Smothers, Mandela, RFK Jr

    I have to admit that I feel a little lost.  I am done with substitute teaching at Sacred Heart because I felt like the job had run its course.  I thought that I might like to substitute at Collegiate but, after spending a morning being interviewed and being introduced as the new substitute teacher, the principal sent me an email to tell me that I would not be hired.  I was embarrassed at being rejected, but also relieved because I really didn’t want the job anyway.  It was just delaying the inevitable and this incident slammed the door on my teaching career.  What I really wanted was to to work at a place where I felt like I was part of the community; a place where I could contribute, where I belong, and a place where I could share my gifts.  I am out of ideas as to what I should do next.  Volunteering sounded like a good idea but Gilda’s Club and Kosair Children’s Hospital do not allow you to work directly with the kids, and that is all that I wanted to do.  When asked by the guys at the gym what my next move is going to be, I simply replied that I was “going to throw all of my money on the floor and make cash angels all day.”  Sometimes that line would get a laugh.

   What I need now is a role model.  For example, Robert Kennedy Jr. could do anything that he wanted with his career since he inherited a lot of family wealth, but what he chose to do was to dedicate himself to improving the environment.  Tommy Smothers, a comedian from the 1970s, dropped out of the entertainment industry and won’t even take interviews anymore because he is only interested in yoga and self-care.  Michael Rockefeller is an example of what not to do when you have all of the time and money in the world.  He decided to spend his time doing research on the pygmies of New Zealand.  They turned out to be cannibals and Michael was eaten for his efforts.  The best example of what to do at the end of your career is Nelson Mandela.  He was a shape-shifter in that he was a boxer and revolutionary when he was young, a politician when he got out of prison, and an icon for South Africa when he retired.  Mandela would only make public appearances sporadically when he was old but he made sure that he dressed in the traditional African colors when he did attend public ceremonies.  It is going to take awhile for me to settle into this new role of being retired but I like the idea of having Mandela, RFK Jr. and Tommy Smothers to guide me through these years.
   Now that I am retired, the only people that I talk to are the group of men who arrive at the gym at 5:00 am, waiting for the doors to open.  Over time we have fallen into a relaxed relationship where we can share almost anything with the group.  So, when asked why I quit Sacred Heart, I told the guys that no one seemed to care if I stayed or if I left.  I thought, “okay, I guess that I’ll leave.”  Other quotes that I remember sharing with them are “this is an inglorious way to end a career,” and “it is better to jump rather than be pushed.”  Aside from the men at the gym, I do like to share my thoughts to my 1,500 friends on Facebook.  I wrote that “it has been months since I quit my job at Sacred Heart.  When I started, I was young and aggressive, and now I am old, the same age as Alvin Guenther when he died of cancer.”  Alvin was a friend of mine and it was hard to see him get sick but his death reminded me of how good I have it, especially since my only worry is how I am going to spend my years in retirement.  

Rhine and Moselle

    Tuesday, October 18, 2022: We arrived at the Frankfurt airport after a nine hour flight. I can’t sleep on the plane.  The most that I can hope for is to pass out for five to ten minutes at a time, but that doesn’t do any good, so I was groggy for the whole day.  I had been very sick the week before we left for Germany, so I was worried about my health issues; but as it turned out, I bounced back from the flight and my illness with relative ease.  In fact, the whole trip could not have gone better.  My only other concern about our trip was that it was going to be just one old castle after another and, once again, my worries were unfounded.  We saw so many things and experienced so many different places and none of the sites repeated themselves.  Our Rhine and Moselle trip was wonderful and quite an adventure.  

       Wednesday, October 19, 2022:  Most of the day was spent on the ship, which was fine with me because I was perfectly happy sitting on the upper deck to watch the remarkable rows of vineyards and the old towns of Germany pass by.  A vacation on a ship like the Uniworld River Queen isn’t supposed to be like Disneyland or Cancun; the idea is to slow down and appreciate the beauty of the countryside as you meander your way through it.  The vistas were breathtaking and we were given the downtime to sit back, relax, and enjoy the best views that Germany has to offer.  I remembered the quote that my Latin teacher liked to recite in high school; “Hodie ergo vixi,” which translates to  “I have lived today!”  We were living our best lives while on the ship.
   The highlight of the day was to visit the Cochem Castle on the Moselle River.  One of the many reasons why I like to travel with the U of L Alumni Group is because they line up a lot of extra events for us.  At Cochem, they hired an actor and a singer to entertain us when the tour was over.  Some of the other tourists decided to walk back to the ship when we were finished but I told my wife, “it is a lot further than you think, it is dark, and the sidewalk only appears intermittently.  There are going to be a lot of tired and sad looking walkers returning to the ship late tonight.”  Sure enough, two of the walkers cut their losses and took a cab back to the River Queen. 

   Thursday, October 20, 2022:  We took the city tour of Cochem and Lisa was our guide.  Past experiences have taught me that the tour guide will make the difference between a good day and a bad day.  Lisa was great because she knew her history but was smart enough not to get too entangled in the details of the different wars.  For example, she said that “the French visited Germany twice, during the reign of Louis XIV and Napoleon.  But that was fair because, after all, we visited them first.”  Lisa also mentioned that half of the city was destroyed at the end of WWII by American bombs, but she forgot to tell us that it was Germany who brutally attacked the U.S. first at the Battle of the Bulge.  It is important for the guides to avoid controversial subjects to the vacationing tourists.
   After the tour my wife was thirsty so I went to buy her a drink.  I went to a small shop in the town square and put a Coke on the counter.  The cashier didn’t speak English very well.  I asked her, “Do you accept American Express?”  “Nein,” she replied.  “How about VISA.”  “Nein,” she replied.  “Alright, how about cash.”  “Ja,” she replied.  “I don’t have any Euros but can you accept American dollars?”  “Nein,” she retorted and then physically took the Coke away from me.  This cashier was hard core; after all, I am used to a quick tap and go with my credit card, so I was surprised at her abruptness.  As Lisa would say, the cashier was being “very German” in her abruptness.

   Friday, October 21, 2022: It rained almost all day during our visit to Trier.  We decided to tour the city anyway because, as our fellow passenger, Amy, said, “I am not that sweet.  I won’t melt.”  Andrea was our guide and she showed us the ancient ruins of Porta Nigra, the Market Square, and the old Roman aqueduct.  She knew the place well as she grew up in Trier and used the aqueduct as a playground.  The Germans are very good to the handicapped in that there were 3D sculptures of the basilica and the cathedral right outside of the real buildings.  Since my wife is blind, these representations really helped her to understand what everyone else was seeing.

   Saturday, October 22, 2022:  Our morning tour included visiting the American Memorial Cemetery in Luxembourg to see where General Patton and about five thousand U.S. soldiers were buried after they given their lives for their country, most of them dying in the Battle of the Bulge.  It was a somber place and that is why I was surprised that Jane, one of my fellow travelers on the Uniworld cruise, suddenly started to dance in the middle of the cemetery.  She kicked up her leg, performing an amateur  pirouette, and flailed her arms around in a dance move that was wildly inappropriate for such a sacred place.  Brenda, another fellow passenger, later said that she wanted to “take a wide circle around this crazy lady ” because her dance moves were so wild and unexpected.  It was only when I saw Jane swiping the air did I realize that there was a bee flying around her head.  She looked so silly that I could not stop laughing, which clearly irritated her, and Jane said to me, “I hope that the bee stings you!”  After visiting the cemetery we saw the Cathedral of Norte Dame in Luxembourg and the Flea Market in the main square.  Later, when we were all back on the ship and some time had passed since the bee incident, Marjorie and Brenda and I shared a laugh about the crazy lady doing a dance in the cemetery.  

   Sunday, October 23, 2022: Our tour to Bernkastle included walking through the old town to see the architecture of the buildings that were 500 years old.  Then, since we were in the Riesling area of the Moselle Valley, we had a wine tasting at the Bergweiler Wine Estate.  Since a lot of my trip revolved around drinking wine, I am sharing a couple of drinking quotes with you that came from our guides.  For example, when our tour began at 10:00 am, our guide said “you can’t drink all day if you don’t start in the morning.”  During the wine tasting, the sommelier said that you “have to open the bottle to let it breathe.  If it doesn’t breathe then you have to give it mouth to mouth!”  Another tour guide, when asked why the locals drank so much alcohol, replied “because beer has freedom in it and wine has wisdom in it.  Also because water has bacteria in it.”  His clever answer was a round about way of saying that in the past drinking the water could make you sick.

   Monday, October 24, 2022:  We toured Boppard in the morning and Rudeshiem in the afternoon.  The weather was perfect for taking pictures of both of these beautiful towns.  Part of the fun for me in going on these tours is that I get to put all of my memories on Facebook.  I’ll post every single morning and then watch as I rack up the ‘likes’ throughout the day.  The purpose of my posts is not to brag but to let the people back home that I am safe and am having a wonderful time.  I never put anything bad on Facebook because that site is my happy place.  I have a good life and I like to share it with others.  Also, “Hodie ergo vixi.”

   Tuesday, October 25, 2022:  The Doktorenhof Vinegar Estate in Speyer was our first tour of the day.  Part of their kitsch was that all tourists had to wear these long capes to protect the vinegars and the casks but I think that they made us wear the capes because they really looked cool.  It was a simple way of dressing us up so that we felt like we were in a “Harry Potter” movie.
   In the afternoon, we toured Heidelberg.  We started off touring the old town first and then moved onto the castle.  Our guide was Thomas and he did not disappoint.  Without a doubt, he was the funniest guide that we had during our whole vacation.  For example, he told us of Frederick IV, the young king of Heidelberg, who was an alcoholic.  He died prematurely and when they opened up the young king for an autopsy, “his liver poured out onto the floor in an gelatinous puddle; so he did that right.”  I found that line hilarious.  Then, once we were at the castle, Thomas said that “there was a laughing face carved into the corner of the building so that, when attacked, the guards could pour hot oil onto the enemy.  The last thing that the attackers would see was a smiley face looking at them as they boiled to death.”  This was a little dark, but still funny.  When we walked through the courtyard of the Heidelberg castle, Thomas said that “the people would entertain themselves by playing games.  A popular game at the time was called the “Fox Toss.”  A series of young couples would stretch out a sheet between them and then a fox would be loosed in the courtyard.  The idea was to wait until the fox crossed your sheet and the lift the sheet up as quickly as possible so that the fox would be tossed into the air.  The game lost popularity because the young couples didn’t like having an irate fox dropped onto their heads.”  Once again, I found this hilarious.  But Thomas was not finished.  He noted that Heidelberg has several fraternities.  Over time, they had “lost a lot of their membership because these fraternities are known for their nationalism.  We had already had our bout with nationalism in the 1930s and that went kind of wrong.”  One more joke that Thomas played on us was when we went to Heidelberg Castle to see the world’s largest cask of wine.  When we entered the ante-room we saw a huge cask and so we started to take selfies in front of it.  Thomas said, “now that you are finished taking pictures of the wrong barrel, let’s go over here to see the real one.”  We all sheepishly followed him.  I think that he let us take the selfies just so that he could have his own little joke.

   Wednesday, October 26, 2022:  This was our only day in France so we wanted to make the most of it.  The morning was spent in Strasbourg, a university town with a population of over 480,000.  It was much larger than I thought that it would be and the highlight of our visit was touring the Church of Notre Dame, the prize of the city.  In the afternoon we took a bus ride to the Black Forest, a place for the locals to ski, hike, and vacation.  My wife is Tracey Armbruster Frazier and the Armbruster family has deep roots in the Black Forest region.  To prove that point, as we were arriving back in Germany to visit the Black Forest, we saw the Armbruster manufacturing plant, which produced cakes and pastries.       
Nestled into the Black Forest is an Open Air Museum where we saw several of the old houses that the Germans had moved on site for the tourists to see.  The only house that was original to the site was a farmhouse built there in 1612, six years before the first permanent settlers arrived at Jamestown.

   Thursday, October 27, 2022:  We transferred off the ship to ride the bus to Baden-Baden.  Since we had some time to kill we were dropped off at the hotel, we visited Gengenbach, a small town that few tourists visit because it doesn’t have any hotels or the amenities to satisfy the expectations of our large American group.  It turned out to be a charming place to visit.  For example, at Gengenbach, I learned how much the Germans loved their dogs.  One shopkeeper bragged on her little Yorkie Terrier by saying, “she is my sunshine.”  While at a restaurant, one owner had trained her Corgies to wait patiently outside because no dogs were allowed inside.  Meanwhile, she filled up her napkin with treats from the buffet to share with her little friends.  My outstanding memory of Gengenbach will be how much the Germans loved their dogs.

   Friday, October 28, 2022:  Our last city to visit was Baden-Baden.  Sometimes you just have to appreciate it when things go your way; the weather was perfect for a casual walk by the river or taking a tour of the city.  Marion was our guide and she began our day with what Baden-Baden is most known for and that is its casino.  She warned us, however, that we had to be on our best behavior for this private tour before the casino opened and that meant no horseplay or running through the halls.  I turned to my wife and said, “Dammit.  We may as well leave right now.”  Anyway, the casino was spectacular and the old resort town retained a lot of its former glory.
   There were two reasons why Tracey and I took this trip.  The first was to visit the Black Forest region where her family is from.  The second was to see our exchange student, Niko, who spent a year with us two decades ago.  We met up for dinner on our last night on the trip and it was a lot of fun catching up with him.  It was the perfect ending to a perfect trip to Germany and France. 

Quotes
• On one of our tours, the guide said that he had memories of an apartment that we had passed up.  Apparently his girlfriend used to live there and his memory was that he had accidentally let his girlfriend’s canary out of its cage and the bird escaped.  He spent the whole morning trying to get the bird back.  Finally, he was able to find it and put it back in its cage.  I said, “that is the way that it is before you get married.  After you got married I am sure that you would have said, ‘just let the damn thing go.’”  With a look of disgust, Geetha, one of my fellow U of L tourists, said, “that was very cynical of you.  You should let us keep our illusions.”  What I thought was a whimsical comment turned out to be a much more serious statement.
• When I saw a group of German primary school students touring Gengenbach, I walked over and introduced myself as an American.  No one, not even the teachers, knew any English.  I talked for a minute or two, said goodbye, and started to walk away.  I was about a quarter of a block away when one of the teachers must have shared with the class the one word of English that she knew.  Twenty little voices yelled “Hello” after I had already left.
• When we saw an actor dressed up in full Renaissance regalia, I said to him, “I bet that you don’t wear that outfit at home.”  He replied, “only when my girlfriend asks me to.”
• If things were slow and we didn’t have a lot to do during the day then I would have a couple of drinks.  For some reason, I felt that I needed to hide my drinking from some of the other passengers because I wanted to “avoid the disapproving glare of a saint.”
• While we were in Heidelberg, I happened to need to use the bathroom.  I found a public bathroom and it was unusual in that it was uni-sex; male and females were expected to use the same bathroom and the only thing that separated the sexes was the thin wall of the stall.  In effect, there were no barriers between the sexes and, when I saw Kaitlin exiting the same bathroom a little later on, she said that “was one of the most awkward experiences of my whole life.”
• One of our guides talked incessantly about the great German lunch that was being offered to us.  Gina told us that we must try the Schnitzel and the sausages, for example.  As we pulled into the German restaurant’s parking lot, at an attempt at being funny, I replied with “I hoped that they were going to serve pizza.”  She frowned at my little joke.


Non Sequitar
• It was nice being with an older crowd.  Sure, they liked to talked about their grandchildren and the careers where they had made their bones, but talk to couples for any length of time and they will inevitably bring up how they met and the hard days of when they were first married.
• The great thing about the U of L Travel Group is that it is made up of people who are of different races, different ages, and different fields of study, but everyone gets along and truly enjoys the company of the other passengers.  They raise the level of conversation by talking about their favorite books or other trips that they had been on.
• The U of L Travel Group is a refined group.  For example, I never heard anyone cuss the whole time that we were gone.  The worst that I heard was when a lady was frustrated about packing blurted out “Jimminie Cricket.”  I felt like trash when I dropped the F-bomb when I hit my head of a ceiling in the aqueduct.  I apologized to everyone wishing hearing distance.



Congratulations if you have made it this far.  Today is my wife’s 58th birthday so if you could write in the comment section on Facebook, “Happy Birthday Tracey,” I will pass along your well wishes. 

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