One of our guides describes the shape of Croatia as that of a bird flying. Check out the purple image on the map, and you’ll see her description is accurate, with one “wing” of Croatia lying along the Adriatic Sea and the other slanting inland to follow the Danube River. As I mentioned in my…
I have loved horses since I was very young, and one of the “characters” in my novel-in-progress, BONE FIRE, is a horse. Horses from 5000 B.C. (the timeline of the novel) were quite different from horses today. They were smaller, with large heads, and the insides of their legs were striped, like zebra legs. One…
When I began the research for BONE FIRE, it didn’t take me long to decide that I needed to visit the area where most of the novel takes place — the lower Danube River. After a few months of consideration, my husband Neil and I decided that a Viking River Cruise was exactly what we…
Since about 2001, I’ve been studying a re-constructed language that is considered the mother tongue of most European languages. Linguists tell us that more than 400 languages have their roots in that ancient Indo-European tongue. You might enjoy seeing a map that puts that all into perspective: The dark green areas are countries in which…
Neil and I learned that the magnificent city of Budapest, often called the “Queen of the Danube,” was at one time two cities, separated by the Danube River. Buda lies on the west hilly side of the river, and Pest is on the east, which is the flatter side of the river. In 1873 the…
Neil and I arrive in Budapest, Hungary, at about 1 p.m. We take a taxi from the airport to our hotel, the Budapest Marriott, which is located right on the Danube River! The lobby welcomes us with dark elegant paneling, flowers, and chandeliers. The Lobby of the Budapest Marriott We have a great room with…
The first day of our trip, Neil and I leave home at noon, and on our way to the airport we stop at our local Main Street Cafe to have lunch. An easy beginning! Then we drive a short 12 miles to our local airport, Chippewa International and board the flight to Detroit Metro Airport:…
When I was in sixth grade, our teacher Mrs. Hannah Graham decided that each member of our class of 40+ students should write a term paper. She taught us how to use note cards and how to write a bibliography and footnotes. The assignment, which at the time seemed overwhelming, included a forty-four-mile round trip…
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