Greetings!
I thought my ninth grade Western Civilization/History class, coupled with lots of WWI and WWII movies, gave me a pretty good education on the countries which stretch from England to the Soviet Union. Turns out, I didn't learn much at all. These last two weeks have convinced me that my assumption that our "let's hold off on touring Europe until we're old and won't have to work as hard at it" strategy was misfounded.
Gabor, our local guide, combined with Katrin before him, and at least a dozen before them have blown our minds with events and facts we did not know. The period from 1848 to now is filled with uprisings, border changes, political intrigue, family dynasties, religiously-inspired, and secular revolutionary dramas. All around us we see plenty of really interesting, memorialized, architecturally represented evidence of somebody's proclamations of truths. It may not be free, but it sure is visible.
At each stop on this trip, the volume and complexity of information compounds. And the depth of intrigue seems abysmal. Without the guidance of our trip advisors, and the mixture of extremely well-traveled colleagues, all of this would just be lots of tall buildings, statues, and museum. But with them, it's all beginning to make sense. A thousand years and more of disputes and wars and changes. It's very hard to keep track of it, except that every few days we're in a different country, at a new hotel, with a nother great set of guides. How much fun can you have?
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