. By contrast on the recent Rhine cruise, it became quickly apparent that heavy drinking was at the tippy-top of most people’s agenda on our Rhine boat (despite the fact that we had passengers from all over the USA aboard). My experience has invariably been that heavy drinking NEVER brings out the best in people, sadly. QED.

This all brings me to my central point here and that is that my most preferred M.O. for travel has always involved settling in a carefully researched & pre-selected area and then gradually setting out to savor and gradually experience the locale, its people and the local customs by turns. I used to do this back in the 80s & 90s while a filthy rich American expat on numerous trips to German speaking Europe and I’d do it again readily, if I didn’t have to factor wifie’s demands for personal enjoyment into the matter. As it was, this Rhine cruise was a definite compromise on my part. Fortunately, I was able to do most of my world-gallivanting about while still relatively young enough to enjoy it thoroughly. Anything I do now as a ‘decrepit-old-geezer-to-be’ is just frosting on an already richly confectioned cake.

As to whether a river (or ocean) cruise is for you, that remains a highly individualized decision based upon your perceived needs. All I can say is that any erstwhile ‘pleasure trip’ shared with throngs of my fellow human beings will always be far less than optimal by my personal standards, to say the least, but if you are relatively unfamiliar with the broader historic & cultural backdrop of Europe and are dipping your toe in the water for the first time, it might just be the perfect compromise!

In closing, I should share with you the fact that at just about every turn on our recently concluded trip I found myself half-recalling certain passages from Sam Clemens’ famed ‘Innocents Abroad’. That august 19th century master of prose certainly had the essential mixed-nature of the experience’s many delights nailed firmly to the foredeck! As Peanuts character Lunus van Pelt (Charlie Brown's fastidious little buddy) famously expressed it: "I love humanity; it's people I can't stand!"

After all, when you’re a world-class old poopy-pants like I am, some aspects of human nature never seem to change! And now, take some comfort in knowing that I have uncomfortably dragged myself from my sick-bed to share these positively scintillating details of my own Twainesque ruminations with all of you at great personal cost to my comfort and feelings of well-being! Why? Because 1) I have such a profound regard for all of you to whom this has been directed, and 2) because I am afflicted with a chronic case of what we word-slingers may tactfully call ‘oral diarrhea’. [PS: I have a castle or two along the Rhine that I’m willing to sell to you for a song, if you're interested…]

Be well, friends, and always remember to cover your mouth when you sneeze…that might be MY nose you’re messing with! [And now I’d better get this completed placed on Author’s Den, before it becomes the usual small book.]

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PSS: Nala, our much-loved girl pup, experienced a wild case of extreme separation anxiety over our brief absence. Probably thought we had abandoned her (she’s a rescue) and the pet boarding people told us she was the most ‘vocal’ of all the dogs boarding there…this about a Siberian girl who is normally not prone to the usual vociferous Siberian ‘talking’ proclivities and who is usually the quietest pup imaginable! I confess I really missed her, too. In factg, I’d have traded all the people on our cruise for her companionship and if that makes me a suspect for sociopathy, so be it! [H.L. Mencken had some pithy things to say in that regard also, I seem to recall.]