Cowboys and Angels
I have a silly habit lately. Whenever I’m on a long flight nowadays I like to listen to music from musicians that have died. I figure I’m 30,000 feet in the sky so I have to be that much closer to heaven where they should be having fun.
When I listen to their music, I enjoy imagining that I can see them playing out on the wings. Actually, It won’t take anytime at all now before airlines start installing holographic projectors on their wings so passengers can look out on the wings and see their favorite musicians while listening to their tunes. The tricky part will have each passenger looking out from different windows to only see their musicians and not the musicians others are enjoying. When technology makes this all happen, those seats next to the wings will be the most expensive on the airplane!
I only bring this up because my wife Sharon, myself, great friends Mary and Neal were just on some long flights to Budapest recently to catch an 8-day Romantic Viking River Cruise along the Danube River with stops in Budapest, Vienna, Krems, Passau, and Regensburg. Mary and Neal took a one-day journey to Munich before flying home while Sharon and I stayed an extra 4 nights in Munich before returning home.
Viking Cruise Hospitality
We all arrived a couple of days early in Budapest to adjust our body clocks and start our adventure early before getting on the good ship Viking Gullveig carrying 190 guests, 52 crew at 443 feet long of pampered service.
Someone said their were 164 Americans on board and 4 from Australia who we met and learned the Australians were all travel agents that won free rides due to their superior sales skills on signing up more and more Viking Cruises to Australians!
The gliding colorful scenery, lectures, entertaining staff, organized sightseeing to visit churches, abbys, funny little shops, palaces, even more churches, museums, and the tasty meals were all very rewarding. Someone also said the calories eaten on a ship don’t count so we believed them!
Attending the very spots where so much good, bad or ugly history occurred was remarkable, and it was easy to fall back in time. In one city, 500 years ago, a group of people had to escape the town overnight and run across a stone bridge that we had just walked across earlier in the morning.
Although history can hold tragedies, there were amazing people back then too. We attended a classical 4 string quartet concert in Vienna’s St. Peter’s Church. As advertised, “One of the city’s baroque beauties, the lavish church is a fitting venue for an evening of music in the heart of the city. Take a seat in the church vaults and immerse yourself in a program of music from renowned classical composers such as Mozart, Vivaldi, Bach, Schubert, and Beethoven.”
The Value of Traveling
I love traveling and I love classic quotes about traveling:
• “Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.” – Helen Keller
• “Adventure is worthwhile.” – Aesop
• “Jobs fill your pocket, but adventures fill your soul.” – Jamie Lyn Beatty
• “The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams.” – Anonymous
• “To travel is to live.” – Hans Christian Andersen
• “Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer.” – Anonymous
Sharon and I have visited Europe 6 times before, mostly as a couple but this time we joined our friends, Mary and Neal, making their first visit to Europe along with many, many other first timers to Europe onboard. It was refreshing seeing their initial reactions to Europe!
Most mornings Mary, Neal, Sharon, and myself had fun picking a card from a deck of traveling cards I had picked up in Amsterdam. These cards invited the card holder to see the world with fresh eyes with exciting and unusual suggestions. The point was to nudge us out of our comfort zones as we visited somewhere new each day. It worked!
George Michael Daydreams
Getting back to those long international flights, one person’s music I always bring with me is a healthy collection of George Michael songs. For some reason I have had dreams attending his parties in the South of France. One dream had me attending his split-level house on a hill overlooking Monaco. On one level of the estate, heavy rock or dance music was constantly playing but on the other level closer to the garden, ballads, and love songs filled the air. Chances are George Michael never owned a house in the South of France but it doesn’t stop me from dreaming about it!
One of my favorite George Michael songs is “Cowboys and Angels”. However, as we made our way down the Danube just the very title of that song had me imagining there could be quite an extended show at all the world-class attractions that we are visiting throughout this vacation.
Many tourists are overly noisy, clumsy, and pushy like American Cowboys in a hurry to declare another victory. While all these tourists are jostling each other to attend these historical attractions on the main floor there could be another show entirely up in the rafters filled with polite Saints, Ghosts, or Angels that occasionally could be tourist too but are much more civilized as they complete their journeys.
Of course, we can’t see any Saints, Ghosts of Angels very often so we can only imagine what kind of travelers they might be.
Epilogue
In Munich, Sharon and I ate well and enjoyed extra shopping, and sightseeing including watching their marathon one morning, national treasures and more at their Residenz Museum, and later I visited the Deutsches Museum, the world’s largest museum of science and technology, with about 125,000 objects exhibited from 50 fields of science and technology. Our hotel even had a Rick Steves’ Travel Group assembling for their 13 Days Guided Tour. Alas, we never saw Rick Steves at breakfast.
Shopping can be tempting at times.
Turning a corner, we bumped into a great home store called Kustermann in business since 1798. They had marvelous items including a coffee mug with Marilyn Monroe blowing a bubble on one side and the quote, “Happy Birthday Mr. President.” on the other side. The mug sold for €169.00.
Turning another corner earlier during our visit we saw the Limited-Edition Craig Blousan tan suede jacket for sale that James Bond wore in the movie “Spector”. Rumor has it there were only 700 of these jackets made.
Naturally, when the store was actually open again, I went back to investigate.
Fantastic leather jacket store with movie star portraits on all the walls plus an early prototype of a Terminator that was supplied by Arnold Swarznegger who is close friends with the store’s owner.
I said I understood there were limited amount of James Bond jackets by Craig Blouson available anymore. The salesperson suggested they still might have 7 in stock.
I said, “Those cost about one thousand dollars, right?”
He answered, “They cost €1,400.00.”
I thanked him, mumbled how I was currently very heavily invested in European chocolate and refrigerator magnets so I couldn’t pick up the James Bond jacket immediately, but I also picked up a card with their website just in case I change my mind after I got back home.
Wonderful invigorating vacation again, and this time some precious shared memories with great friends too!
Cache of Communiqués 