Before Karen and I got married, she had traveled to a number of European countries. Most of my travels centered around the National Parks and National Monuments in the United States. Any overseas travel was business related, like my trip to the Soviet Union.

I also traveled to Sweden and Denmark via a Cornell Cooperative Extension Dairy Tour, hosted by Extension Agents in Columbia and Dutchess Counties in Southeastern New York State.

My first impression of Sweden was that all the women were blond. Second, all the women were gorgeous, and third, all the women had beautifully sculptured bodies. I didn't see much of the countryside because I spent so much of my time looking at those beautiful bodies, including those that were nude on the beach.

After Karen and I were married, our first trip together was in the United States but far from the mainland. We visited four of the Hawaiian Islands with another couple who were mutual friends of ours. We flew from island to island, rented a car on each island, and saw more in ten days than most people would see on a typical bus tour in a month.

But the real adventures came when we went out of our country. I could write a book about all those experiences.

We had both been to England, Scotland and Wales before, but we wanted something different than a typical bus tour. Karen wanted to do the ABCs: another bloody church, another bloody castle, and another bloody cathedral.

We began by looking through my many National Geographic magazines and their accompanying maps of the three countries. One of the fascinating things my father told me, when he was sober, was that someone had traced our ancestry to a count in King Arthur's Court. My first reaction was, I don't believe there really was a King Arthur. It's just a fable. We did find a description of the ruins of King Arthur's Castle in one of the magazines. That convinced me. We were going!

While we were in Austria, I wanted to show Karen Schoenbrunn Palace in Vienna. I had been there twice. It is one of the many Imperial palaces in Vienna. This Baroque style Palace is set around beautiful gardens. Only 45 of the 1,441 rooms were open to the public and only for guided tours. The lavish Rocco interior of the Palace was designed by Empress Maria Theresia. The palace has many state rooms. Some of the most impressive were the living quarters of Emperor Francis Joseph; the Hall of Mirrors where six-year-old Mozart gave his first concert, and the Viewx Room where Napolean met with his generals. Many of the walls and ceilings in the different rooms are gilded with gold leaf. Floors are inlaid with many different kinds of wood in spectacular designs. A fresco on one of the walls was unique. It showed a soldier on a battlefield. When you walked towards the painting and then past it, his eyes followed you! Really!

The funny thing about going to the palace was that we couldn't find it initially. We went all around the city three times before we found it. We went by it twice. How can you miss a palace with that many rooms?

Among my many travel experiences in Europe that left me with a lasting impression--the ones that would make anyone cry--are the Berlin Wall in Germany and Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.

The 96-Mile-Long Berlin Wall That Divided the City for 28 Years

Auschwitz Concentration Camp, One of the Estimated 5,000 Nazi Camps Established in the Occupied Countries During World War II