Kraków, Elbe River & Berlin

May 2014

We traveled to Poland, the Czech Republic and the portion of Germany that had been Communist East Germany when we lived in Mannheim in the early 1970’s.  Most of the trip was a cruise on the Elbe River but with extra days in Kraków at the beginning and several days for a return to Berlin after 43 years.  Kraków is a beautiful city but was extra special because we met with two cousins from Jim’s Mother’s side of the family.  They arranged for us to meet more cousins in Muszyna, a small mountain village where Jim’s grandmother was born in 1882.

We spent one night in Prague and boarded our ship, Viking Theodor Fontane, in Mělník.  We cruised the Elbe with many stops including Bad Schandau, Meissen, Dresden, Torgau, and Magdeburg.  We traveled by bus from there to Potsdam and Berlin.

In Berlin we visited new sights and some we had last seen in December 1971.  Especially memorable was the beautifully restored Berlin Cathedral which had been a bombed-out shell in East Berlin when we saw it in 1971.