Page 74 - Jan Sun Rays

Continued from the previous page Chapel at the Wawel Castle in Krakow, Poland. The priest who would become
Pope John Paul II preached here.
that people sat upon and wiped their per-
spiration with during interrogations can but inexpensive. As an example, the Tra- fourth-floor walk-up apartment from the
still be seen in neatly catalogued bottles. bant, a car with a two-stroke engine and GDR era. She remembered with fondness
These, along with the extensive files that notoriously poor performance, was the the sense of community and caring she
were kept on suspected subversives are only car for sale in the GDR, but the experienced growing up within the GDR
now available for Germans to access. purchase price was actually below the and lamented the changes brought by
Many have been surprised to learn that cost to produce it. reunification. She claimed it had since
neighbors and friends were part of the become harder to raise children, and
network that reported on their activities. Sailing to Wittenberg, the cradle of the everyone had become focused on their
Protestant reformation, we learned own needs in their struggle to get ahead.
On our way to the Elbe River boat that about Martin Luther’s 95 Theses, which
would be our home for the next seven protested the Catholic church’s sale of In Meissen we toured their famed por-
days, we stopped at Potsdam to see Ceci- “indulgences” – purchasable pardons celain maker, which had flourished
lienhof Palace. This was last palace that which allowed sinners to buy their way consistently in the 300 years since an
was built by the Hohenzollern family, to forgiveness. It was also here that we alchemist, desperate to find the secret to
who ruled Prussia and Germany un- had coffee with a single mother in her making gold, stumbled upon the secret
til 1918. It was here in the summer of
1945 that Russia, Britain and the United ONLINE: SCTEXAS.ORG
States met to resolve issues about the
end of World War II, including the new
boundaries of many countries.

We found our ship docked in 1,000-year-
old Tangermunde, a historic town in
northeastern Germany. We were greet-
ed by the Captain, a former Czechoslo-
vakian who had been imprisoned and
beaten in his younger days when he had
tried to leave his country for opportuni-
ties elsewhere. Not until 1990’s “Velvet
Revolution” would Czechs be free to leave
the country.

Tangermunde gave us the first inkling
of the nostalgia many former GDR resi-
dents feel for pre-reunification Germany.
One store there specializes in food, toys
and politically-topical items once avail-
able only in the GDR. Choices were few,

72 | SUNRAYS JANUARY 2016