We’ve made it to Prague – off the boat and in a real hotel downtown. It was a lovely cruise on the Danube – Budapest, Esztergom, Bratislava, Wachau Valley, Melk, Vienna, Linz – now Cesky-Krumlov and Prague in the Czech Republic by bus. I’m sure I’ll be posting some highlights tonight – pictures of wonderous places, but for now, a land-based nap.
There is so much to learn from the history of these countries, it will take me months to sift through it. But the thing that screams through it all is that culture trumps power and ideology every time. Countries like Hungary, Czechoslovokia, Romania, Bosnia, Croatia, and Serbia have survived centuries of occupation, indoctrination, incorporation and are still aiming to follow the trajectory of their founders millenia ago. They’ve lived through the Roman Empire, invasions by Barbarians, the age of Monarchies, the domination by the Church, the coming of the Fascists, the years of the Communists, and they’re still firming up their prehistoric borders and playing with getting their own personal versions of what we would call socialist democracy working. In the end, there will be a united Europe – modelled somewhat on the U.S., though I expect they will never have so strong a central government. Given the abuses of power in the recent years of our country, that is a very wise decision. Concentration of power is like concentration of uranium – powerful and dangerous.
And so to bed…
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