Eric Anderson, MD

We were talking about the narrative nonfiction book

 Blue Latitudes, Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before,

 published by Picador Henry Holt and Company, New York in 2002 (see “

Book Review: Blue Latitudes, and How the World Changed Hawaii

bestseller. Other books covering the same late-18

 century-time frame also explore the discovery of Australia. We will come back to them shortly, but let’s consider for a moment how today’s South Seas islands differ from what James Cook saw.

Tourists can appreciate much of what Cook saw when he came again to what he had named the Sandwich Islands (after the British cavalry officer who achieved more fame for creating his eponymous sandwich than he achieved in the Crimean War). Today, hanging from walls in luxury Hawaiian megaresorts or in upscale art galleries, paintings by prominent contemporary artists, like 

, show modern versions of Cook’s excursions. One such painting shows the Hawaiian outrigger canoes Cook’s lieutenant, James King, wrote about when they arrived at the largest of those islands, the ones “natives called O’why’he.” Cook sent his master, William Bligh (later of 

 fame), “to probe a wide bay…as a fleet of a thousand canoes swarmed around the ships…and hundreds were swimming around the Ships [sic] like shoals of fish.” King thought the men in the canoes—tawny-skinned, tattooed, and muscular&mdash;most closely resembled Maori, who dwelled 5,000 miles to the south. Cook wrote, “’How shall we account for this Nation spreading itself 

 over this Vast Ocean?’” That is still a 

 entertained by today’s anthropologists.

The story of Hawaiian outrigger canoes is indeed the story of Hawaiian history, but most tourists are on vacation and not likely to have history books in their beach bags. Yet sensitive guests will notice how pleased their hosts are when visitors show they know how Kamehameha the Great united the Hawaiian Islands. He did it so forcibly by sea that, in 1810, Kaumualii, the king of 

, peacefully surrendered his island to avoid further bloodshed. But Hawaiian hosts hope we know even more: How their islands became our 50th state particularly this 1893 story 

Tourists, especially snorkelers, will notice and appreciate the modern versions of the outrigger canoes, but this is evidently how Kamehameha and his army traveled to each island to subject it to his rule.

Today’s visitors find serenity. Tropical birds enjoy their island, too, as do tourists listening to their resort’s welcome but what Captain Cook confronted two centuries ago were Hawaiians who sensed their culture was about to be invaded.

Sensitive visitors with the curiosity of travelers and the pull of history might gaze on murals and statues in the megaresorts. When sailing ships arrived, they brought infections natives had not seen before—nor had any immunity to. 

 explains how Cook handled this: His ship’s log showed he was charmed by Hawaii, “with the flowers sending forth the most fragrant smell I had anywhere met with…the sweet potatoes the largest I had ever seen…taro root the best I ever tasted.” Yet he was not unaware how his crew enthused about the Island women. One sailor wrote, “As fine Girls as any we had seen in the south [sic] Sea Islands…with no more Sense of Modesty than the Otaheite women [an island in French Polynesia where women were indifferent to clothing], who cannot be said to have any.”

Horwitz said, “Cook forbade his men from having relations with women, lest they bring ‘the venereal’ to those untouched islands. He dispensed twenty-four lashes to an infected sailor who had disobeyed, but this proved an inadequate deterrent.”

Local guides claim Hawaii’s biggest problems were caused by the arrival of the maritime explorers—which led to infections and ultimately colonial subjection&mdash;and the arrival of the missionaries which led to destruction of Hawaiian culture and its own religion.

Today, Hawaii is a melting pot of many peoples’ cultures and religions at a time when Mainland America struggles to share those values. Still, on the island of Lanai, visitors can see the resorts embracing the old even as they welcome the new. Buddhists are welcome here and Lanai children charm visitors. On Maui, a young tourist walks unafraid past symbolic carvings. And on a Moorea town wall in Tahiti, a mural shows the simplicity and innocence of an earlier time.

Captain Cook did more than discover unknown islands in the South Seas. He determined that, although there was no mysterious continent in the Southern Hemisphere to balance the weight of Europe in the North, there were other large islands and one he, strangely, called New South Wales. This was strange, Horwitz said, because the outback of this new country receives less rain in a year than South Wales does in a week.

 is both a historic nonfiction and a droll tongue-in-cheek that shows the fun it was to reproduce Cook’s exploits an easier way (by air) for two somewhat care-free young people at an easier time (the 21

 century). Horwitz and his irreverent buddy, Roger Williamson, did not pursue Cook into Australia—odd, as both had lived a significant time in Sydney and one of the dramatic episodes in Cook’s life occurred when he impacted his ship on the Great Barrier Reef and barely escaped the destruction with his life. Why would Cook ignore the maritime maps? Well, there weren’t any; Cook was on a meticulous mission to draw those maps. For readers of historic nonfiction interested in how Australia started as an English convict colony two books offer entertaining material, 

 by Robert Hughes, which surely qualifies for what is now called narrative nonfiction, a fantastic read. And 

 by Sian Rees, her first book, covers how English jails were emptied of women as the new colony needed to expand. When I told a daughter I was reading this latter book, she wrote me, “How Salacious!” But it isn’t, I hastened to reassure her; it is a meticulously researched (to a fault) historical documents highlighting how little crime a woman had to carry out in order to be imprisoned in England at the tail end of the 18

 century—and ultimately sent on “transportation” for seven or 14 years to this new world of New South Wales.

 and the brief look may send readers to their public library for the full copy. Robert Hughes, author of 

 was an erudite Australian art critic once described by 

 as "the most famous art critic in the world."

*All photography by the authors unless otherwise noted

The Andersons, who live in San Diego, are the resident travel & cruise columnists for Physician's Money Digest. Nancy is a former nursing educator, Eric a retired MD. The one-time president of the NH Academy of Family Physicians, Eric is the only physician in the Society of American Travel Writers. He has also written five books, the last called

The Man Who Cried Orange: Stories from a Doctor's Life

Articles

It's the third and final part of analyzing the book, Blue Latitudes, Boldly Going Where Captain Cook Has Gone Before, and how it applies to modern day.

Book Review: Blue Latitudes, and How the Maritime World Changed the South Seas Forever

Writers of crime fiction usually offer fast, intense reads to their fans. The authors bid for your attention with styles that become their own and characters that grow into favorites. The field has expanded. The many forms of crime writing today include political thrillers, police procedurals, psychological suspense novels, detective fiction, and legal mysteries — for starters. The writing is more complicated; we’ve moved on from Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett “whodunnits” with their sparse syntax. Now some crime writers, like James Lee Burke, generate pastoral scenes that are pure literature. Some, like Greg Iles, provide the polish and suspense of Southern writers. Some, like Lee Child, create such powerful characters that Hollywood and Tom Cruise come running. But now, crime writing seems to have added a touch of 

I find sometimes the best descriptions of scenes and places lie with my favorite crime writers. With a touch of envy, I ask, why is this? Is it because the best writing advice is 

. That’s often the case, and when you investigate those authors you often find they live in the same cities they are writing about. Indeed, the advice from a website, 

 includes, “Create a three-dimensional world. A mystery novel may be a kind of puzzle, but it's more… Your characters should have lives that extend beyond the particular situation. They have families or lovers or a lack of family and lovers. They live in a particular setting — maybe New York or Los Angeles or a charming small town or a snooty suburb – which you should make real for the reader.”

Perhaps the emphasis on location, location, location began with the movies’ interest in the James Bond novels. We started seeing faraway places, yes, with strange sounding names and today’s lenses were up to the challenge — and today’s writers and those movies that began with a bang influenced novelists as well. Gone was the Charles Dickens-like convention of slowly developing a theme or place. Instead you were plunged into a Dante-like hell. And the upfront question was, were you going to survive?

Some authors are so skilled at this beginning this prologue that their readers might not accept any other.

American novelist Ridley Pearson began his Walt Fleming series in 2007 with 

 was electric. Pearson has written about Seattle and another series about Idaho. Robert Crais takes his readers to Louisiana and, as here, in this 

 to Los Angeles. However, good crime writing today needs more than quality prose, it has to have an exciting well-described location, it needs to show readers the place.

I recall how a Ridley Pearson novel The Art of Deception introduced me to the reality that a subterranean Seattle existed. I knew nothing of this. In some ways, Seattle was like Egypt’s Alexandria, a city surrounded by sea with such little room to expand. The new construction had to build on top of the old and the old was put aside to lie forgotten. Within a month of reading Pearson’s novel I was in Seattle’s most unusual tourist attraction, 

, although the book’s characters were having a more intense experience than I was.

Pearson’s popular character, Lou Boldt, is a Seattle police detective and by the time you have read a few of this 

 you may be ready to visit Seattle as a tourist.

Texas publisher, David L. Lindsey, became an author himself in 1980 to create a Houston homicide detective, Stuart Haydon, who has appeared successfully in many of Lindsey’s stories. I really like this author’s style, although I do smile at some of his descriptions which may not exactly make you a Houston tourist; he has shown how his fastidious detective takes a shower on a typically humid Houston day, puts on a clean shirt and goes back to work — the shirt immediately drenched in perspiration!

 Top: My Texas memories. Wells Fargo stagecoach made for sale by prisoners in Huntsville Prison; scenes from the Texas Hill Country.

If an author creates a successful series, as many writers aspire to, then the sequences take on a life of their own, though loyal readers sometimes feel it takes a lot to beat the earlier episodes. And so Michael Connelly gave us, and finally Netflix, the intense world of Los Angeles and 

. James Lee Burke created the gritty spaces of Louisiana and 

 — and if we were troubled when our good guys lost family members to bad guys, we had Jonathan Kellerman’s forensic psychologist, 

A fictitious ex-Seal hero like Mitch Rapp could survive only as long as his creator lived. It was a sad disappointment when author Vince Flynn died in 2013, aged 47, of a long battle with prostate cancer. Readers who love their country but don’t like their politicians took to Rapp’s stories about a wild cannon CIA operative who didn’t hesitate to execute an American congressman who betrayed his country. The publisher of the 13 episodes Flynn wrote has now found a competent and exciting writer to continue the series. “The show 

Our capital and Flynn’s political thriller which saw DC invaded.

We need heroes. We have to believe right ultimately triumphs over wrong, even if the anti-hero has a place in today’s stories. In real life we seem to be surrounded by such business corruption and government mediocrity that we are desperate for a brief fling in fiction, so it all really does come out right. However, the complicated planning to arrange a plot, a storyline that makes sense, that succeeds in tying up all the loose ends, has never been more difficult for crime writers because the good ones have stretched their stories’ boundaries such that you almost need your passport or at least Google Maps to follow the chapters.

 Daniel Silva’s stories might take you to Russia, to France, to Israel, even to the island of Corsica, to follow the duty of a professional painting restorer who is also (gasp!) a spy. Not only does this series make you want to travel, but also to spend more exciting time exploring art museums.

Silva’s character’s visit to the island of Corsica sees parallels in the TV camera’s exploration of virgin areas: the rural or island crime scene. Perhaps the Wallender books and the Scandinavian trilogy that began with 

started the trend — then studios saw the chance to produce streaming video jumped in. Novels by Ann Cleeves have been transferred very successfully by BBC America to a crime series 

. A trilogy now starting with a first novel, 

, is based on a nearby Scottish archipelago, the Outer Hebrides. Written by Scottish author and film maker, Peter May, it suggests equal promise for a long run on streaming TV.

The Lewis Trilogy takes you, of course, to the Island of Lewis and Harris and briefly to Scotland’s capital Edinburgh, but this remote island has seen a decline since the 18

 that evicted settlers for sheep. The middle image shows a black house stands neglected in the Island of Skye in the Gillian Abramson and the bottom image features a window’s look out to sea in the concrete-like bunker boathouse that is the scene of the murder that opens the novel, The 

Yet I would have this caution for author Peter May, whose reader acceptance of his recent series of more than a dozen crime novels has been sensational: The main character in 

 is a gentle, kind, and compassionate detective inspector, Jimmy Perez, who really cares for those he serves and for the staff he commands. He is most likeable. He is backed up by a competent and congenial female assistant. I would say as an exiled Scott to Peter May, if he hopes to make his police detective, Fin Macleod, an equally strong character on TV, Fin has to be more assured and more likeable.

Writers of crime fiction usually offer fast, intense reads to their fans. The field has expanded. The many forms of crime writing today include political thrillers, police procedurals, psychological suspense novels, detective fiction, and legal mysteries â€“ for starters.

Crime Fiction Takes on a Touch of Travel Writing

The Burt Bacherach/Hal David 1957 song “Magic Moments” — one of their first collaborations – became Perry Como’s biggest hit. The lyrics, “Memories we’ve been sharing” sum up a place and may validate travel photography. If images trigger memories – and happy ones – maybe they should be shared.

Older travel writers (as I consider myself) favored the “invisible narrator” where authors were shown in the third person and never intruded to become part of the story. Younger writers disagreed and felt the personal style of a “travel blog” allowed better communication. If this is so, perhaps I could have been more helpful writing about Europe if I’d approached the story in a more personal way and, in effect, said this is what I feel is worth doing. If you have time, consider this. Here’s what to include in a visit to Europe. And since the currency of physician travel is always time, here’s how to do it efficiently.

OK. You can’t see everything and maybe the first visit is just to find what you should include in a second visit. But even if this misses some classics here are my suggestions, what I thought caught the flavor of a place.

Public transportation is pretty good in most European cities. You don’t need a car in Edinburgh and the Edinburgh Castle gives a fine view to the Firth (like delta of river) Forth. A half hour walk will take you on to the Anatomy section of the old med school (but check that the exhibits have not moved to the new med school to the south of town). The Old Surgeons’ Hall, 10 minutes away from the Anatomy Department, has been modernized as a fine medical museum. The grave-robber, 

, skeleton is of the “murderer too lazy to dig.”

If you haven’t made any plans yet to cover the vast expanse of the continent, know Europe has some of the most interesting navigable rivers of any continent and a plethora of companies running river boats. They all have their contented fans — previous passengers all receiving some benefits on succeeding cruises. The trick is to start right so that if you are getting better deals the more you return, you are getting them with a premier company.

My wife, Nancy, and I have done about 10 European cruises with 

Uniworld Boutique River Cruise Collection

. We have almost run out of rivers! By using its river boats, we have covered more ground more easily and probably less expensively than if most of our travel had been done as independents — not to mention more comfortably, because travel can be tiring but less so if you are not changing hotels every night.

There is time to observe and learn on a river boat cruise. I had never heard of the Dacian King 

. I had never even heard of the carving, the tallest rock sculpture in Europe which took 12 sculptor about 10 years (1994 to 2004) to complete. 

I have friends from Edinburgh medical school who seem a bit burned up by a lifetime of dealing with the National Health Service. They say they would 

 do anything remotely medical on vacation! They show surprise that a physician would visit a medical museum on “holiday.” Understood. But I believe most physicians are curious enough to put their lives in context as they move around the world.

I looked in vain around Vienna for tributes to 

 — nor could I find them in Hungary, his birthplace, a land more famous for its equestrian shows. I was, however, pointed at a Semmelweis statue in Heidelberg; the way Vienna and the then medical world treated Semmelweis is one of Medicine’s disgraces.

The Czech Republic offers contrasts between the 17

 of the Capuchin Church in Brno where 24 mummified monks lie some clutching a crucifix, to Prague’s devotion to the Beatles. The placard (insert) says “As you are now, once we were; as we are now, you shall be.” Wow! The Beatles are easier to understand: The Prague students oppressed under communism turned to Beatles music as being anti-establishment and a perfect source to show how they felt about the communist regime. They even used a wall under the French Embassy for their John Lennon Wall graffiti!

Some sources list France as the most popular of all visited European capitals. Maybe so. The Eiffel Tower has to be the most perfect signature image of any city even if not shot through a prism. And 

 in a museum in Rouen reminds visitors of the controversy surrounding his death mask.

Napoleon died in 1821. The D Day Battle of Normandy in 1944 cost 29,000 American lives. The Battle of Normandy saw a total of 425,000 Allied and German troops killed, wounded, or lost during this battle. (In contrast the entire war in Iraq took the lives of 4,800 US soldiers.) The memorial on Omaha Beach is overpowering as is the American Cemetery.

The Netherlands is a fine country to visit: windmills, tulips, art, cheese — and a quick rundown to Leiden by train will bring you to the 

 Museum where Leeuwenhoek’s early microscope is on show.

It’s hard not to have Amsterdam as a favorite point of entry to Europe. Great airport, train service, city center, and port all essentially adjacent and an efficient public transportation system. The major art museums have all been upgraded which has made them even busier (and as crowded as the subjects in the vast art paintings)

The redone Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam has made Rembrandt’s 

 the very center of its exhibits. If you could get in as the museum opens and walk freely down the aisle to the huge painting, it would knock you over. But its legend is such that it may be cluttered with spectators, many with full size iPads taking their images. Ask the museum if there might be a time when you can see it in all its majesty — and read about the painting before you get there. My images show a poor attempt to fit the painting into this website’s protocols. Downtown Amsterdam is trying to retain the group of statues that replicate the scene, and in Delft you can find the same art grouped in the tiles the town is famous for.

 (the name means hand throwing) is Belgium’s biggest port and has a Roman army legend that a soldier killed a tyrant giant by cutting off his hand and throwing it in the river. The statue in front of city Hall shows the event. The renovated Museum 

 founded in 1555, has just re-opened showing the first industrial printing works in history. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Hollywood may have made both the canals of Venice and the fountains of Rome more famous than any travel guide, but although Venice is being damaged both by floods and mass of visitors, you should go before you lose the opportunity.

The easiest way to get the feel of Norway is take the 

 up its coast. When? Anytime. Winter if you hope to see the Northern Lights but an unexpected treat is catching the largest crabs you’ve ever seen in your life and eating them freshly caught and home-cooked.

Norway has Bergen where Hansen lived, the discoverer of the leprosy organism. Norway has Oslo that, one day, will be one of the great cities of Europe, and it has all its magnificent scenery — and people. But Stockholm, in Sweden, is the Scandinavian sophisticate, the suave, successful, polished master city of the North. Who wouldn’t want to be Swedish and live in such a gorgeous well-run city? And, as we have noted before, when you stop someone in the street and say, “Excuse me. Do you speak English?” the Swede draws himself up to his formidable height and says, “Of course!”

A small Swede studies the Viking swords that are part of his heritage and a Palace guard lives the dream. (Insert the Nobel Medal)

Then comes Spain, romantic, noisy, colorful — a mixture of such dignity and formality -- that sometimes seems to break down into fun and laughter provided you remember: This Was Once a Great Powerful Country.

Barcelona reminds me of Stockholm: confident and organized with people moving briskly doing important things. Yet it has the whimsy of its architecture such as the city’s most famous, albeit unfinished, church, 

 basilica, which was designed in 1882 by the Spanish Catalan architect Antoni Gaudi — whose work is revered all over Barcelona. The church may be completed in 20 years.

You will find whimsy, too, in Spain’s signature curled moustache artist, 

. It is said he adopted his moustache from Diego Velázquez. The rest of Dali has got to be original. Who else thinks or paints like him?

Hereâ€™s what to include in a visit to Europe. And since the currency of physician travel is always time, hereâ€™s how to do it efficiently.

Magic Moments: Last Look Postcards from Europe

One country lies dominantly today plumb in the center of Europe: Germany — and it has made the most successful recovery of any European country after World War II, an astonishing fact for anyone who does not understand German efficiency. Germans can be the hardest workers on the continent.

In 1950, as a young Selective Service infantry second lieutenant in the BAOR (the British Army of the Rhine), I was leading my platoon on the monthly obligatory 21 mile-night march when we heard mechanical noises ahead of us around the bend of a rural road.

We were approaching bright lights. “Tanks!” our point man shouted. But 

 were in Allied-occupied Germany. We were 

. Our Royal Scots Fusiliers regiment didn’t have tanks.

We marched round the bend in the middle of the night to find a scene that would become normal those post-war years in Germany. Cars were lined up facing each other along the town’s main street. Lights ablaze they were illuminating a frantic scene as the town people (which included children) bent their backs to rebuild their ruined town. It was hard work. Nobody was complaining. 

Berlin, in particular, shows the face of reconstruction yet much has survived World War II: Five magnificent buildings, some rebuilt at 

 have one of the world’s greatest collections. I was particularly pleased to get into the Pergamonmuseum with the Altar of Zeus that was carried off in 1876 from the second century AD gladiator workplace of Galen by the meticulous German engineer and self-educated archaeologist, Carl Humann. It is now the center of a huge architectural effort that may keep it closed to the public till 2019. Verify it is open before you buy an admission ticket.

 to the Murdered Jews of Europe. For a personal 

Pathological specimens of laboratory of Rudolf Ludwig Karl Virchow who, born in 1821, may be the greatest pathologist who ever looked down a microscope.

Berlin is a natural place to visit first in Germany. But what then? Given that working professionals in the United States don’t have the long paid-vacations of the Europeans, what is worth doing now? Well, the 

 has some suggestions for you; actually a lot of suggestions, as if wanting you to know it is the most efficient and helpful of any tourist organizations in Europe. It is so well organized and its offices are so helpful that you could almost confine your 

 visit to Europe to Germany and come back the next year to see what remains elsewhere. (Amongst travel writers the GNTO — click 

I have found the Germany “Off the Beaten Track” 

 tremendously useful. Its map shows its 14 small cities: Augsburg, Erfurt, Freiburg, Heidelberg, Koblenz, Mainz, Muenster, Osnabrueck, Potsdam, Regensburg, Rostock, Wiesbaden and Wuerzburg including Trier, one of Europe’s oldest cities (see my Trier images and map with the city locations).

Historic Highlights of Germany cities showing Trier in particular, an old Roman city.

Some of the cities on the map are more famous than others. Mainz, for example, celebrated for its wines and marvelous Marc Chagall stained glass window (the last artistic piece Chagall created just before he died in 1985 aged 97 — and for which he invented eight separate shades of blue; and the site where Gutenberg printed his famous Bible in 1450). Our guide, Judith Konig, a certified printing demonstrator at the Gutenberg Museum, prints the first page of the Bible for us on Gutenberg’s own printer.

Heidelberg is possibly as much famous for Sigmund Romberg’s operetta 

 as for its much admired university. The 1954 

 of the operetta offered the voice of Mario Lanza (who had been sensational in the Great Caruso 1951 movie) who outshined, in my opinion, the performance of the actor he sang for, Edmond Purdon. We meet our guide, Susanne Fiek, a cheerful blonde who offers us a copy of her book 

written in German. We go to the Castle, the home of the world’s largest wine barrel (58 thousand gallons). We shoot our customary images as she reaches to point at a gigantic barrel. She laughs and says, “There are two barrels; 

 is the smaller one.” We head to the student haunt, The Red Ox with its framed autographs by those famous American travelers, John Wayne and Marilyn Monroe but scribbled on different dates. They were not traveling together!

 on your destination list. It’s easily reached by car or train and especially by river boat as it lies on the junction of the Rhine and the Moselle. Our guide Gerd Reis not only spoke fluent English, but with a Scotsman as a friend, could tease a Scottish travel writer like me by assuming a thick Scottish accent. He took us up to the fortress where we saw examples of the artillery that ended the reign of castles.

We have also followed the trail of Martin Luther across Germany 500 years after his birth with reference to the detailed notes from the GNT. We went by rail with a DBahn pass fairly easily although sometimes there was a bit of a hike from the station to what we wanted to see. Each stop had some impact on Luther’s life from where he was born in Eisleben, to the church door where he nailed his protests to the Pope, to where he hid while he translated the Bible into German, and finally where he was laid to rest. The tours run through 2017. 

Our GNTO Guide Frau Hoffmann-Meschede was delightfully efficient in leading us through all the German rural sources of the Brothers Grimm stories from where the Brothers were college students to towns that had statuettes commemorating their characters. Knowing our health background, she made sure we saw in Marburg the Emil Adolf von Behring wall statue. She reminded us he developed the vaccine for diphtheria and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1901. Behring truly lived. But so did the legendary Dr. Eisenbarth whose exploits are all over Hand. Munden, one of the prettiest small towns in Germany. We had a local guide in Hand. Munden,

Dr. Gudrun Keindorf who had a Doctorate in Philosophy. “It was like a circus, a carnival when Dr. Eisenbarth came to town,” she said. “He might arrive with more than a hundred musicians, entertainers and assistants and the loud music would drown the cries of pain from his patients. But it’s important to know that the death rate from surgical procedures in those days was about 80 percent and his death rate was 50 percent. People attributed that to his ‘contract with the devil.’” Insiders say he placed his instruments on hot coals postop which may have partly sterilized them.

A local actor plays the part. For more details see our 2013 article 

The GNTO put us in touch with an extraordinarily generous museum owner, Winfried A. Seidel, the owner of the 

. He knew of our interest in the events of 120 years ago and could not do enough to help us understand and drive the Bertha Benz Memorial Route. He provided us with two elegant classic Mercedes-Benz automobiles, one to be a chase car and two drivers and sent us on our way. Our 

 we have written on German destinations for this magazine can be seen there.)

What is an Ex-Brit to think looking back now on a dozen or more contented visits to a country that was his nation’s enemy all through his childhood, a child whose father, born in 1898, lied about his age to join up at the start of World War I and survived the War to End All Wars — and can be remembered bending over an old wireless set in the early days of World War II when no news was good news for the British. Children should be seen but not heard was a common saying in the 1930s. Children knew not to speak when Winston Churchill was intoning solemn details over the BBC network.  And yet life moves on. Germany has apologized for what the Nazis did in World War II; Japan in contrast has not 

Germany is the easiest country to visit. It is efficient and really strives to help tourists — and it hopes they will become regular visitors. This country has fascinating sculptures, gorgeous Gothic architecture, and its youth seem to have the enthusiasm of a land that has given much to the field of music – and it is most humbling to kick against its “stumble stones,” those countless brass plates that remind people passing by that here, for example, lived the family of 51-year-old Dr. Ludwig Konigsberger. They were all murdered in 1942 for the crime of … being Jewish! The guide, who was not Jewish, drew my attention to the stones. “We hope you will mention them in your articles,” she said, “so the world knows!”

There are many ways to explore Germany. Train, car, tour operator, and even Uber! For us, many times, it has been through Uniworld and its river boat cruises. Germany has perhaps the best canals and rivers in Europe, and that has made 

Germany is up next for exploration of European countries in the series, "Should American Tourists Make Their Own Exit from Europe?"