fulfilling our blog title

today we actually cruised down the rhine river, from bonn to a small town called linz. it was a lovely and relaxing trip, during which we saw all kinds of german architecture and lush green trees. we spotted a few swans and some ruins. we saw the remnants of the bridge american soldiers used to cross over the rhine for the first time in world war two. by the return trip the air had cooled considerably and it sprinkled intermittently all day, so the castles and churches were bathed in fog, which was very romantic looking. :)

randy pointed out that mozart traveled from vienna to linz once and wrote an entire symphony (the linz symphony, no. 36) during the three-day journey, to be played when he arrived.

this morning there were public celebrations of today's holiday, and we could hear singing and beautiful churchbells from our hotel room. i imagined the congregants were not the same people who were out reveling in germany's victory until the wee hours of the morning. during the day today we saw altars with flowers and candles set up in several public squares, both in bonn and linz, so it seemed the services must have been nice.

we finally bought a travel alarm clock yesterday because we seem to have a hard time getting up too early, and when we returned to our room to set the alarm, we discovered that the time on the clock is set according to radio signals from frankfurt. so we can use it within 1,500 km of frankfurt, but then we're out of luck. who would have thought you could even find such a clock? i guess we will leave it as a present for someone in nuremburg as we head home.