Reminiscences 2024
While my documentation is sparse, there are enough pictures and memories to attempt to recreate this trip. It was the only one with Dr. Walsh, who had a family emergency that caused him to leave the trip in Budapest and return home. We had an elderly gentleman as a tour guide who was a friend of our tour operator (Value Holidays in Wisconsin) who turned out to be semi useful at best; as I recall, he also had health issues and faded as we did reach Russia.
London was always a highlight, and we reached there in time for a parade celebrating the Queen’s opening of Parliament. The Brits certainly know ceremony, but it’s always instructive to see machine guns on 18th century uniforms, a reminder of the problems of security in the contemporary world. One of the site visit highlights was to Harrods’s, world-famous 
departm
ent store, where I think I bought place card settings.
Paris was next on our agenda, and I remember the trip to the Louvre and Notre Dame. World class art, as always. At the church of St. Denis were the graves of former French kings. The business visit was to the Galaries Lafayette, a major department store in the mode of retail palaces.
The overnight train to Berlin was my first stab into going East. I remember asking the border guards for a passport stamp without success. Our tour guide was useful in steering us to the Pergamon Museum (the museum island is one of the treats of Berlin), which would, in turn, provide an introduction to the amazing ruins in Anatolia where I would see Pergamon and its contemporaries i
n Greek 
civilization. We also got to see the church that housed the Hohenzollern mausoleum, with the crypts of many of the Kaisers. Unter den Linden was the fashion street that East Germany showed off, but the wall proved East Germans were prisoners. A heady sight was the old airport, which had a monument to the airlift that saved Berlin during the cold war.
Our guide also arranged a tour of a newspaper, whose owner longed for the return of the Junkers, and the good old days of coddled communism.
I caught a performance of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana that helped me appreciate that work!
On the way to Prague, one of the classmates discovered we’d go through Dresden. Though that city had been bombed to smithereens in World War II, the opera house (one of Wagner’s favorites) had been rebuilt, and parts of the old city remained.
From there, it was an easy ride to Bratislava, capital of Slovakia, with a charming old town. I had never heard of Bratislava, because it historically was Pressburg, where the Hungarian monarchs were crowned. We stopped at a building that commemorated the victories Napoleon won at Austerlitz, certified in the Treaty of Pressburg.
And of course, Prague. The city Hitler spared as a museum, while he gassed its inhabitants.
Budapest, was once two cities, and once the capital of the Kingdom of Hungary. It has a stunning Parliament building on the Danube, which still has bullet holes from the 1956 uprising. I liked the cigar section of Parliament building, where parliamentarians could leave their cigars and come back to smoke after the session. The Opera House had a special section for Franz Joseph, and of course me. 
The Great Synagogue, built in the 1850s in the revival Moorish style was one of the birthplaces of Zionism. It’s the largest synagogue in Europe, and–before World War II, housed a major Jewish neighborhood.
I think I purchased tickets for everyone for the Budapest Opera House, where the orchestra played a Mahler symphony. At least one of us enjoyed the performance! As I recall, several “assumed” it was over after the first movement and went to enjoy other entertainment! Dr. Walsh and I also visited an old restaurant that specialized in exotic animals, such as bear or boar. Yum.
With Dr.Walsh and our tour guide gone, Russia was Moscow, with the massive subways built with slave labor and the Kremlin, where the rulers lived. It was my first trip to Russia, and as I stood there on Red Square, where so many 
May Day parades touted the greatness of Mother Russ, I noted the McDonalds and KFC. I thought,”The Cold War is Over, and the West won.”
We rode the subway, built by slave labor with incredible art–socialist realism style.
As impressive as the military was, the consumer world behind it was hollow. No wonder the Russian Civ book we read was “Cement.” Fitting.
Culture included the Bolshoi Ballet, and a Tchaikovsky piece based on Eugene Onegin.
However, I was really impressed with the Tretyakov Museum near the Kremlin, where I discovered the Russian impressionist painter, Arkhip Kuindzhi, whose birch forest paintings reminded me of places in Pictured Rocks. Lots of Pushin, too.
And the opportunity to buy matryoshka dolls and other souvenirs on Arbat Street.
We took the overnight train to St. Petersburg, and saw the city Peter the Great built to inspire Russians to abandon their non-European features. Castles and Palaces housed splendor until 1917, when the Communist Revolution toppled one dynasty for another. The Hermitage was really impressive, partly because the Romanovs purchased and the Reds confiscated art. To think, the country produced so many wonderful musicians and artist. And, as Leningrad, the city bore the brunt of a Nazi siege for almost two years. 
Ironically, one of the first things (International Communism be damned) rebuilt was the Palace of Peter and the Amber Room.
Our last night (remember this was May above the 60th parallel, a great time for long white nights) we toured the canals of the city, toasting Moskva! in the easy-to-get vodka that is probably Russia’s primary drink.
We covered a lot of territory, and, as I recall, we traveled by public transportation in many of our cities. That was pretty neat. But be careful to keep your ticket in Budapest. If you didn’t have one, you might get arrested!