/Summary: 1991 Trip to Europe

(August 9 to October 25)

We rented (first time) an RV for two months. Gorbachev was out of office, then back in, so we zig-zagged along the western, then the northern part of former East Germany. We crossed the border to Szczecin, Poland where Emmy’s stepmother was born, when it was still called Stettin, Germany.

Spent five nights in Berlin, and used a hammer to break off two ten-inch pieces of the Berlin Wall. We spent three seconds at the customs station on the same bridge where we spent three hours in 1985, and crossed into Poland. Visited with the family we met in Poznan in 1985, then to Gdansk to see Henryk and Irena, who we met in the campsite in Warsaw that same year.

That year the roadside fruit and vegetable stands contained a few pieces of poor quality produce, but now farm wagons are loaded with an excellent harvest. We found the carved-of-salt-cathedral in the salt mine at Wieliczka to be phenomenal, then we drove into Czech Republic, and on to fabulous Prague.

It’s difficult to find a “one-view” that would surpass the sight of the Vltava River and the Charles Bridge, with the Prague Castle and St. Vitus Cathedral high above Marla Strana (Lesser town), across the river. On to the exceptional city of Dresden. Some of the famous old buildings have been rebuilt, but Palaces, Cathedrals, and other structures await exact rebuilding from piles of rubble that remain from WW II.

A few more days were spent seeing Martin Luther’s Wittenberg, Leipzig, Halle, and the hilltop memorial to the Buchenwald Concentration Camp. We enjoyed Bamberg again, and we can’t imagine anything more beautiful has been built since the spectacular Cathedral in Ebrach was begun in 1200 AD.

A few days at Mettlach was followed by a drive across Luxembourg on our way to Paris and back. With Hugo, Maria, and Monika as passengers, we again crossed Luxembourg, stopped to see the Cathedrals in Rheims, the little stone village of Senlis, and to Monika’s home in Montivilliers.

We revisited Honfleur, Bayeux, Fougéres, Dinan, Mont St. Michel, and a dozen others in this part of Normandy, then took Hugo and Maria to Belgium to see Brugge, Ghent, and Brussels. We returned the rented vehicle, and flew home after as interesting 78 days as can be imagined!