The square in Prague, Czechoslovak was one of the cities Frank Sharp and his wife visited on a recent tour. Wow! This would have made a great Mystery Photo.
By Frank Sharp | An ambitious and taxing trip to Europe began with a Delta flight to New Jersey to a hotel close to the airport – a move that saved my wife and I a total of $500. We both got our flu shots before leaving and I carried a bottle of antibiotics just in case. Who knows what might happen on such a long and ambitious trip: six countries in 14 days and 2,000 miles on the ground?
Next morning we flew United to Montreal for the eight-hour flight on Lufthansa to Frankfurt. Our Cosmos tour guide, Anita, met us at the airport with the tour bus, a 60-seat Mercedes-Benz, which I learned to love. We had 41 in our group, so we could spread out on the bus. There were only four American couples in our group, with others from Australia, New Zealand, Scotland, and Indonesia.
Next morning we rose at 6 a.m., had a great buffet breakfast and boarded the bus for Berlin, a six-hour 350 mile trip, with a “comfort stop” every two hours. Our first city was Weimar “the Athens of Germany,” with luminaries such as Luther, Bach, Schiller, Liszt and Goethe.
Our tour of Berlin began with a city guide for each of the cities we visited. We saw Checkpoint Charlie at the Berlin Wall, which had black and white photos of John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev’s visits. Other stops included the Brandenburg Gate where President Ronald Reagan, behind two panes of bullet-proof glass, said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”
After two days in Berlin, we took another six-hour, 350 miles drive to Warsaw, Poland, stopping to see the statue of Chopin. Eighty percent of Warsaw was destroyed by the Nazis in World War II, yet they rebuilt it beautifully, so that you hardly see any damage. However, one section of the ghetto formerly had 80,000 Jews, but now none live there!
Later we traveled to the notorious Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz, hidden deep in the Polish forest. It looked like a well-maintained apartment complex, intentionally I suspect, to make it look pleasant, not to upset the incoming millions to its gas chambers. Hitler was an evil master of deception.
Next was Krakow, Poland’s second largest city. It was untouched by World War II with its buildings all preserved, many dating from the 16th century! It is considered the cultural capital of Poland. We visited the medieval Old Town and its Market Square, Jewish Quarter, St. Mary’s Basilica and the Royal Archcathedral Basilica of Saints Stanislaus and Wenceslaus.
Later came Budapest in Hungary, seeing Buda Castle and Heroes’ Square, and enjoyed a short cruise on the Danube River for the evening lights. Then we were in Vienna and had a chance to attend a concert by the Vienna Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra, the highlight of our trip.
Prague, capitol of the Czech Republic, was our next stop, walking across its Charles Bridge with its 34 saints over the Vitava River. Munich on the final stop on our trip where I picked up a “bug”. That made the medicine we brought a life-saver. (There were no doctors at the hotels even though they were four and five-star hotels.) We have had this problem before in Europe, so we were happy to return in one piece!
On our final leg back to Rhein-Main Airport in Frankfurt, as a fitting tribute to America, they played Elvis Presley’s greatest hits. All the travelers seemed to enjoy it immensely.
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