With XM blasting out "Light My Fire", we departed Helena for Waterton Lakes National Park, Alberta, Canada, first making a quit visit to the beautiful Montana State Capitol. Jan asked why Yellowstone overlaps into Idaho and Montana, and we discovered that at the time U.S. Grant signed the order creating Yellowstone, Montana and Idaho were not yet states. Montana became the 41st state on November 8, 1889. and Idaho followed as the 43rd on July 3, 1890. Yellowstone was established as the world's first National Park when Grant signed the law creating it on March 1,1872. Our first stop was at First People's Buffalo Jump State Park. On maps it is still usually listed as Ulm Pishkun, but that was from a single native American language and it was felt best to change the name since ... read more

Toilet water, Rhine water, holy water. Köln is a diverse city, and old city, a city of contrasts. Media capital of Germany, yet still dominated by the huge cathedral and graced with Romanesque churches. Köln is the media capital of Germany, and hosts numerous international trade shows annually, all of which came about as a result of the reconstruction after World War II. The city was subject to intense bombing, and by the end of the war the population was reduced by about 95%, and the central city was largely in rubble. The Cathedral was not totally spared, as is falsely claimed by the Lonely Planet guidebook, but did suffer relatively little damage. Good luck? Divine intervention? Deliberately spared to be used as a landmark for future bombing missions? The truth is unknown. Following the war ... read more

We arrive in Leipzig in late afternoon, rested a while, then went to the famous Auerbachs Keller for dinner, just as Goethe often did. Rubbing the left foot of the Faust statue outside the restaurant is said to bring good look. Eating at the restaurant definitely brings good food. The next day we made a walking tour of Leipzig. The most interesting things in Leipzig are within relatively easy walking distance of one another. Leipzig has long been a university town with resultant and connected cultural and intellectual interests. In the late 1600’s Gottfriend Wilhelm Leibniz was the co-inventor (with Isaac Newton) of calculus, and also made contributions to graph theory as well as philosophy. Goethe was provided a house in Leipzig and wrote Faust there. Students at the University have included Friedrich Nietzsche, Leibniz, Richard ... read more

Once upon a time, a country with a proud patriotic past and a history of military might found itself in serious economic difficulties largely as a result of a war of its own choosing. It turned to a charismatic right wing politician who promised to lead them back to military strength and to control the economy without raising taxes. Teaching of students in the schools was converted to ideological ends, and books that were felt to be subversive were not only banned but burned. Homosexuals, foreigners, and persons of the wrong religious persuasion were persecuted. When the economy and other matters did not go as promised, the problems were blamed on “enemies” and fear of those enemies was systematically used to keep the populace under control. The country was Germany, the politician was Adolf Hitler, and ... read more

Entering Dubrovnik, you cross the Franjo Tudman Bridge. Locals rarely refer to it by that name, instead calling the new cable-stayed structure the “New Bridge”. Tudman is now a controversial figure. He fought as a partisan in WWII, and when Croatia declared its independence from Yugoslavia he became its first president. There is evidence that he engaged in ethnic cleansing like that of Slobodan Milosevic, but he also engineered what appears to be a very successful conversion of Croatia to a working capitalist state. He has been accused of corruption and nepotism, and his daughter was convicted on corruption charges. I think it is fair to say that his record was mixed but positive in many ways for Croatia. He died in 1999 and thus avoided criminal charges for the ethnic cleansing. Dubrovnik was traditionally said ... read more