Europe 2022 - Part 1

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Details: Written by: Richard_McKie; Parent Category: Travel; Category: Europe; Published: 02 December 2022; Hits: 4161

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In July and August 2022 Wendy and I travelled to Europe and to the United Kingdom (no longer in Europe - at least politically).

This, our first European trip since the Covid-19 pandemic, began in Berlin to visit my daughter Emily, her Partner Guido, and their children, Leander and Tilda, our grandchildren there.

Part 1 of this report touches on places in Germany then on a Baltic Cruise, landing in: Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Sweden and the Netherlands. Part 2 takes place in northern France; and Part 3, to come later, in England and Scotland.

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Travel

Laos

The Lao People's Democratic Republic is a communist country, like China to the North and Vietnam with which it shares its Eastern border.

And like the bordering communist countries, the government has embraced limited private ownership and free market capitalism, in theory. But there remain powerful vested interests, and residual pockets of political power, particularly in the agricultural sector, and corruption is a significant issue.

During the past decade tourism has become an important source of income and is now generating around a third of the Nation's domestic product. Tourism is centred on Luang Prabang and to a lesser extent the Plane of Jars and the capital, Vientiane.

Fiction, Recollections & News

Egyptian Mummies

Next to Dinosaurs mummies are the museum objects most fascinating to children of all ages.

At the British Museum in London crowds squeeze between show cases to see them. At the Egyptian Museum in Cairo they are, or were when we visited in October 2010 just prior to the Arab Spring, by far the most popular exhibits (follow this link to see my travel notes). Almost every large natural history museum in the world has one or two mummies; or at the very least a sarcophagus in which one was once entombed.

In the 19th century there was something of a 'mummy rush' in Egypt. Wealthy young European men on their Grand Tour, ostensibly discovering the roots of Western Civilisation, became fascinated by all things 'Oriental'. They would pay an Egyptian fortune for a mummy or sarcophagus. The mummy trade quickly became a lucrative commercial opportunity for enterprising Egyptian grave-robbers.

Opinions and Philosophy

Adolf Hitler and me

Today, with good cause, Adolf Hitler is the personification of evil.

Yet without him my parents may never have married and I certainly would not have been conceived in a hospital where my father was recovering from war injuries.

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