After Duernstein, we cruised through lunch up the Danube River to the city of Melk. This city boats about 2,700 inhabitants and an incredible Abby of Benedictine Monks. My command of English isn’t enough to describe this place, particularly the church in the Abby. I have never seen anything so ornate – to the point of being almost gaudy. The tour was centered on the Benedictine version of Catholicism, and I would have appreciated something much more historically focused. The major source of income for the Abby is tourism and about 450,000 people per year pay admission to tour a very small part of the Abby. The probably translates to some $5 million dollars a year just in entrance fees – perhaps more as I don’t know what the price of admission was. The library, having more than 150,000 books, was astounding. Anyone can come to the library, visit the reading room, and read any of the books. Those that are too old or fragile are on microfilm. The Abby has a current membership of 31 Benedictine Monks, 16 of whom live at the Abby. The rest are stationed at Parish churches around the country. I’d guess each of those 31 monks has available about 50 rooms apiece in the building. The Abbey is rectangular, three stories tall, with a large inner courtyard. Most impressive.

We set sail about 6:00 p.m. At the daily port call briefing at 7:15 p.m. (just before dinner), we learned that the boat has a propeller problem. While we were in Vienna, divers had gone down to inspect the bottom of the boat, the drive shafts, and the propellers. One of the propellers needs to be replaced. So, rather than sailing to Passau, our original destination, we are going to put into port in Linz about 7 a.m. We’ll go by bus to Passau after breakfast and spend the day there while the boat goes into dry dock to have the propeller replaced. If all goes well, we’ll be back sailing up the Danube on Saturday.

More on the propeller problem (added later, of course): The propeller had been damaged a couple of weeks before when leaving Melk on the previous cruise. The pictures of the propeller taken while the ship was in drydock and we were in Passau showed a very damaged propeller, so whatever had happened was serious, enough that the captain of the ship at that time had been placed on leave and a new captain assigned to the boat. As our cruise ended a week and a half later, we learned that replacing the propeller had fixed some of the problem, but that the drive train had also been damaged and the entire drive system — engine, transmission, drive train, and propeller — were going to be removed from the boat and shipped to Rotterdam for repair. The process sounded quite complicated!

When we got off the boat in Amsterdam, the ship was turning around for the final cruise back to Budapest. It was then going to Vienna and was going to do one-week trips between Vienna and Nuremberg through January 4th. A sister ship, the Viking Spirit, however, was also headed to Nuremberg to drop off passengers and then go idle for the rest of the season. The plan was, after the Spirit dropped it’s passengers, it would then sail to Vienna. The Neptune (our ship) would complete its cruise to Budapest, then sail back to Vienna. The Spirit crew would get on the Neptune and the Neptune crew would move to the Spirit. The Spirit would then finish the season in place of the Neptune. Meanwhile, the former Spirit crew would take the Neptune back to Linz where the boat would go into drydock once more. The drive train would be removed, sent to Rotterdam, and then reinstalled, a six week process. The previous captain of the Neptune had indeed done some serious damage when he grounded the boat in Melk. He would have been far better off getting a tug to pull them out in the deeper water…!!

We arrived at the small town (400 souls) of Duernstein just as we sat down for breakfast this morning. Ruins of a castle overlooked the city. Our guides told us to be sure and remember it was a City and not a Village as Duernstein had obtained all the rights of a city, including the right to have an executioner, due to their loyalty to the monarchy during the 30-year war. It was a very quaint city well worth a visit. The city is built along a fairly steep hillside at a narrow point in the Danube River near the beginning of the Wachau Valley. The Wachau Valley is the source of an enormous amount of wine from vineyards all along the 20-mile long, narrow valley. The city was formed to collect tolls on the river and provide a way station for travelers (particularly royalty).

Duernstein’s major claim to fame is that this was the place where Richard the Lionhearted, King of England, was imprisoned and ransomed by England after about three months. Richard was one of several monarchs of Europe on the Third Crusade, but the only one to make it to the Holy City of Jerusalem. He managed to anger the Austrian Duke during the trip through Europe. On the way back to England Richard was shipwrecked near Italy and began making his way across Europe. While in Austria, he was discovered and taken hostage by the Duke. To keep Richard safe and away from public attention, the Duke quartered Richard in Duernstein. Legend says that Richard’s faithful servant searched from castle to castle through Europe singing the first verse of a song that only he and Richard knew. Upon singing the song in Duernstein, Richard heard it and sang back the second verse. The result was messages back to England and the ransom of Richard followed. Further, according to the story of Robin Hood, Richard’s brother John was attempting to have Richard declared dead in England so that John to assume the throne. Just in time, Richard appears, hale and hearty, and foils the plot.

The day began cloudy, but by the time we got to the city, the clouds were gone and a bright sunny (but chilly) day ensued. The weather was actually quite perfect for walking around the town and taking more than a hundred digital pictures. Perhaps a few will survive. The town was well worth our time.

This is a beautiful city and one that we definitely need to visit again. We often don’t go back where we’ve been because there is so much that we haven’t seen, yet. The morning was spent in a bus and walking tour of the central city. Even with that, we probably only saw a tenth or less of the area we were in. The picture accompanying this entry was taken near the city center and is of the monument erected to the plague that ravaged Europe in 1347 and 1348. About a third of the people in Europe died during this epidemic. Many cities pledged to erect monuments if the suffering would cease. This is Vienna’s monument commemorating the suffering of the plague.

I have learned a lot about the Hapsberg monarchy that I never really learned about before. Our tour guide was very well informed and quite passionate about her country, city, and heritage. I think that kind of passion causes learning to happen and knowledge to transfer.

It has been quite cold here today with a pretty stiff breeze. There were a few snowflakes falling earlier. The guide said it was unseasonably cold. Next time we come either in May or in September. The afternoon included a tour of the Schoenbrunn Castle. What a magnificent building. We had the “short” tour of 22 rooms. This castle, the so-called Summer Palace, should be on everyone’s agenda when visiting Vienna.

Tonight we’re going to a Mozart / Strauss concert. That should also be well worth our time. We’ll sail away from here about midnight.

Some thoughts:

The language on the Danube is German. All signs, instructions, and radio traffic is in German. This is a remnant of the Austrian Empire.

All of the buildings in downtown Vienna are four stories tall. None taller. I don’t know why.

There is construction everywhere downtown to renovate and extend the subway lines in preparation for the Soccer World Cup, which will be held in Vienna in 2008.

The UN has a huge facility on the other side of the river from downtown. Some 4,500 people work at the Atomic Energy Commission alone. No wonder it costs so much.

Later on in the evening:

The concert was absolutely delightful. It was kind of like a Mozart and Strauss Pops Concert – about 40 minutes of the most popular music from Mozart, a ten minute intermission and about 40 minutes of the most popular Strauss music, ending with the two most famous waltzes in the world: The Blue Danube and the Radizky Polka.

We were told in our initial briefing when we got on the boat to remember that other boats are on the river and sometimes boats tie up next to each other, so be careful about curtains when coming out of the shower or getting out of bed. Tonight as we were eating dinner, a boat came by right next to us maneuvering to dock behind us. Suddenly the dining room erupted in laughter — a fellow in the other boat had just come out of the shower, naked of course, with the curtains wide open. It took a few moments for him to figure out he was putting on a show. He waved, and ducked out of sight. The folks in the dining room are still chuckling about the incident.

The guidebook says that Vienna and Bratislava are the two closest capital cities in the world. They are about 50 miles apart. The town is quite small, about 450,0000 souls. It was a very quaint town with a compact medieval center, where we spent most of our time. One of the gates into the city center had a big statue of Michael the Archangel slaying the dragon and overcoming evil, referring to the Book of Revelations. Further legend is that people are pulled down to hell by the weight of their sins.

About 20% of the country’s population lives in Bratislava and that city accounts for about 26% of the gross national product. Housing was a problem until a large public housing project was put in place. Just on the outskirts of the city are a row of domino-looking apartment buildings housing 130,000 people!

The city itself was clean and well kept. We did some shopping at a store selling folk art from all over Slovakia. We didn’t find similar stores in any of the other cities we visited on the cruise. I took mostly 35mm film pictures in Bratislava and will have to wait to get these pictures developed and scanned. Meanwhile, the picture the accompanies this entry is of the main bridge over the Danube River. There is a restaurant on the far side of the bridge built high over the bridge. Unfortunately, the restaurant is closed for renovation. There was a huge amount of construction going on in the city, perhaps because it is now the capital of the country and needs to get dressed up a bit. The US ambassador’s residence in Bratislava is built in the shape of the White House in Washington D.C. Slovakia is a very new country, or rather a re-establishment of on old country. It was formed anew in 1991 when the Czech Republic divorced them so they wouldn’t have to continue to subsidize the Slovaks. There isn’t much yet to recommend the city but I’m glad to have been there as we’ll probably never be back.

We’re headed towards Bratislava, capitol of Slovakia. We left the dock in Budapest right at 7:30 p.m. Monday evening (last night) while we were having dinner. The boat has been cruising up the Danube river ever since. It’s currently about 10 a.m. on Tuesday morning. Outside it is a beautiful, clear sunny day with temperatures of about 45 degrees. We passed through a lock about an hour and a half ago when we reached the first dam on the river. This was the first of sixty-eight locks on this cruise. We went into the lock while I was in the shower. It took about 20 minutes once we were in the lock for the water to fill up and raise the ship to the level needed to sail out of the lock. We’re now on a long reservoir feeding the power plant around which the lock was built.

The server at home went down last Thursday. Of course there’s no way to do any repair work while we’re here in Europe. I’ll need to figure out how to be able to get these systems back up and running when I’m out of the house. That’ll be the project when I get back home. I’ll probably need to put in place different computers since a couple of them have to be switched back on manually when they loose power. That’s probably something I can’t do remotely! Because the server is down, I can’t post to my weblog. So, I’ll keep the weblog in this document until I get home and will then make the updates as though they had been posted as we went along.

Budapest was a delightful city and we spent a very good time there. We arrived on Friday in the mid-afternoon. Bobby and Duane’s flight from Amsterdam was about a half-hour late, but they also arrived without incident. I had a rental car arranged, but it wasn’t quite big enough to put all the luggage in the back. We probably looked pretty weird with luggage stacked everywhere. The map from Avis showed how to leave the airport and then showed the city with a big gap in between. Unfortunately, the information in that gap proved to be pretty crucial. We missed a turn that we should have taken and ended up wandering around in Budapest for a couple of hours trying to figure out how to get to the hotel. Even after stopping to ask questions twice, we were only getting closer without actually being able to arrive. I finally bought a detailed map of the city and we were then able to pinpoint exactly where we needed to be. It made for a very long afternoon, particularly for Bobby and Duane who had been up by that time for more than 24 hours.

Nina and I took the hotel shuttle bus into the city on Friday evening. We strolled down a walking / shopping street (Vaci Ut) and discovered at the far end a large group of restaurants. The weather was quite pleasant so we sat outside and had dinner. One of the deserts listed was noodles with poppy seeds. We couldn’t figure out how that could be a desert, so we ordered one to share. It turned out to be quite delicious. The noodles were round and fairly thick. Each noodle was about three quarters of an inch long and were a little sweet. The sauce was dark with a lot of cinnamon and sugar. Also included were a small pieces of fruit. It made a very good end to a very nice meal. By taking the shuttle bus into town and back to the hotel, we learned the way into the city, which allowed us to drive back and forth over the next couple of days.

Saturday morning two people that Duane had worked with in Hungary about six years previously met us – Eva and Monica. Eva’s husband Oscar came along as well. We drove through town and then about a half-hour north and a little west of Budapest to Szentendre. We visited an open-air museum there built to represent various areas of Hungary and the style of living over the years in each of these regions. We spent several hours there including eating a late lunch in the museum’s restaurant.

In the late afternoon we drive into town to do a little shopping and sightseeing. We went the other direction on the walking / shopping street and bought a few postcards. We then drove northwest out of the city through Tatabanya to the small town of Tata. When Duane and Bobby had been in Hungary some six years previously on business, they lived near Tata while Duane was working at a new plant in Tatabanya. Monica and Eva both worked at the facility as well and that’s how they came to know each other. Monica is about eight months pregnant with her second child. Eva is about three months pregnant with her first child. They were most gracious hostesses and we had a wonderful time with them.

Monica and her husband Tibor had recently built a home in Tata. We visited their new house and then we all went to dinner for another authentic Hungarian meal. The restaurant had great food. About 30 women who were having a class reunion populated the tables behind us – they were very loud!! That made conversation out our table difficult. We had a good conversation with Eva and Oscar but weren’t able to talk very much with Monica and Tibor.

We were not able to figure out where Church would be on Sunday. No one answered either of the two telephone numbers available to us. I did get an email from the Mission on Monday with a little bit more information, but still was insufficient to figure out where Church met. There are supposedly three Branches in Budapest meeting in three different chapels. The Mission and District could definitely use some help with publicity and Public Relations! So, instead of Church we drove downtown and verified where the Viking Neptune was parked, our boat-home for the next two weeks.

We packed up and left the hotel about 1:45 p.m. Avis wanted the car back! We drove to the boat and dropped off the luggage, Bobby, and Nina. Then Duane and I took the car back to the downtown Avis office. Finding anything in Budapest is an adventure. We had to ask three times for directions to find this place. What looks like a major street on the map often is nothing like what I think a major street should look like. The car rental office turned out to be down a narrow street that looked more like an alleyway in a gas station.

The boat is very nice. There are about a 150 passengers on the ship. Our room is on the right (Starboard) side of the ship on the middle level. The window is huge with a great view outside. The front of the ship has a large lounge with seating for all the passengers (most of them are here now as I’m writing this). A sun deck goes the full length of the ship upstairs. There is a restaurant in the back of the ship with seating for all the passengers as well. Breakfast is a buffet. Lunch has a salad bar and the rest is served at the table. Dinner is served at the table. The restaurant is open seating (no assigned tables). The food has been excellent.

Monday morning we were still docked in Budapest. We took a bus tour of the city including stops at Hero’s square (a breathtaking place) and then up to Castle Hill (where there is no castle). We really enjoyed getting an overview of the city and both Nina and I decided we could spend some time exploring the city on a future trip. We returned to the ship for lunch and then took another tour out to a horse farm for a show of Hungarian horsemanship. That was also quite fascinating. We enjoyed the drive out of the city and through the countryside. We were back to the boat about 5:30 p.m. We cleared immigration, had dinner, and were underway.

I’m really enjoying this type of a cruise. There is a lot to see – there’s always something along the shore to see. We’re coming up on a bridge in Bratislava in just a few minutes. Some of the bridges are going to be very low – such that everyone has to leave the sundeck and the wheelhouse hydraulics lower it into down to the ship so we can clear the bridge. There is another boat coming our way, so we’ve slowed way down as we approach the bridge.

I learned late last night that Tom Grissom had been found dead in his
apartment from an apparent heart attack. Tom lived alone and his body
wasn’t discovered for a couple of days after his death. He is now in a far
better place.

Divorced and estranged from most of his family, Tom’s passing will likely
be noticed by very few people as it was very hard to stay close to Tom. He
was retired from the Navy for several years when he came down with a
mysterious and debilitating disease. Medical science wasn’t able to quench
the overwhelming fire that seemed to burn in his feet. Tom lived in
constant pain, sometimes enough that I’m sure in the late night hours he
would seriously contemplate ending it all with a single bullet from the
Glock 9mm pistol he kept nearby.

Many in his family could not understand Tom’s pain and that often the only
way he could deal with it was to talk almost incessantly and usually late
at night. He couldn’t keep a job and soon thereafter his marriage ended.
When I first met him about three years ago he was living in a one-room
walkup apartment that he couldn’t afford since he was under a court order
to turn half his monthly Navy pension over to his former wife. The Church
stepped in to offer as much assistance as he would take.

Social Security had denied his application for disability and he needed to
appeal the ruling. The appeal process would take 14 to 18 months,
evaluation by a number of doctors, and the services of a lawyer familiar
with government machinations and idiocy. A good member of the Church and a
respected lawyer stepped up to take Tom’s case at no charge. Finally a
little less than a year ago he got his appeal hearing. He would have to
wait another 60 days for a favorable ruling and then another 45 days
for the disability payments to start.

Meanwhile Tom was evicted from his walk-up because a housing inspector’s
surprise inspection revealed that the landlord had illegally modified the
building in a way that didn’t conform to code. Tom wanted deperately to be
able to make his own way and not have to live on charity. When he won his
appeal, he would receive disability payments from the date of his original
application. Tom kept a running tab of how much the government owed him and
in the meantime would petition eveyone around him for a loan to be paid
back when he won his appeal. This constant pleading for a loan further
estranged him from family and friends.

One day I decided to make a loan with Tom. I’d “loan” him $150 a month. In
return he would let the Church welfare pay his monthly rent. That would
give him about $400 a month of money that he could spend on food, gasoline
for his small, battered pickup truck, insurance, medicine co-pay, and a
telephone.

Tom was on a lot of pain medication. The military doctors would often
prescribe just to get on to the next patient. None seemed interested in
trying to really figure out what was wrong. About the only medication that
helped very much was morphine. Tom hated taking morphine because it made
him constipated and over time the dosage had to be increased as the
narcotic became less effective. The pain was the worst late at night as Tom
lay in his bed trying to get to sleep. Sometimes he was awake and tormented
for thirty hours or more before he was exhausted enough to fall asleep.

It was often in these very late hours when Tom would call. We would talk
about anything, mostly guns and bass fishing, to distract him from the
fires burning in his feet. Tom loved guns and had collected them for a
while. All but one had been sold to pay for medication and daily living.

Finally, the hearing as held and the first hurdle had been cleared. He had
just to wait until January of this year to get the ruling. Further, a
doctor decided to see what could be done with some kind of a bio-feedback
device coupled with a catheter down into Tom’s feet connected to a pump to
feed pain killer directly to the nerve bundle near the ankle. For the first
time in several years, Tom had several nights of normal, uninterrupted
sleep. The relief didn’t persist, but Tom’s quality of life was improved
and the late-night calls got much further apart.

After being evicted, Tom finally found an apartment in another part of
town. A different Ward picked up the financial support. I still kept in
touch and when he got the favorable ruling on his disability claim, I
talked him into letting me forgive our “loan” when he learned that he was
going to have to pay taxes on his disability payment. The last time he and
I talked was shortly before we moved to Pocatello. He was then in the best
mental condition that I had seen since I had come into his life.

He had just come back from Oklahoma where he had gone bass fishing in his
favorite spot. We had talked about this place many times and I’m sure I can
accurately describe the bend in the river, the small island, and how the
river flows into a reservoir. The big bass lie just under the northeast
edge of the island under a tall, old tree that shades the area during the
heat of the day. Tom had caught two of “the big mamas” and was very proud
of his achievement. His doctor had some additional ideas for pain
management that offered Tom some further hope. He was going the next day to
do another temple session. For more than a year he had been going
faithfully to the temple once or twice a month and fighting through the
pain to sit through a session and make the drive up and back.

A few short months later Tom is dead. His suffering is over — both with
his feet and with the estrangement from his family. His methods of dealing
with his pain had driven almost all of them away. One son who lived out
east stayed somewhat in touch, but all those who lived nearby wanted little
if anything to do with him. His circumstance now is much better. The pain
is gone and he is surrounded by family who love him.

I shall miss you, Tom, and our late-night phone calls, our visits in your
apartment, and most of all your determination to live when many others
would have ended it all. You have a special call on our Savior’s atoning
love. Goodbye and godspeed.