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Steve Kramer: Two events in June: one wonderful, one fraught

We had long planned a family trip to celebrate my 80th  birthday. Never having taken a cruise, we decided it would be a good way for five of us (me, Michal, Saul, Moshe & Christina) to enjoy a week together. I can’t say enough about how great the Danube River cruise turned out to be. But before the cruise reached its port in Nuremberg, Israel began its long-expected war against its arch-enemy, Iran. What transpired after that is the anxious part of our story.

 

Part I: While I remained in Kfar Saba, Michal went to Budapest, our embarkation port, to meet her sister Linda for five days before the cruise started. Moshe and Christina arrived in Budapest shortly after to explore the city on their own, but of course, met with Michal and Linda several times. I arrived in Budapest the day before the departure and stayed with Michal while Saul came the afternoon of its start, escorted directly from the airport to the ship, the S.S. Beatrice of the Uniworld cruise line.

 

I omitted an embarrassing fact: my flight from Israel to Budapest had a stopover to switch planes in Athens. I had only a carry-on and a small backpack. When I boarded the plane in Athens, I looked for a bin to place my bag, but I didn’t have it! I had left it in the airport waiting area next to my seat. I immediately told the flight attendant of my screw-up. After a phone call, she told me that it was taken care of.

 

When the relatively short flight to Budapest ended, I asked where my bag was. She then told me that it was in the Athens Lost Luggage department! I was shocked that it hadn’t been brought onto the plane, since there was plenty of time before all the passengers were seated. Of course, it was my stupid fault, but let’s blame it on the rigors of 80 years of life. I was left with no extra clothes or toiletries, which I assumed I could readily obtain in Budapest. However, it was a three-day holiday weekend and I couldn’t buy anything until we arrived in Vienna, two days hence. Enough said about that!

 

The first day of the cruise we were guided around Budapest, taking the option of the ‘Jewish Heritage Tour’. (One of the deciding factors in choosing the Uniworld cruise were the several touring options pertinent to Jewish life in Europe.) We saw beautiful neo-Renaissance architecture and various sites and learned about the life of Jews over the centuries in Austro-Hungary. We visited the Great Synagogue, respondent in decor but much underused. There was a smaller synagogue nearby which had been reconfigured to host various events, since worship was not the main activity.

 

The most interesting site in Budapest for me was the House of Terror, which we had visited on our own the day before. In detail, one saw the terrible Nazi, then Soviet, machinery which was used to terrorize the Hungarians. It reminded me somewhat of Yad Vashem, for its super-realistic depiction of the Nazi’s methodical demoralization, devastation, and murder. Also similar to Yad Vashem was the fact that once one entered the museum, there was no exit until the very end – a long period of exposure to the most horrendous brutalism.

 

Our next stop was Vienna. We skipped the Jewish tour; instead, we all had lunch with Michal’s sister Linda and her husband Allan. After that, we walked on our own to the area around the Judenplatz, where we saw the Shoah Monument and the Jewish museum (one of two in Vienna). I took the opportunity to buy the clothes I needed as we walked along the streets of this beautiful city. Michal and I had spent four days there several years ago, so we were familiar with the city center.

 

Soon after boarding, the cruise continued. The scenery along the banks of the Danube got much more interesting as we cruised towards Germany. We stopped in the village of Krems, where we had two very interesting lectures about the local wine industry, including samples. Our next port of call was Passau in Germany, where three rivers meet—the Inn, the Ilz and the Danube—and three nations almost meet: Austria, Germany and the Czech Republic. Krems was picturesque, but having seen one village, seen them all (my take).

 

The next day was much more interesting: Bavaria’s first capital, Regensburg, whose impressive historical lineage and rich architectural heritage of 600 years as a Free Imperial City was recognized and publicized by UNESCO in 2006. This was a very beautiful town, with lots of cafes and interesting shops (not necessarily chain stores). We had a Jewish-oriented tour in which various sites were pointed out, including Oskar Schindler’s house and the story of his wife’s life after Schindler’s death. We were also in a bunker under a main square, where our guide talked about life during WWII.

 

Afterwards, we had a great lunch in a beer garden while we sat under a shady tree. During this cruise, the weather was more like Israel than chilly Europe. We walked back to the ship along the river in plenty of time for drinks and an excellent dinner, which was the standard.

 

While cruising the river we encountered many locks, but this day had the most. We were on the Main-Danube Canal, a commercial waterway in the southern German state of Bavaria. Completed only in 1992, the canal is 106 miles long. It was built to permit traffic to flow between the North Sea and the Black Sea. It creates a 2,200-mile waterway that runs through 15 countries and can accommodate barges carrying up to 2,425 tons of bulk cargo. The canal, one of the largest civil engineering projects ever undertaken, has a total of 16 locks, each about 625 feet long, 40 feet wide, and up to 100 feet deep. It reaches a height of more than 1,332 feet over the Swabian Alps, which are south of Nuremberg.

 

We had reached our destination and had thoroughly enjoyed the cruise. Like most or all of the river cruise ships, there was a large lounge with a bar and many nice seating areas. Especially since all the drinks were included, there were always people around to talk to. Michal and I were the only Israelis on the ship, which made us a minor attraction. We also had gained attention the first few nights of the cruise, when there was a lot of danceable music, which allowed us to do our thing: swing dancing (remember the ‘jitterbug’?). Our kids found plenty of people to talk to, including some of the relatively few people anywhere near their age.

 

After the war began in Israel, there was a lot of talk among the passengers, especially the Jewish ones. We, as Israelis, were often engaged in conversations with certain passengers, Jewish or otherwise, about the situation. We encountered only wall-to-wall support for Israel. Of course, we wondered whether we would be able to fly home as planned. We couldn’t. But that story is in Part II of this article.

 

Part II: Because the war had begun two days before we disembarked from our Danube River cruise, there was already a huge disruption of air travel. We had originally booked a flight back to Israel, which entailed a train from Nuremberg to Munich airport to Ben Gurion Airport, but because of the war, Israel’s airport was closed. So, we took the train to Munich, but changed our destination to Athens, for two reasons. The first is that Athens is cheaper than Germany and much closer to Israel; the second was that I could retrieve my “lost” bag, which I immediately did upon landing.

 

We’ve been to Athens and Greece several times before, so we know there’s good food, wine and it’s a bit similar to Israel. We stayed at an airport hotel the first night, after which we were booked into the Herodian Hotel, a very nice place to stay. It’s close to the Acropolis subway station and its neighborhood, apart from the very crowded tourist streets, is interesting, with lots of small shops and almost no chain stores. (We did see H&M and Zara.) Practically next door to the Herodian is the fabulous Acropolis Museum. We stayed there for five days, which included two extra days, but there were no more vacancies. Rooms were scarce in Athens, so we were lucky to get those two days. We did hope to be on a ‘rescue’ plane imminently, but we needed to find another hotel.

 

Serendipitously, Michal contracted an old friend from the Atlantic City area whose family is from Greece and it turned out that she was also in Athens, for the first time in 12 years! Tula was leaving soon, but she thought her hotel had some vacancies because it was a big commercial hotel with many groups coming and going. She was correct. This new neighborhood, near the Amonia Square, had a beautiful fountain but was quite seedy. It was a quick walk to our hotel, the Titania. The next day we discovered that the neighborhood got much nicer when walking in the other direction. I must mention that there were cafes and bars on all the side streets, mostly featuring seafood. For kosher folks like us, it’s not easy.

 

When we walked in the direction away from Amonia towards the next, smaller square, there were many nicer shops and a fabulous department store called Attica. Since it was very hot, we stopped in and visited the men’s and women’s floors. In the past, I had visited the Bergdorf Goodman men’s shop on 5th Avenue in New York, but the Attica men’s shop surpassed it! Of course, the prices were very high, but it was great for window shopping.

 

We decided to visit one of the larger museums in Athens. But after walking past three very beautiful classical buildings and small shops, we chanced on a private art museum and decided that it would do. The special exhibition showing at the Theocharakis Foundation was a father and son duo. Pericles Byzantios (1893-1972) was the son of an army officer who studied painting in Paris as a young man. In 1934, along with another painter, he founded the first private art painting school in Athens, which operated successfully until the fall of Greece to the Germans. In 1939 he took over as director of the Hydra [island] branch as well as the Delphi branch of the Athens School of Fine Arts.

Pericles’ son, Dico (1924-2007), lived and painted mostly in Paris, where he was a friend of Alberto Giacometti and many others in the art world. His works are included in the collections of the largest European museums. I preferred the painting of the father over the more abstract ones of his son. Michal and I enjoyed this small museum and lingered over coffee in its cafe afterwards. (https://thf.gr/en/)

 

In the last days of our somewhat agitated sojourn in Athens, we visited four other noteworthy sites: the Athens City Museum, the National Historical Museum, the Maria Callas Museum, and the Jewish Museum. As a student of history, I liked all these museums. The Historical Museum we visited was hosting a very extensive temporary exhibition about refugees, namely Greek ones who were displaced by the Turkish invasion of the northern part of Cyprus in the Turkish invasion on July 20 1974. This is a huge deal for the Greek public. The exhibit was very well done and covered a large part of the museum. My interest was mostly in the history of Greece, especially the period leading up to and during WWII.

 

The Athens City Museum and the Maria Callas Museum were also worthwhile. The City Museum mostly featured the furnished rooms that former kings had occupied and memorabilia. I had no idea that Maria Callas was born in the US and raised in New York until the age of 14. Her music was loudly in evidence in two sound-proof rooms, followed by a larger room portraying her life and times. Her story was glamorous to an onlooker, but it was very taxing and ultimately depressing for Maria Callas. On September 16, 1977, she died of a heart attack at the age of 53 in her Paris apartment.

 

The Jewish Museum, while not very large, is very well done. It covers the gamut of Jewish life in Greece for thousands of years. Individual stories were highlighted, making the history quite personal. This one, during the Nazi occupation of Greece, especially intrigued me: “Instead of handing over a list of Jewish residents to the Nazis, Mayor Loukas Karrer and Bishop Chrysostomos secretly hid the town’s Jews in various rural villages and turned in a list that included only their own two names. The entire Jewish population survived the war. The Jewish community of Zakynthos was the only Jewish community under German occupation in Europe to not have been deported or annihilated through local measures.`’ (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rescue_of_the_Jews_of_Zakynthos)

 

After adding a few days to our stay at the Titania, we had to move again. All along, our travel agent had been in touch with El Al, trying her best to get us on a flight. Several times she was able to get Michal a solo flight, but we were intent on flying together.

 

Our next abode was a bed & breakfast, minus the breakfast. It was located in yet another neighborhood, Psiri, something like a cross between Yaffo and the East Village. This was in an extremely touristic neighborhood. In one direction on our tiny street there was a small square, with a score of cafes and bars in and around it. But if one went in the other direction to a standard urban street, it was a souk-like neighborhood. Food wasn’t featured but there were scores of stores selling dry goods, nuts and spices, work clothes, electrical goods, camping supplies and hiking apparel, and much more.

 

On the third day of our stay in Psiri, our agent Heidi found a day-time flight at 5:30 for me; soon after she got Michal on the flight. We left several hours later and arrived at the airport three hours ahead of the flight. At this point, I want to say that I used my “80” identity card (send by the government on my birthday) to get to the front of the ticketing line, after we had been waiting for 90 minutes to get our boarding passes. We glided to the counter, where the clerk gave us free passes to the business class lounge, a nice perk.

 

I can’t describe our stay in Athens without mentioning some salient facts: a large part of the city is very decrepit and in these areas, the graffiti was ubiquitous. Not just that, there were many scrawled messages: F—ck the Jews, Kill Zionists, Jews not welcome here, etc. Some of these were also scrawled on buildings in the better parts of town. Luckily for us, we didn’t personally experience any Jew-hatred.

 

When we got to the lounge, we only had about half an hour before we were signaled to depart for our gate.. Then, the waiting ensued. We sat for about an hour, then for another two hours on the plane itself. We eventually landed in Israel around midnight, hours after our expected time.

 

Never mind, we were home! Michal remarked many times that, as far as we know, people at war fled the country if they could, while Israelis abroad were trying their hardest to return. If I made it sound like we were suffering in Athens, I gave the wrong impression. We made the best of it while still anxious to return home as soon as possible. After we finally made it to Israel, our friends quickly told us that we were very lucky not to have come back earlier, before the ceasefire. They had nights where they stayed in their safe rooms for hours or even all night. (Many of the newer apartments’ safe rooms are used as a bedroom or den.) Everyone we met was sleep-deprived.

 

In all, Michal was away about 3 weeks and I, 4 days less. Most of the time was very enjoyable, enjoyable, or ok. There was anxiety, but nothing like the life-threatening events happening in Israel. Now, we wait to see how much the screws are going to be turned on Iran, or if the world will succeed in forcing us to accept an unacceptable compromise letting Iran off the hook – not to mention Hamas.

 

I’m very happy that it was President Trump calling the shots from the US. With Trump’s backing, Prime Minister Netanyahu and his government are much more likely to be as tough as they need to be against our evil, terrorist enemies in Iran and in Gaza. Now, Iran and all of our adversaries are deterred. How things will work out in the next several months is, of course, unknown. But we are back home and Israel never felt so good. Our summer plans have been disrupted, like everyone’s plans here, but we will no doubt be able to find interesting things to enjoy. In fact, the Jerusalem Film Festive starts next week!