It's a Small, Small World

Internet access has been problematic, but the trip so far has been great.

Friends have asked--why Eastern Europe?  Plans for this adventure have deep roots and have been simmering for many years:  my participation as a teenager in a folk dance group that performed some Eastern European dances, a visit to Israel and meeting survivors of the holocaust, Adele’s story, my Bulgarian friend Julia’s story, the Romanian orphanages we assisted in RS projects, studying Russian in high school and just a fascination with the part of the world that was hidden by the Iron Curtain and Cold War.  So with friends serving on a mission in Kiev, Ukraine, and the Uniworld Eastern Euopean Explorer riverboat cruise waiving single supplements, this journey fell into place.

As this trip was not convenient, affordable, or of interest to friends and family, it is mostly a solo trip (except when visiting friends).  I wondered whom I would meet and how I would fit in.  So far, I have been amazed at the connections I have found with traveling companions:

  

--On way to Munich, sitting next to a priest who runs a home for orphaned Ukrainian children  

--On flight to Vienna (Austria), sitting next to an LDS woman from Salt Lake City

--On riverboat, meeting couples who have lived in the Washington, DC area; those with children in my area; some who attended school in Northern Virginia; other teachers and school administrators with similar professional experiences

--On way to evening concert in Vienna, sitting with a spunky, woman who remembered she had cruised nine years ago with doctors from my community  

--Visiting the Hapsburg’s Schoenberg Palace with a woman had lived and studied in Paris with her friend (also on the cruise) the same year my sister and I were studying in Tours France.  

--Becoming friends with a Canadian couple who used to live in Northeast England near where I visited my nephew last summer and  who taught in Alnwick Castle--one of my favorite places (see post)

--Being driven by a well-educated, English-speaking driver to Budapest’s Momento Park (containing former Soviet statues) whose father, like mine, had worked on developing rockets in the 50s, but his for the Soviet military and mine for the USA.  And there the two of us were, peaceably in Budapest, sharing our differing memories of the Cold War.  

--Sharing where we have visited and our hopes for further travel with the other 85 well-traveled and  interesting passengers (including a couple who had been to Antarctica 3x) and so on.....

It has been a trip of instant friendships, and it is hard to say good-bye to new friends as the cruise part ends.  I have been reminded that the commonality of mankind is far greater than differences in either places or circumstances.