Our descent into madness …

That’s the only way to describe what’s happening. 

Antifa thugs physically attack innocent people coming out of a rally and are called “peaceful” protestors. Throwing rocks and bottles of urine at police, smashing windows and setting fire to cars is also called a “largely peaceful” protest.  Mayors are praised for ordering police to stand down while rioters loot and burn businesses; others for deciding they won’t comply with Federal immigration laws. 

Congress is being asked to outlaw “hate” speech – but only hate speech by some groups but not by others. The ACLU announced it will not defend free speech by some groups because it’s hate speech – this from the same ACLU that vigorously defended the Westboro Baptist bigots’ right to harass families burying sons and daughters who died while serving in our military. 

Social media networks are determining what is “hate speech” to be banned here, while also working with repressive regimes overseas to censor what can be viewed there.  Facebook and Twitter executives are deleting the accounts and postings of some “hate groups” but turn a blind eye to others and live-stream postings of beatings and even suicides, rapes and murders.  

We now have blacks at public universities demanding segregated, blacks-only dormitories and meeting spaces, and the right to exclude anyone who isn’t sufficiently black from those places. On one college campus, with that school’s administration’s blessing, black students and faculty had a day dedicated to excluding all whites from that campus.    

Meanwhile, public schools, libraries and even streets are being renamed, and historic statues and monuments are vandalized and torn down, because they honor long-dead segregationists.

Some want the monument memorializing Confederate soldiers buried in Arlington national cemetery removed – along with any Confederate symbols on their graves.  

A bust of Abraham Lincoln was recently set on fire in Chicago. Someone else spray-painted part of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. Another doused a statue of Columbus with red paint. 

New York Mayor Di Blasio is seriously considering removing the Columbus statue from Columbus Circle in NYC because it offends some Native Americans and Caribbean blacks. He may also remove Grant’s Tomb because – despite defeating the slave-holding South in the Civil War, and later serving as a U.S. President – some think Grant himself was also anti-Semitic.

College and public university administrators support professors who spew hatred, including those calling for genocide on whites and murdering police. The same administrators allow violent protestors to silence conservative voices from being heard – for fear what those conservative speakers may say could incite violence.  Free-speech advocates on campuses are beaten by masked attackers who claim to be anti-fascists exercising their own right to “free speech.” 

Black Lives Matter activists and black entertainers promote killing cops – a popular BLM chant is: “What do we want? Dead Cops! When do we want them? Now!” A major movie star says he’d like to punch the President in the face.  A comedian poses with an ISIS-like picture of herself holding a bloody, severed head of Donald Trump and posts it online.

Elected officials call for the assassination of a sitting U.S. President. Celebrities get cheers for saying they‘ve thought seriously about blowing up the White House.  One gets cheers at an event for saying “When was the last time an actor assassinated a president?" – a clear reference to John Wilkes Booth.  And after a pause he added, "been a while, and maybe it's time."

I wish I was making this up but I’m not.

Some are quick to blame the events in Charlottesville for the sudden surge in violence and what can only be described as anarchy. The truth is it started long before Charlottesville; long before Trump was elected, in fact.  We’ve been heading down this maelstrom of madness for decades.

The far left and the left-leaning media have created a Frankenstein monster from a combination of myths, misinformation, manufactured outrage and outright lies. Now this monster stalks the land, apparently free of any moral compass or conscience.    

It’s frankly Orwellian, in many ways.

Free speech now doesn’t mean the right to express your views, no matter how hurtful or unpopular, but the right to stop others from expressing their views through violence and intimidation. There's long been a prohibition against inciting a riot or creating “imminent” danger like yelling “fire” in a crowded theater, under the guise of free speech.  Now, however, it’s perfectly acceptable to claim you’re expressing your right to free speech by inciting a riot, beating people and attacking police simply because you merely anticipate the possibility of speech and words you don’t want to hear.     

Freedom no longer means the Constitution will protect your right to believe what you want, worship or not as you wish, and live your life the way you want as long as you don’t harm others. Freedom is now subject to government approval alone: you can be forced by government edict to abandon your core beliefs, how you worship, how you live your life, or even how you run a business. All because your freedom may impinge on the freedom of someone else more politically favored.  

There’s no such thing as equality. Today, some are clearly “more equal” than others. Especially if you claim to be a victim. Being a self-described victim – or someone who asserts they are fighting to defend self-described victims – establishes a moral high ground in their mind that allows them to do whatever they want to whomever they choose with absolute impunity.   

Justice is no longer blind and even handed; instead of interpreting the laws or Executive Orders as written, some judges now divine motives behind laws or Orders to determine legitimacy. This reverses hundreds of years of legal tradition where the actual words, and the precise way they are written, were the only things that mattered. 

“Racism” and “racist” now cover more people and ideas than perhaps ever before in this country.  Unfairly, so, too.  Where once these were used almost exclusively to describe those who judged anyone and discriminated against them on the basis of their race alone, only whites – and especially conservative whites or Republicans of any race – are now automatically racists.

Anyone opposed to illegal immigration is racist as well.  Anyone who accurately describes our inner cities as urban hellholes – where minorities are killing each other in astonishingly high numbers, and poverty is higher than ever – is also automatically a racist.  Anyone who wants to improve education in our inner cities by closing failing public schools and giving poor parents the opportunity to send their kids to charter or magnet schools is also a racist.     

Curiously, those blacks who judge all whites based on their skin color are automatically not racist.  Blacks who judge all Asians based on their race alone are not racists. In fact, blacks can’t be racists at all, despite judging other groups based on race alone, because, well, they are black. 

Courts and Presidents and government regulators, not Congress, are creating de facto laws, in clear violation of the Constitution’s separation of powers.

And no one cares.  Unless, of course, it’s coming from a President and an administration with whom you disagree. When Obama and his administration did it, conservatives grumbled about executive overreach. But when Trump and people in his administration use the same tactics, the far left and media go berserk and fan the flames of violence in the streets. 

We are in a bizarre time in our nation’s history. 

There’s a collective blindness to what is actually happening, driven by a media that has devolved into a propaganda tool rather than a source of impartial news.  If one is to believe what our media are reporting, our country is awash in neo-Nazis and white supremacists, supported by Trump and fellow Republicans, who must be stopped – by any means necessary – or they will endanger Jews, gays, immigrants, and any people of color.     

The neo-Nazis and white supremacists in particular are the “oldest and darkest forces” Joe Biden decried recently in an op-ed.

Unfortunately, as usual, Joe is off base.  Neo-Nazis and white supremacists, as loathsome as they are, don’t really amount to much.  Their lunatic followers number in the hundreds, not thousands. Most often they have trouble getting a hundred supporters to show up, and even then they typically shout a few stupid things, wave a few dumbass signs, and go home. 

No, the real threat to Americans – the real “oldest and darkest forces” – are mobs fueled by emotion instead of reason. They don’t respect the rights of others, they want to rewrite history for their own purposes, and they prefer demagoguery to democracy to achieve their goals.     

It’s more than a tad ironic that so many of those using violence and destruction to oppose what they see as intolerance are themselves so intolerant of others.  With a mob at their back, they feel empowered to do disgraceful and despicable things they’d never do alone. 

When Trump noted after Charlottesville there was violence by both sides of the protests, he was widely criticized for implying a moral equivalency between the neo-Nazis and white supremacists and the counter protestors. He didn’t; he simply stated a fact borne out by video evidence.   

The "anti-fascist" mobs today, as in Charlottesville and elsewhere, use tactics startlingly similar to the Nazi Brownshirts of the 1930s. Yet they claim to abhor everything the Nazis stood for. They also claim to be fighting fascists, when they are in fact the modern incarnation of fascists.  

They have become what they abhor.  

That’s true madness. It can only end badly.    

The disloyal opposition …

I expect Democrats to oppose Trump at every turn. I expect them to be angry and frustrated they lost the last election even against such a flawed candidate as Trump. 

But I’ve never seen so many people and groups actively working night and day to overturn the results of a legitimate  Presidential election.

At times, it seems overwhelming. 

Virtually all Democrats, most of the mainstream media, and a great number of establishment Republicans are doing their damndest to force Trump from office.  Then there’s what’s known as the “deep state” – the entrenched bureaucracy in the intelligence community, the State Department, and elsewhere – actively sabotaging Trump at every turn with leaks designed to embarrass him and further the perception that he is uniquely unfit to be President. 

I’ve never seen anything like this. There’s an open insurrection against a legally and democratically elected President by an unholy alliance of Democrats, the media, unelected bureaucrats, and even people in his own party.

They are lined up against him, and using every legal option and often illegal means at their disposal, not because he’s done anything wrong or committed “high crimes and misdemeanors,” but simply because he’s not one of them. He’s an outsider; a barbarian in their view, who doesn’t respect how things have always worked in Washington. 

He’s a clear and present danger to the status quo. 

They’ve decided we need what is, in essence, a coup d’état – something that’s never happened here since the founding of this nation.

Some Democrats have called for Trump’s impeachment, although they can’t seem to come up with any hard evidence to warrant that.  The media have been trying since he won his party’s nomination, and are now near hysteria, to find something, anything, to disqualify him. Some far-left celebrities have even called for the military to seize control.

What they want is to thwart democracy and ignore the will of the millions of people who voted for Trump. That’s especially rich since they claim Trump himself is a threat to our democracy. So they think invalidating a democratic election will help preserve democracy. 

If that sounds crazy it’s because it is. 

Now, that’s not to say some people have had second thoughts after voting for Trump. With the incessant drumbeat of negative coverage of his every move and statement it’s understandable that would have an impact on his approval ratings. Yet he still has the overwhelming support of his base; it may have dipped a bit since inauguration but it’s still high.

That’s remarkable is some ways, not so much in others.

He is a polarizing figure, not because he wants to be, but because that’s how he’s painted by adversaries in the Democrat Party, the media, and among establishment Republicans.

He’s either a monster or someone sent to Washington to kick ass and overturn the political establishment as he would say “big time.” There’s no middle ground.

His supporters still love him for the same reasons his adversaries will always hate him. Trump is challenging and threatening to overturn everything self-serving establishment politicians and bureaucrats have built over the decades.  To Trump, nothing is off the table for review simply because that’s how it’s always been done before.  

All of this would just be political theatre except for one thing: in the process of trying to hurt Trump and force him from office, his adversaries are also hurting the United States, perhaps irreparably. The citizens of this nation, and our institutions, have become collateral damage. 

With the aid of passive-aggressive establishment Republicans like John McCain, Lindsey Graham. Linda Murkowski, Susan Collins, and others in Congress opposed to Trump, Democrats have effectively regained control of the legislative agenda. That’s despite Democrats being the minority in both houses.  Even if Republicans wanted to pull together, which they clearly don’t, Mitch McConnell will never do what Harry Reid did to change Senate rules so Republicans could use their majority to push forward legislation that Trump wants. 

It’s as if the last election had no consequences. 

So repealing and replacing ObamaCare – something millions voted for and Republicans ran on for years – remains mired in petty politics and shameless grandstanding often from the same Republicans who voted to repeal and replace it many times before. Yet when the votes really counted this time, many Republicans turned tail and let it continue. 

The rationale? It’s really a complicated issue, they say. No, it’s really not.

It wasn’t all those times in the past when Republicans voted to repeal it. Sure, they knew Obama would never sign those their bills.  But now that they have a Republican in the Oval Office – Trump – who is eager to sign repeal and replace bills they can’t come up with anything. 

And that’s because they don’t want to. Part of it is because they don’t want to take any risk that some voters – especially those benefitting from the out-of-control expansion of Medicaid, the subsidies for insurance policies, and the silly rule allowing adults up to 26 years old to stay on their parents’ insurance plans – might be upset if ObamaCare is killed. 

But part of it is also to spite Trump. That’s what’s driving Senators McCain, Graham, Murkowski, Jeff Flake, Rob Portman and others who have been opposed to Trump since he ran for office.  They are determined to see Trump fail, regardless of the cost to the rest of us. 

Building the wall – another Trump campaign issue? Nope. Too many big businesses and agribusinesses here like cheap illegal immigrant labor. Cracking down on businesses that employ illegal immigrants?  Nope. See above.  Next?  

Tax reform? Again, the same rationale as healthcare: it’s really complicated. 

And again, no, it’s really not. 

As always, we won’t be getting substantive tax reform anytime soon because Republicans can’t agree on whose ox is to be gored. And real revenue-neutral tax reform means somebody’s will.  Nobody is willing to give up any of the ridiculous tax breaks they’ve enacted to help their deep-pocketed campaign contributors.  Or to scale back all the gratuitous credits and subsidies consumers receive to do what they should do anyway, or could easily afford without these. 

Trump wants to simplify the tax code.  He wants to close business loopholes. He wants to eliminate provisions that make it more advantageous, from a tax perspective, to send American jobs and profits overseas rather than keeping both here.  These were his campaign pledges. 

His supporters voted for that by electing him.  Here again, establishment Republicans in Congress will oppose him. Partly because they don’t want to change anything; partly because of Trump – they are working aggressively to keep him from fulfilling any of his campaign promises.  

They want him gone. They are sandbagging him so he fails.       

And since Republicans are in control of both the House and Senate, that means no meaningful legislation Trump has requested is getting to his desk to sign. Gridlock continues.   

It’s no wonder a majority of voters now would now prefer to see Democrats rather than Republicans in control of Congress. Why not? At this point, and considering what Republicans in Congress have done with their majorities, squandering opportunity after opportunity, would it really make a difference?  

In truth, many Americans and businesses are okay with gridlock in Congress. It works for them; they get to keep the subsidies, credits, and special treatment – no matter how senseless and expensive – they’ve won over the years from Senators and Representatives buying their votes and continued financial support with taxpayer dollars.   

To stop the gridlock and get spending and special-interest influence under control voters in the last election put more Republicans in Congress and a Republican into the Oval Office. 

Has it made a difference? That’s a big fat nope.  Not because Trump hasn’t been trying.  It’s because establishment Republicans despise everything he stands for – change. 

Some things have changed since Trump’s election.  Not for the better, however.

Democrat-appointed Federal judges have violated the Constitution’s separation of powers, as well as established law, to stop or at least delay the implementation of Trump’s lawful executive orders on restricting immigration. Even renowned liberal jurists like Alan Dershowitz – no fan of Trump by any stretch – have questioned the legal grounds for these rulings. 

When is the law not the same law for everyone? It now depends on which Federal judge you get.  That’s incredibly damaging to a nation, and a culture, that prides itself on impartial application of “the rule of law” rather than the arbitrary rule of man.  

Our intelligence community has also lost credibility by becoming more political. 

It’s hard to trust the FBI to be impartial when the then-director of the FBI – Jim Comey – admits he leaked government documents to the media to force the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate a sitting President.  Or when he admits he changed what to call an investigation to appease an Obama-appointed Attorney General.  Then there’s his refusal to bring charges against Hillary Clinton, after telling Congress she mishandled classified information in violation of State Department rules and didn’t tell the truth when questioned about her personal server and missing e-mails, because “no reasonable prosecutor” would either. 

Then there are the leaks from the intelligence community – often of classified information that threatens national security and the ability of any President to govern. These are intentional and belie the desire by some members of the intelligence community to take down Trump.

Leaks are also coming from within the Justice Department itself, prompting Attorney General Sessions to hold a press conference to warn that anyone, in any department, found to have leaked confidential government information will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. 

We’ll see.    

There are additional leaks from the Special Prosecutor’s office supposedly tasked with investigating alleged Russian tampering with the last election. But in reality – according to well-timed leaks – they are also investigating any financial dealings Trump or any of his campaign staff had over the past decade or more, whether or not these are in any way related to Russia.    

Trump is even under assault via leaks possibly coming from within his own administration. Some of these are the result of typical internecine battles in any administration.  But others, such as the release of full transcripts from his private calls with world leaders, which only a handful of people would have had access to, are far more troubling.   

Given what we now know of the intelligence community’s antipathy toward Trump, I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that some government agency, or some employee in the NSA or another alphabet intelligence agency, has bugged the Oval Office.  That’s scary. 

When I was much younger, in my college years, a lot of us didn’t trust the government. There were too many shadowy groups doing stuff the government tried to keep secret. Plus, the government routinely lied to the American public – whether about CIA-sponsored coups in other countries, Vietnam, political assassinations overseas, secret experiments on ordinary Americans, or where government money was going and to whom and for what. 

However, I must say that I am now even more concerned with efforts by members of Congress, faceless bureaucrats in the intelligence community, Federal judges, and the media, to delegitimize a lawfully elected President of the United States.

I may not always agree with what Trump says or does – in fact it’s increasingly rare that I do – but millions of people voted to put him in office.  And in our democracy, voters have the sole authority to decide who should be President, not other politicians, bureaucrats, pundits, or the media.

It’s long past time to stop worrying about Russian meddling in our elections. The real threat to our democracy is from our own political establishment and political elites. 

They clearly don’t trust us, the voters; they’ve proven we shouldn’t trust them

The river cruise …

Taking a river cruise in Europe has always been on my wife’s bucket list.

We planned one two years ago but had to cancel at the last minute because we sold our house and the buyer wanted to close at about the same time.

So we rebooked and finally made it this year.  We did the Rhine on Viking.

Our original itinerary had us flying on United from Orlando to Dulles, followed by a direct flight to Brussels that evening arriving at 7:15 AM the next day. We would be picked up in Brussels and whisked away to our hotel in Bruges. A couple of days in Bruges, then to Amsterdam for a couple more days, and then on to the Viking ship. Then on the Rhine to Basel and fly back home.    

That was the plan.  Here’s what happened instead. 

Our flight from Orlando was delayed by thunderstorms. We sat on the tarmac for five hours.  At one point, the pilot came on to say our plane had mysteriously been dropped from the queue by air traffic control – the first time ever in his entire career – and that United and the controllers were trying to sort things out.  Not a good start. 

We missed our connecting flight to Brussels, but United courteously texted us while we were still on the tarmac in Orlando that our connecting flight had already departed.  Thanks, United.    

While we waited to take off, we called Viking and they rebooked us on a British Airways flight that night from Dulles, but to Heathrow, and then from Heathrow to Brussels the next day.

PITA but hey, we were on our way!

United said they would try to get our bags, checked in Orlando, over to the BA flight.  But they didn’t.  However, at least we had a flight and would eventually get to Brussels, even if our bags would take a bit longer to catch up.

Okay, so maybe we got the last and worst possible seats on the BA flight, against the bulkhead against the bathroom, no room to recline, but we were on a plane going the right direction. 

On the BA flight that night – which didn’t leave until around midnight – they had a dinner service with wine. Nice. Except my wife knocked over her white wine into her lap and partly into mine. It wasn’t a total catastrophe; we had worn jeans to travel and always packed a couple of days’ extra clothes in our carry-on bags. If need be, I could change.   

Her jeans were soaked; mine were only partially wet, so I figured mine would dry overnight. And, to be candid, it’s not like it was the first time someone, or me, had spilled a drink on me.

Although I was usually having much more fun when it happened. 

She got it much worse than me. She was drenched.  They brought her a sleeper set from first class to wear while her jeans dried.  She changed into the sleeper pants, I stayed in my jeans. 

The next morning, my jeans were completely dry. Until the breakfast service on board.

That’s when the flight attendant dropped a full glass of orange juice into my lap. Directly into my lap. Dead center. Which, at my age you can’t ignore – it looks like an inside job. 

So now I have dried wine on one leg and fresh orange juice and pulp in the middle.    

I had no choice but to change into a spare pair of pants from my carry on, which is a nifty trick in an airplane bathroom. (This proved to me once again that anyone claiming to be a member of the “mile-high club” is either lying or both parties were world-class contortionists.)  

The attendants were so sorry they brought my wife a really nice goody bag from first class.  I got soaked and she got a great gift.  Go figure.  

That morning we landed safely, but late, into Heathrow. I don’t know if anyone else has had this experience, but Heathrow is the only airport I know where they don’t announce your next flight’s gate until 15 minutes before boarding. 

Plus, you have to go through security screening all over again.  Which, by itself, is no big deal. Except that they select every 4^th or 5^th passenger’s carry-on bags for detailed inspection by pulling everything out on a table, running an explosives scan, and examining everything. 

Guess who was 4^th or 5^th? That’s right, me.  And we’re running tight on making our next flight.

So while I’m frantically looking over my shoulder to see which gate we should be running toward, and trying not to look nervous like a potential terrorist, the security woman is calmly poring over my stuff and assuring me my next flight’s probably delayed anyway. 

Which it was, continuing our streak. 

We do arrive in Brussels in the late afternoon, instead of early that morning. Of course our checked bags aren’t there; we have to file a claim for those.  The claim agent tells us our bags are still at Dulles, but should be on the next United flight arriving at 7:15 AM the next day, at which time they will be brought to our hotel in Bruges. 

We can deal with that. Just one day, right?  Then we’re back on track. Still, because we got in so late, timed perfectly to hit rush hour in Brussels, it takes our driver a couple of hours to get to Bruges; we get there and checked into our hotel about 6 PM.  

The next day, when our bags haven’t arrived, big surprise, the Viking rep calls on our behalf and learns that our bags are probably now headed toward London Heathrow and there’s a possibility that one bag will be coming on one flight and the other on another. He advises the airline that if our bags aren’t delivered that evening, they will have to go to our hotel in Amsterdam, because that’s where we’ll be the next day.

We have started to exhaust our emergency clothes in our carry-ons.  We had our jeans cleaned at the hotel in Bruges – only about 30 Euros for laundering two pairs of jeans – but underwear has started to become an issue for me.  I had tossed my wine and orange-juice pair – imagine housekeeping’s surprise find – and I wasn’t ready to go commando, clean jeans or not.  In Europe or not.  I was down to my last clean pair. 

Fortunately, because our bags had been lost for more than 24 hours, we were allowed to buy some more stuff and be reimbursed by the airlines. My wife bought some things.  And the supermarket down the street from our hotel sold men’s underwear.      

When we leave for Amsterdam our bags remain in transit. 

We tour Amsterdam that day. It’s gray and rainy. Still, I have a pack of overpriced spare underwear so I’m calm. When we get back from dinner that night the concierge has great news – our bags are in Amsterdam!

But there’s a problem. They can’t release the bags without a customs form. 

The airline agent suggests we come to the Amsterdam airport to sign the forms and retrieve our bags. My wife convinces them to e-mail the form to the concierge, we will complete it and fax it back. They give us 15 minutes to do this. They do it, she completes it, the hotel faxes it back.

At 11:05 PM that night our bags finally arrive at our room.  We wept in joy.

Not really, but we were truly relieved to see our luggage at last.  That’s a really good thing because I’ve just discovered that men’s underwear marked “medium” must mean something entirely different in Europe than the States. European men must have hips like little girls. I don’t. 

The rest of the trip was relatively uneventful by comparison. 

How could that be? It was Europe!  It was a river cruise on the Rhine – castles, touring historic cities, experiencing European culture!

Yes, it was all that. And in fairness to Viking, the river boat was modern and beautiful, the staff exceptionally friendly and helpful, and the food was terrific. Since we had a beverage package, drinks were awesome and generous and the bartenders amazing. 

Would I do it again?  I don’t think so.  Not my kind of vacation.  Not Viking’s fault.

When I’m on vacation, I’m not fond of rigid schedules or set seating for meals. On the boat breakfast is 7-9:30; dinner at precisely 7 PM. Tours start at 8:30 or 9 AM, and you’re back on the boat around noon, in time for lunch, which ends at 2 PM. Then you have about four hours of “free” time – with absolutely nothing to do, no place to go, and no on-board diversions, until the bar opens.

What about the tours? Didn’t we get to tour amazing places?

We did, but not the way I hoped. It was more like elementary school field trips.  Only you didn’t need a permission slip from your parents or a PBJ wrapped in wax paper and an apple for lunch.  Other than that, it brought back memories of chaperones keeping everyone in line.       

Let me start by saying I’m not a paddle-following kind of guy. Especially now that I’m an adult.  I’m more a get me to the city, give me a map with what I should see, tell me when I have to be back, and let me wander around on my own kind of guy.  I’m all grown up. 

But all the guided tours on Viking had you follow a guide who held a paddle aloft to keep everyone in the group together, like ducklings.  

Plus, everyone had to wear a “quiet box” with an ear plug to hear what the guide was saying.

Which in Belgium is how much they hate the French, and also stupid and lazy French-speaking Belgians who refuse to learn Flemish, and the Spanish, and, being a proudly Catholic nation, how awful and disruptive the Protestant Reformation was. 

Which in Amsterdam is how rich it became because educated and wealthy Jews relocated there when the Catholics and their Inquisition chased them out of other parts of Europe, and how so many Jews were later saved from the Nazis by the brave locals. (Cue Anne Frank story.) 

Which in Brussels is how proud they are to have the EU headquartered there, the great work the EU is doing passing numerous wonderful laws and regulations about everything, and how the Brits are misguided idiots for voting to leave the EU.

And which in Germany is how most of the buildings including cathedrals had to be wholly or partially rebuilt following the devastating bombings by the Allies in WWII, so most of what you see is a recreation. (I couldn’t help thinking: well, if you hadn’t started the war in the first place the Allies wouldn’t have bombed you. Just saying …)

Oh, and almost all the “medieval” castles you see on the Rhine are actually restorations from the 1800s during the “romantic” movement.

Okay. We did see a lot of cathedrals. We did see some interesting cities. And as I said before, the Viking boat, staff, and food were all excellent.

Except for the next-to-last night on the boat. 

Before we could go to dinner, the hotel manager and program director for this boat assembled all the guests to pitch us on leaving additional gratuities for themselves and the rest of the staff.  They paraded members of the restaurant staff, including the dishwashers, the wait staff, the bar staff, and told us not to forget the housekeepers as well. 

The only thing missing was pictures of their kids with outstretched hands. 

We were advised there would be envelopes in our rooms for the program director, and we could get additional envelopes at the reception desk for others. 

It was truly awkward.  And in extremely poor taste.  Especially since I’m certain almost everyone on board had already been handing out tips to the service staff all along, or planned to do it anyway, and some people had bought their trip packages with built-in gratuities. 

River cruises are not inexpensive.

But Viking’s beg-a-thon near the end unnecessarily cheapened the experience.    

Overall, a European river cruise is a great adventure. For the right personality type, I’m sure it’s a wonderful experience. For me it was a once-in-a-lifetime event. 

Literally.