On To Wesel Germany

  We sailed from Nijmegen at 3:45 in the morning and are now on our way to Wesel, Germany and are scheduled to arrive around 1 pm this afternoon. There is a casino in Nijmegen, and I don't know if any passengers went in to the casino last night in an attempt to recoup the cost of the cruise. We enjoyed our time in Nijmegen. For those of you of the Catholic faith, a friend replied to my post reminding me that Nijmegen is the birthplace of the Dutch Catechism in 1966. For me it was but a dim memory, but as I recall it was quite controversial and was not universally acclaimed by the Catholic Church hierarchy and powers that be. By the time the Dutch Catechism was published, my 5 1/2 year seminary career had come to an end and I do not recall hearing about it in any of the required theology courses I took at USF post seminary days.

  Our walking tour of Nijmegen was another delight. Our guide Tosca was delightful and her narrative was properly dramatic and added enjoyment to our walk. The city of Nijmegen is right on the Waal River in the Netherlands, aka Rhine River in Germany. The old city center is filled with charm and is a combination of new and old. Much of the old town was destroyed in WW II due to a friendly fire incident. American planes that had not been able to complete their bombing mission in Germany were headed back to their airfield with full loads of bombs. Landing a bomber filled with bombs is decidedly not a great idea, so they decided to drop their bombs on the German train depot in Nijmegen and unfortunately many of the bombs fell on the city center rather than the train depot. Many civilians were killed because they did not seek shelter in bomb shelters since the planes were headed home and the assumption was they were not carrying any bombs so why seek shelter. Tragic. When our tour was over, we retraced our route and thought perhaps we would eat in town rather than on the boat. We checked menus and found that nothing that said "you must try me" jumped off the pages of the menus on display. Of course, the menus were in Dutch and so we were not quite sure what the offerings were and may have missed out on a chance to have a gourmet Dutch meal. We did see the words "burger", "fries", and "lasagna", but other than that, it was all Dutch to us, so we returned to the boat and had dinner onboard. On our way back to the boat, we passed through Nijmegen's mini red light district. There was one window in which the young woman was sitting and looking at her phone. Probably a slow day. After dinner we went to the lounge and enjoyed the evening's entertainment, two men, one a base fiddle and the other on a guitar, and they sang a combination of rock, folk, and Dutch songs and were quite enjoyable. Tonight is Disco Night. The 70s live here among a bunch of youngish and definitely oldish farts.

  Happy Halloween everyone.














Comments

  1. Jackie BradleyOctober 31, 2025 at 6:57 AM

    So sad about the bombing🥲. Thanks for sharing…the pictures were great!

    ReplyDelete

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