3205 Brandon Hunt Lane
Baldwin, MD 21013
December 18, 2016
I
Dr. Armin Mruck
112 W. Chestnut Hill Lane
Reisterstown, MD. 21136
Dear Dr. Mruck,
My name is Tony Celmer and I am a 1985 participant in your class "Encounters with European Cities". I
would like to thank you and your wife Marlene for leading me and the other participants on what is one
of the most important events in our lives. It is hard to believe that 32 years ago, I was preparing for this
great adventure. The Trip has had a profound effect on my life, and I still think of it often. I know that
we are better people for having participated in this tour.
I will never forget our first night in Frankfurt on Friday January 4th, we walked from the Hotel Monopol
to the Romer and got some HeiB Apfelwein and bread that reminded me of the pretzels that the Amish
make. I remembering trying to figure out how many pfenning to pay and trying to calculate how much
this cost in dollars. As travelers, we were very lucky because the dollar was very strong against the
European currencies in January, 1985. The next day we went to Gothehaus and took a walking tour of
Frankfurt. That evening we went out to dinner and we met Sabine Seyfried a friend of your family, who
accompanied us on the trip. For the next four or five years, I would write to Sabine, and after I started
taking German at Towson, I would write in German. It is ironic, that I lost touch with her when she came
to study in America.
On the train ride to Paris we traversed an area that had seen many wars, and yet the bare hillsides were
covered in snow, and the trees sparkled with the frost. The small towns that we passed through looked
as if they had not changed in many years. It was very peaceful. Paris had many memories for us. You
taught us how to buy tickets for the Paris Metro, and from that point on, we seemed to be only a short
walk from anywhere we wished to visit. That evening, we attended Mass at Notre Dame, and ate
Belgian waffles from a street vendor. I remember that you were fighting a cold during our stay in Paris,
but Marlene was able to show us around the museums in Paris. We visited the Cathedral at Chartres,
and Versailles, the Arch De Triomphe, Notre Dame, the Sacre Coeur, and Eiffel Tower. We also ate
dinner at the Taverne Du Sergent Recruteur, and went to Le Procope on another night.
Traveling by train using our Eurail passes was very enjoyable. It was nice to relax in our seats and see
the countryside as it passed by our windows. I even found that it is easy to sleep on the train during the
overnight trip from Paris to Rome. Rome, and Florence were amazing places. When we got off the train
in Rome, people were clearing the sidewalks of snow. It was the first time it had snowed in Rome in
many years. On our long train ride from Rome to Innsbruck we had another amazing sight. The train
entered a long tunnel through the Apennine Mountains from Florence to Bologna. On the Florence side
of the tunnel, it was raining, and when the train emerged from the tunnel on the Bologna side it was
snowing. The snow was very deep, and stuck to the trees making everything very bright.
