22. Part 2 of My Jewish Heritage River Cruise Adventure

Hello, my friends, and welcome to episode 22. Part 2 of river cruising is the perfect bougie choice for extra AF vacations. And today's episode is all about what we did prior to our river cruise and then immediately following our river cruise. So we did an extension both before and after. 

But before I get to part 2, I hope everyone has listened to episode number 19. Teen. We will put the link in the show notes for sure, where I spilled some serious tea on an upcoming virgin voyage, cruise of the Greek Isles coming up in June 2024. It's a group I'm putting together, and this isn't just any cruise to the Greek Isles.

It's not just any Virgin Voyage trip cruise. It is a quote, definite bucket list, once in a lifetime opportunity. And I am bringing it up because I am about to talk about some travel bucket list items when I talk about the post and the pre of things that we did as part of the Jewish heritage river cruise. And when I say this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, it really is. Because 3 of Carrie's friends, and by Carrie, I mean, the Carrie, Bradshaw friends will be sailing with us to meet all of us in this group. It's limited to only a 100 people in person. So we have some real superstars. Cindy Shupak, who was a writer on the original Sex and the City.

She was a creative content producer. She wrote my absolute favorite episode called One is the loneliest number. I think that's the title. Anyway and she wrote the one about Carrie's book party, where, you know, Berger makes an appearance. It's just a great episode. Love, Cindy. And back in the day, she helped me write my J Date profile. So if you wanna learn some hot goss about me, you should definitely come.

We have Molly Rogers, who is responsible for all the amazing looks on the reboot. And just like that. I mean, did you not love that winter coat that Carrie wore in the snowstorm. And what about Miranda's coat of many colors that she wore at the UN? The woman who was responsible for all that, that would be miss Molly. And when I talked to her about the cruise, she actually told me which of the 4 women she is most like. So if you wanna get that answer, you have to come and hear our 3rd celebrity, Richard Lawson, who is the Vanity Fair television critic. He has interviewed both of these people beforehand, and he hosts still watching, which is the Vanity Fair podcast that has done a debrief of every single episode of And Just Like That, and they picked their all time favorite Sex and the City episodes of which one of those was written by Cindy. So it's all coming full circle.

And if you're into hashtag travel bucket list things, then this cruise is for you and check the show notes out for how you can book. There's a direct link, you can book it right there. Now, if you're into hashtag travel bucket list discussions, this episode is definitely for you. Now many people have what I call the Disney bingo card of a quote, Disney bucket list items. 1 that is on my wish list and you heard about on episode 13 is getting to visit club 33. And just in case you're wondering between episode 13 and now, no, I have not gotten to go to club 33. So this is a shout out for my 6 degrees of separation, and me, buddy, who can get me an invite to club 33. I will owe you my firstborn child, and he's available. So there you have it. 

But as part of this Jewish heritage river cruise full vacation this past August. I did check off on an item that had nothing to do with Disney, and that I actually think was my very first ever travel bucket list item. I mean, like, since I was a kid, I have wanted to do this. And that was I took a Sound of Music tour in Strasbourg. So more on that in just a minute, but first, prior to our river cruise, my mom and our friend who is traveling with us, and mister Michelle visits, Miki even came for this, we went to Prague. Now one of the reasons we wanted to visit Prague is, well, everybody says you have to go to Prague. It's beautiful. You have to go.

There's a lot of Jewish history there, and I have a cousin that lives there. So for me, I always really wanted to go to visit with my cousin. And not that this is the world's best testimonial, but Hitler loved Prague. He did not want any bombs to go off in Prague. He didn't want his troops to destroy it because it was gonna be the capital of his ultimate empire. It was going to replace Paris in his heart. It was more beautiful than Paris.

Many, many people do think that Prague is more beautiful than Paris. I say this very guiltily because my dearest cousin lives there, but Budapest for me still has my heart. Prague, however, was a great few days. I wanna say that being with a local, like, we definitely saw Prague like no one else. We pod, some incredible food. We had maybe the best Middle Eastern food I've ever had. The shawarma, the pomace was it was just homemade from a Lebanese family who has settled in Prague. And how in the world would anyone know to go there except from a local? It was in a neighborhood. It wasn't in the tourist part of the town.

So as a travel advisor, that is something that I always do for myself and my family when we travel, but also for my clients is to find out what the locals know, where do they go. And so we definitely had some of the best meals of the trip in Prague. That that Middle Eastern food. It's definitely the best Middle Eastern food I've ever had in my life. It was amazing, and that includes my trip to Israel. So we did do a Jewish history in Prague. And another thing that I do as a travel advisor, definitely for me when I'm traveling for my family, because when I'm not traveling for work and I am traveling for me, I tend to splurge a little bit more than when I'm traveling just for work.

But I always encourage my clients to do this 2 is that get quote, unquote, off the boat excursions, go beyond what the major tour companies recommend for you. While we were there, the river cruise company that I never ever recommend Viking pad either there pre or post excursion, because Prague, you don't get there by boat, actually. You get there by land. And so many river cruise ships offer as an extension. And I mean, they had 25 people, 30 people in all their tour groups. They were so spread out, like, by the end of them walking by their Viking tour groups, you could always tell who they were because of the red paddles in the red whisper ears. People were in their phones. They weren't paying attention because you couldn't get close to the speaker and you couldn't necessarily see what the speaker was referring to.

And we had a private guide. And I always, always, always get private guides. And I do this when ocean cruising too. Always go beyond what the cruise ship offers and find my own guide and do wonderful things that others wouldn't necessarily. So we were so fortunate. It was just the 3 of us and our guide, and we got to see so much of the Jewish history of Prague. And one of the things that I remember aside from the oldest synagogue, it's over 700 years old, and it is still in use today. It is actively used, very orthodox, very stone, very cold looking building, but yet still in use.

They do have a Mejitsu, which means the women and men don't pray together, and the women, like, they could barely see. It was like a little window. And I will post pictures of this. I actually already have a tab my stories that says river cruise, and pictures from the whole trip are posted in there. So you can see that the women, it looks like they're in prison, and they have this one little window sill to look out on. So most of them don't even join in services. They stay in the concourse area, but there was also a reform congregation that is still active. It's called the Spanish congregation for the Spanish synagogue, and that was in Prague, so I was very excited to actually see a reform congregation there.

And many, many people, not all Jewish, lots of non Jewish people take this tour because it's a lot of history. It's not just Jewish history. The it's the history of Prague in many ways. But one of the newer things that they are doing in all of Eastern Europe now is they are installing what are called stumbling blocks. And these are memorials of people who died in the Holocaust, and they are little paving stones that are right in front of the residences where these people lived. And so as Prague and many of the like Munich, for example, is another city that is doing this. Vienna and Strasbourg had them as well. When they are finding people through historical records that used to live in these residences who were arrested or killed in the Holocaust.

They are installing what are called paving stones, and they're very small. You have to know to look for them. And the philosophy behind that is that the memorials don't have to be big and where all the tourists plot too. They can be small and simple, and just knowing that that life is remembered. And since they're different than the regular stones, you might stumble over them, thereby stumbling over a memorial. A and again in Munich, it's a big deal because Munich is sort of ground 0 for the Nazi party, and they really want you to stumble into remembering what happened in Munich, the start of it all. So that is a little bit of what we did in Prague. And how can I forget we went to Prague Castle, and I learned that when the Habsburg Empire uses the word castle? It's not just the castle where they lived.

It's also the big church that had to be attached to it any of the extra buildings where the court would have lived. Those are all quote unquote part of the castle. So when you go to see a castle, you're probably going to see 3 to 4 buildings, and it's a big deal. They're big and overwhelming. And so we did go to see Prague Castle. And actually, we saw the church part of the Prague Castle, not the actual castle where the the royals lived. And one thing that I learned is that the Habsburg Empire, which I always thought was where Albert of the famous Victoria and Albert came from the Habsburgs. It actually totally different empire.

So Vienna and Germany, and what is now Czechoslovak or Czuchki, it's called Czuchki, and Slovenia and Hungary were part of the Habsburgs that descended from a woman, a woman empress by the name of Maria Theresa. One of her children became the famous woman who said, let them eat cake. Her child was Marie Antoinette, who was beheaded in the French revolution. So just a ton of history, and I'm now reading a book all about this Habsburg Empire, because I thought they were part of the British Royal Empire. And I just love stories of royal history and British or royal lines and descendants. So a whole new wing of royals to learn about. So that was fascinating to me. And then the one very, very touristy thing we did, and imagine this, I couldn't get my local cousin to go with us.

We went to the Prague Folklore Festival, and there was actually a full group of, I think, 10 of us, maybe 11, because I met up with a fellow travel advisor, shout out to Sandy, who helped build the group for the river cruise with me. And so we have lots of people where it was all you can drink beer, traditional German beer, even though we were in Czechie or the Czechoslovakia Republic. Czech Republic former Czechoslovakia, which I understand they don't like that term, so sorry about that. It had traditional cultural music, dancing, singing, local artisans, all you can drink. It was very, very touristy, but it was plenty of fun. And you should definitely check out my Instagram, which is at michelle with 1 l, visits Mickey. Link is in the show notes because mister Michelle visits Mickey, always gets picked to dance on stage for these things. And it was quite funny.

They did a broomstick dance, which is kind of a a version of, like, musical chairs, and the man who gets a broomstick has to dance with a broomstick instead of a woman, you know, gets embarrassed. And, of course, that happened to mister Michelle. This is Mickey. So everyone should definitely check out those Instagram pictures. So then we sailed for 7 days out of Budapest, and then we ended up in Vilshaven, which is, very close to Munich in Germany, and we had a private driver take us sort of backtrack a little bit back into Austria, where we went to Strasbourg, and I got to do my ultimate ultimate travel bucket list experience, which was my Sound of Music tour. A now mind you, I have known lots and lots of people who had done this trip. Every time I hear about it, I'm like, oh my god, I have to do this. I have to do this, I finally got to do it.

And many, many people told me that I was going to be very disappointed. Some people told me I should skip it altogether, and that it's not worth it because you don't really see anything, and you stay on the bus and you kind of get to wade at sites, but they don't necessarily stop at every site, and it's quick and crowded. And I just have to say that I invested heavily, and I got us a private guide, and none of those things were true. It over met my expectations. We were in a gorgeous private luxury car. It was 3 of us and our guides, so 4 total. Our guide dressed up in the traditional Austrian getup. He looked like Friedrich from one of the kids from the song of music.

We saw the house where the exterior scenes were filmed. We saw the house where the interior scenes were filmed. We saw the actual house where the Von Trapps lived, which you can stay in now. It's like a private luxury bed and breakfast. The house where the outside scenes are filmed, you can actually rent it for your wedding. So of course, I'm like, okay, now staying there is on my travel bucket list. We went and saw where Maria twirls in the opening scene.

We got to see those beautiful hills, which learned are part of the German Alps. We saw the real Abbey, which you can actually go into and visit. If the door is open, you can go in, you can see the courtyard where, how do you solve a problem like Maria was. And then we saw the beautiful, beautiful gardens where a lot of the Doreen Nissan is. And the stairs where the kids end up jumping up and down, and Maria and on the stairs at the very end of the song, kind of the pinnacle of everything. They were so small. I mean, on screen, I used to think they were running up and down, like, 20 stairs, and how could they sing and they would be out of rock was so small. And I ran up them all, and then I touched my feet on the gold star where Maria literally or Julie Andrews in this case, stood and it was magical.

And all the time, our guide is giving us the actual history of the real von Trapps, the movie making history. We saw the hotels where everyone stayed. And one of the highlights was the pavilion where you are 16 going on 17 is filmed. And Charmaine Carr, the actress who played Liesel, actually has passed away. She died of a cancer many years ago. She was very young when she passed, and there is a plaque in her memory. You can't go in the actual pavilion and sit on the benches because of the glass. The glass was breaking, so they locked it all up, but you can literally stand right outside, like, where they were before they ran in when it started to rain, pen. You can get your picture taken as if you're going in the door. Yes. I did that. It was all just a very special day. It was amazing, and we did it all in 4 hours. 

The only thing that we didn't do is drive out. It's an hour and a half outside the city, which is where the children and Maria sit in the grass and where the Do Re Mi song actually begins. So we didn't do that. And if you take the big group tour. You do do that, but you don't get to necessarily see the pavilion like I did, and that is why people say it's crowded. Because the bus goes in the back way, you go out, you see the pavilion, you take a picture, and everyone on your bus is there at the same time, and then they all go, and then you get back on the bus. Whereas my guide and I and my friends and my mom that we're traveling with, we walked to the gazebo, saw all the beautiful gardens that are now open to the public, and actually the local people visit there quite often. It's beautiful. They're like public pools and gardens there. Anyway, that was my magical, magical day.

Now the next day, we were in Munich and another travel bucket list experience that I had mostly because I felt like as a young Jewish woman, this was something that I needed to see for myself was going to the concentration camp. And we purposely scheduled it on the last day of travel so that well, for me, it wouldn't run my Sound of Music trip. So it was our very last day, and we did go to Dachau in the morning. It was very sobering. It was so quiet, but you could feel the ghosts who were there. You could almost hear their moans, and the memorial that is there just sent chills up and down my spine. And our guide was really a history buff. 

I would say that most of the people on our tour were not Jewish.And I think they all felt the same that I did that you could hear the ghosts. And you walk around a place where there were assassinations. And the place where there are barracks are all now gardens, and there are religious memorials from Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish. So there's all religions there. I will say there's also a crematorium even though Dachau was not known for it's crematorium. It's gas chambers, but they did have them. I couldn't bring myself to walk through those. I chose not to.

My mother did, and her reaction when she came out was, I understand why getting cremated is not something that Jewish people do usually, even though that is what I wanna do someday, but that's a whole another story for not this podcast at all. And I just couldn't do it. I couldn't bring myself to do that. I really felt like I had done everything I could possibly do by even going to this place at all. And so I am choosing in my life not to journey to any of the Polish concentration camps, which were real moratoriums and gas chambers. 

Dachau was actually the very 1st concentration camp. It is close to Munich. It's literally a 10 minute train ride outside the city. It's called Dachau because of the street where you get off the train, and then you take a bus to the camp. And it was really for political prisoners when the Nazis first took over the party. So the original barracks were not what they became later once they began trying to exterminate the Jews, and they use the word exterminate very purposefully. 

In the afternoon, we did a historical tour of Munich. It is a very, very long walking tour. Again, we did it with a private guide, a small group tour. So there were 12 of us, and it was the same tour company which had taken us to Dachau in the morning, so it was a very long day. And this was around basically what they refer to as ground 0 for the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party. We saw the place where he lived. We saw the place where he began to speak in the beer halls. We saw the place where soldiers were assassinated who were trying to have their first March, so to speak, and the police were there, and so many people were assassinated. We learned that now in Munich. Well, in Germany, it is actually illegal to do the high Hitler sign or display the Nazi flag. 

And, actually, we also learned during the filming of The Sound of Music in Strasbourg, it was only 20 years post to World War 2. And the day they were filming the on Schloss is what it's called, the day that the Nazis rode into Strasbourg, they were filming that, and it's a very vivid scene in my memory in the movie. There were Nazi flags hung all over the city of Strasbourg, and the city of Strasbourg was panicked. hey didn't understand what was happening. And only 20 years post World War 2, the local population got very up in arms, and they were so mad that the movie got its permit revoked to film the wedding scene in the big chapel in Strasbourg. So they actually had to go outside the city, and the church where they ended up filming the wedding scene is very ornate, but it is not in Strasbourg. 

So in Munich, it is illegal to do those things because it is in fact to ground zero, and we saw many, many things. And the tour guide there who has a PhD in history, and he gives this tour in Munich told us that it was the 1st and only time in history where the goal was complete eradication and extermination of a group of people, in this case, the Jews. And that was something I don't think I ever understood before. I grew up in religious school learning that 6,000,000 Jews were killed, and that number is so big. You just can't wrap your mind around it.

I've seen what 6,000,000 paper clips looks like. You can't wrap your mind around it. I can hear that 6,000,000 people gets you to the moon and back, like, 6 times or something. It's crazy, how large that number is, and how hard it is to just, again, wrap your brain around how many Jews were exterminated. And again, I use the word exterminate very purposefully. 

So to wrap it up, I keep asking myself if I would do this trip again. Would I go through that very long day in Germany again, or would I want to see some of the Polish places where my ancestors were and where some of my family died in the Holocaust. And the answer is no.

I have done everything that I want to to learn about World War 2, except go to the Anne Frank House. So I don't plan to visit Germany again. I've been there, done that 3 times now. And I feel like I've seen everything I want to see in Germany. I can't wait to revisit Vienna and Strasbourg. I really loved Austria, and I look forward to seeing it again. And I cannot wait to go to Amsterdam or Belgium. Little less for the World War 2 and more for the flowers and the storybook and to see where the city Belgium and Bruges, which is very storybook like and sort of reminds me of Snow White and the 7 dwarfs even though at Epcot she's in Germany. I'm gonna take her to be Belgian. And Belgium is also where French fries originated from. So, yeah, another reason to go there. 

Next week, we have an incredibly special episode all about Disney VIP tours that you are going to love. So I'm teasing it now. Those of you who know less will be very excited to listen to next week's episode. And even if you don't know less, you will love next week's episode about Disney VIP tours.

Thank you so much for indulging me in my 2 episode river cruise adventures, and kinda like therapy processing through some of those trip. I appreciate that. Thank you so much. And until then, I will see you real soon.