Dresden

 March 30, 2026

It’s not that I’m not having a good time, but at any point, if some djinn had appeared and said, “You can continue on or be delivered home this instant,” I would have done some real consideration.

A narrow channel of turbulent water lies between my window and a stone wall. Moss grows on the square stones but not (or less) the long rectangular ones. 

Rations on the Viking Alstrid are beyond superb.   

Tour of Dresden with the best guide yet. Zwinger. Palace. Bus tour of the historical spots. August der Starke’s green diamonds and priceless toys. Maybe the best city yet. Then cold rain and wind. Not long enough in one place to do justice.

Sweet young trio (2 violins, bassoon) from the Opera doing Mozart, Hayden, Joplin in the lounge. Sweet. American audiences can’t be prevented from clapping between movements.  

Likely, if the djinn came now, I would say, “Take me home.” 

Bad Schandau

 March 29, 2026

Palm Sunday. Nobody mentions that. We took to the river at Decin yesterday afternoon, sailed this AM, and arrived at Bad Schandau. Looking at the gray river flow past my window is full delight. 

Skipped the trip to an interesting rock formation to wander the town on my own. My own pace, time to employ my morbid attentiveness. In five minutes I was happy. I was at home in myself. I was not bent double with leg pain. Wandered Bad Schandau to the market square, where the church bells were ringing. I decided to go to church. The person who turned out to be the pastor let me into the old church to look around, but it was not being used (probably, I think from going in, because it’s impossible to heat) and service was in a sort of classroom across the courtyard. Very Lutheran. The preludes and interludes on piano were Bach. I could sing the hymns and pick out the meaning of the scriptures, but the rest was lost to me. After service, an old woman stopped me in the garden and talked about the flowers, the burden of her conversation being do not judge the poor little garden, spring (Fruhling) is on its way. Wandered to the city park and down a few streets. Nothing was open, so my desire for coffee remained unfulfilled. Good day, which I needed after the physical uncertainty of the last few. Given my own pace, I can still conquer the unknown country. Lovely little town. Hugely liveable. 

My first walk into Dresden was moving west at sunset, and all the city a golden blur out of which came the ringing of bells. Made it as far as the town square before supper. Little girls ran alongside the boat as it entered town.

 

March 28, 2026

Dawn over Prague. My window open on big industrial headquarters, like Lilly and KPMG, through whose windows one sees people at their desks deep into the nght. Walking tour of the old city yesterday morning. Everyone was freezing and the rat-a-tat guide walked so fast he made himself pant, so it was no fun for me. By the end I could hardly walk; unfortunately, I mean that literally. Learned a lot, though, and saw the sights we were meant to see. Clear light over the beautiful town, dressed up for the Easter Markets. Great gray heron flew by us on the Charles Bridge. Our guide hated folklore, so that any question that hadn’t to do with flat history went sneeringly unanswered. He pronounced “Czechs” as “Chicks,” which startled me every time. “The Chicks finally established their own Republic.” L and I had Prosecco on the hotel mezzanine while the tour finished without us. Supper at Gate, in a part of town which was fascinating to me becuase of its alluring ordinariness. Best duck ever, A couple of bedtime vodkas at the lobby bar with its energetic bartender, who received my last zloti as a tip. Managed without Czech crowns. I find this gargantua of a hotel mildly loathsome. The atrium is gorgeous, but all its energy goes into brutal gorgeousness and none into client comfort. L and J love it. Breakfast is sybaritic.

Took the trolly, which Jim understands and I do not, to Wenceslaus Square, of enduring fame, and to the Natural History Museum. Their model of the male Neanderthal looks exactly like me, if I let the hair on my head grow long.  

Praha

 March 26, 2026

Mother’s death, 1974.

To the vanished Jewish Quarter (now a sort of theme park in which there are few Jews) last night, to a restaurant called Ariel beside Helena Rubenstein’s birthplace, for a traditional dinner and klezmer music. Lovely. German students gathered in the adjoining room, all of them nine feet tall. One doesn’t expect turkey to have been an ancient Jewish staple. Turkey feathers decorated the trappings of Polish hussars, the museum witnesses, so–

At the hotel bar last night Karel the bartender gave me a tutorial on vodkas, the subtle but clear distinctions between those made with wheat, rye, and potato. One should prefer potato. Everyone is packed with information they long for the opportunity to release. Karel had visited NYC on his way to Mexico. 

Enormous, complicated, uninviting Hilton outside of the interesting areas of Prague. I won’t be able to take the walking tour tomorrow, unable to go that far at the pace that society would dictate. This trip has far too many moving parts, far too many fellow travelers. Viking is efficient, but I don’t want efficiency on vacation, but peace that lacks the need for efficiency. L and J are here, which may prevent this town from being a bust. What we passed of Prague on the bus was truly beautiful, all Renaissance pastel. I may have gotten away with a free bag of groceries. I was making a hash of self check-out, so I waved my card across the window and walked out while the screen was still reading “Please remove last item.”  The clerk had been helping me to that point, so I had no idea what the last item was. A crowd formed behind me. I panicked, grabbed my groceries, turned and fled.  

Czartoryiski

 

March 25, 2026

Auschwitz. Birkenwald. I will say nothing.

Czartoryiski Museum: small, dark, far more interested in showing me guns and swords than I was in seeing them. Some fine painting, including the famed da Vinci Lady with an Ermine, which is far from the most interesting piece in that collection, but which was nevertheless surrounded by a horde of French schoolchildren. You wonder about renown and how it is assembled. My guess is if the painter was Johannes Doe it would be hanging on the a common wall with other excellent, enigmatic, but not quite priceless artifacts. I liked the medieval pieces best, and a staff apparently inlaid with emerald. Stopped for chocolate, on Michaela’s recommendation, at Karamela’s, around the corner from the museum. The most chocolatey chocolate there ever was. I am still in a bit of a chocolate coma. Saw thrushes in yew scrub outside St Florian’s gate. Sat for a while in the market. Twice a pigeon landed on my hand (two sequential pigeons, I should say) and regarded me inquisitively. The amazing thing was the unexpected coolness of their claws.  

Krakow

March 24, 2026

Evening of an excellent day. 

Swans fly over and float on the green back of the Wistula

The reading was not at the university, but in the market square (“the largest in medieval Europe”), as part of a festival I never properly understood, but whose central events  were a giant balloon and a track meet rather than a gathering of dottering international poets. It’s all right. I was cheered madly by people who likely didn’t understand a word I’d said. I gave my book to a woman standing nearby. Maybe it will be the occasion of my return. The boys flying around the square with batons in their hands were unspeakably beautiful, carrying themselves upright like gods charging into battle. Lunched at Piano Rouge so I could continue to watch the heats. The French family behind me was loud and funny, enjoying one another’s company. 

Today’s foot tour of the city was informative, but– the Guided Tour has never been one of my favorite things, and I’ve fallen into the flaming, thundering core of it. The guide women are supernatural in their ability to keep the vocal stream going minute after minute without so much as an interrupting breath. Even pleasant voices cloy. Had to take the device out of my ear finally to keep from going berserk, thus missing city blocks of interesting information. Visited Wawel Castle, where it all started. Heard the charming story of the Krakow dragon. Got to St Mary’s Basilica in time to be in the front row for the Opening of the Altar, one firmament of sculpted gold opening to reveal a yet grander one. A nun enters with a stick and pulls aside the golden curtain.

Bussed to the suburbs to see the Krakow Ghetto, which, unlike Warsaw’s, still stands. Empty metal chairs stand in the town square, each one representing 3000 people annihilated. One person in six was a Jew in Krakow in 1938. The Jewish population of the city now stands at 350. According to Michaela, one and a half million people in Warsaw in 1938 had become 1000 and 1945.  You’d expect such a place to be a ruin for a thousand years. 

On my way back to the hotel for a nap I trundled through the covered market, where I could choose from a near infinity of items made of amber. At the end of it I met Tomas, who touched my shoulder and said, “You! I want to ask you a question!” I stopped to listen. He lowered his voice to a whisper and said, “What do you think of Trump?” I told him, and we spent the next several minutes enlarging upon each other’s loathing. Tomas lived in Chicago for five years, where a black man aimed a gun at him and he was told to go somewhere else when he pulled into an all-Black service station. He was born in 1986, and had been in the World Trade Center 17 days before 9/11. He was still reeling from an American girl he liked who turned out to be a Trumpist, that being the deal breaker. His aunt is now visiting from Virginia Beach. He typed the address of the art museum into my phone. His parents had sent him to school in London, and he asked me to critique his English, which is clear but also clearly Polish. Tomas is handsome, rugged-looking, with stone green steady eyes. He touched and poked me as he talked, as old (and Polish) friends might do, and I took that as a greater compliment than if the crowd had swooned over my locally unintelligible poems. I think the original contact was to enlist me for a tour, but almost immediately he said, “I don’t want anything from you.” Part of me murmured “pity.” His friend with the glasses speaks seven languages. Sometimes the angel steps out of the crowd and gives meaning to what was a tangle of unrelated impressions. I have a friend in Krakow.      

Black Madonna

March 23, 2026

Krakow. The Radisson. My window looks out on the greenbelt separating the old city from the rest of the town. 

Saw two storks flying as we left Warsaw. 

Was almost berserk with frustration at Michaela’s endless outpouring of data. The amplified human voice is a known torture method. We need only so much history. After a time she did exhaust herself and I feel asleep, until we got to Czestochowa, and the fortress-shrine of Jasna Gora. That place is jam-packed with history, and our new guide about gave himself a coronary trying to deliver it to us. The Black Madonna herself is disappointing from an artistic standpoint, though something has given her an aura of power and holiness. She has several dresses which she changes Easter Day. The most beautiful one is made wholly of amber. One is studded with rubies. The congregation was full of kids praying for success on their exams. America has no place even vaguely like it. The walls of the sanctuary are covered with discarded crutches. 

The land around Krakow is quite different from that around Warsaw. The Warsaw plain could be Ohio, though somewhat messier. Krakow is a fairy-tale city placed amid a fairy-tale forest. Staggered into the Market Square, found the spot with the most insolent waiters, had zuruck and wine while night fell and the fat crescent moon rode high.