IDEAS      Homes for Vacation & Long-Term Rentals

Made With

FOR FAMILY PICTURES - CLICK THE BUTTON ABOVEScroll Down to Maps & Click on the Map of the Country to Read the  Diarios

Below are the

Flags of the Countries & Cities We Have Visited so far

How Many Can You Recognize?  

Germany Added as I Get To It      Scandinavia Diarios Will Be Updated Later    Iberia Complete But Photos Added to Site Gradually Working on Germany and West EU Now.

WEST EU 2009 In Progress	GERMANY 2007 Up To Dresden	FRANCE 2005  Up To Lyon	Scandinavia 2003  UpTo Moscow	IBERIA  2001   Fix Photos	ITALY 2000  TO DO	UK/Ireland 1999 TextOnly	ITALY  1997   TO DO

HOLLAND 1974	Honeymoon: Hungary & Yugoslavia 1970 Pages Setup: Slides Done

Belgium        Holland        Luxembourg      Liechtenstein         Corfu                      Switzerland      Islands of Corsica    and  Sardinia       Italy Makeup

EU Makeup Trip #1 West EU 2009 Visited the smaller countries, islands and cities we did not explore  in our previous trips; everything west of Munich.     2009

Germany

Oberaumergau Trip 2010 Visit the once-every-decade Passion Play in Oberaumergau, Germany.  In EU for 5 weeks.   Next Year 2010

Austria            Hungary        Czech Republic        Slovakia             Slovenia          Warsaw/Krackow        Romania            Estonia              Lithuania                Latvia

EU Makeup Trip #2 East EU 2011 Will Visit the smaller countries, and cities we did not explore  in our previous trips; everything east of Munich.   In 2011 After that we need to think of   Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey

We have thoroughly toured all the areas colored in tan.

The trip Diarios are written by Kenneth J. Hoffer, MD

("diary" in Italian is "Diario")

    These are my writings and photos during 3 month trips taken by my wife, Marcia, and I every other year starting in 1997.

        The goal was to spend 3 months in primarily one country on each trip to learn as much as we could about the people, culture, history, language, food, art and heritage of that country.

        On our first trip in 1997, instead of sending postcards, I decided it would be quicker to write a diary of where we had been and what we had seen and experienced and send it by email.  Being in Italy, I called them "diarios."  Since I was also reading about the history and culture of the people, I flavored it with some of that.  Then I started adding pictures.

        I originally started writing them for our kids (Kristin, Jeffrey, and Kevin) but more specifically for Marcia's mother (Eleanor Wasgatt) in Rockland, Maine (who had never been to Europe) and my Aunt Elsie Holmes in Orange County, CA.

Unfortunately, we lost both of them in 2004.

   Eleanor Wasgatt          Elsie Holmes       

 Aspen, CO 1983

KEVIN (left)

JEFFREY (middle)

KRISTIN (right)

Vince Daukis

WHY A WEBSITE?

        Soon relatives, friends and colleagues asked me to include them in the email list which kept growing.  A problem arose in 2001 when AOL began considering me a spammer because of the number and frequency of the emails I was sending.  AOL shut me down 3 separate times requiring calls to the US to turn it back on.  The 4th time, they closed my AOL account.  Exasperated after the 2001 trip, Vince Daukis (photo right) was kind enough to agree to disperse the emails through his IBM account allowing me to only have to send the one email to him through AOL.

        After doing this for the whole 2003 trip and the France 2005 trip, Vince persuaded me and helped me set up this website and taught me how to edit and work on it.  He did a fairly good job, I think.  Now this website has become my hobby.

PREVIOUS TRIPS

TRIP #1

Marcia Hoffer

        Our 1997 trip wasn't really our first to Europe; but our third.  After we were married in Rockland, Maine on May 30, 1970, our honeymoon was a flight to Frankfurt, Germany and then to Ljubljana (Slovenia) and ending in Belgrade (Serbia,) Yugoslavia.  At that time Yugoslavia was a combined Communist country ruled by Broz Tito.  We rented a Japanese car and drove to Budapest, Hungary [my paternal grandparents were both born there] and while toasting with glasses of Tokay wine on the banks of the Danube, we promised each other that if our marriage lasted 25 years we would return here for our wedding anniversary.  Over the ensuing two week trip, we drove to Lake Balaton (Hungary), Zagreb, Split, Zadar and Dubrovnik (Croatia), to Sarajevo and Mostar (Bosnia-Herzegovina) and back to Belgrade.  Both countries were communist but Hungary was much more severe, since Tito made Yugoslavia less restrictive.  Hungary was ruled by dictator Janos Kadar.  Needless to say we didn't get back for our 25th anniversary but in the middle of our 1997 Italy trip we drove to Budapest and did celebrate our 27th anniversary there.  When we checked into our hotel on May 30th, they did not have anything but twin beds.  When I told them our story, the Marriot staff put us into the Presidential Suite (for one night only) and sent us up a bottle of champagne.  It was quite an experience.  Now that we are in our 39th year, we need to plan to return for our 50th anniversary.

TRIP #2 Ken

        In November of 1974, I had been asked to give my first public lecture on IOL power calculation.  To gain credibility regarding my subject, I felt I needed to visit the ophthalmologists in Europe who originated these techniques.  Marcia was 8 months pregnant with our 2nd son, Jeffrey and she was not allowed to fly, so an optician named Walter Fadden wanted to accompany me since he had never been outside the US.  We flew from LAX to Amsterdam, Holland and spent 2 days there.  We rented a car and drove to Gröningen to visit Dr. Jan Worst and then to Terneuzen to visit Dr. Cornelius Binkhorst.  We later took a side trip to Münster, Germany to see Prof. Dr. Herman Gernet.  We then decided to drive to the Brussels airport and fly to Zurich, Switzerland and then on to Rome with a stopover in Milano.  The flight over the Alps was grueling and on arrival I had a horrible earache and was treated by a hotel doctor.  We toured some of the sites and visited the Vatican.  Our greatest experience was the fettuccini Alfredo at Alfredo's Originale.  We flew back to Brussels and drove back to Amsterdam for our return flight home.  When I returned, I decided to give up flying for a while and later discovered my love of taking Amtrak trains for all my long distance trips in the US.  Not flying gave me a good excuse not to have to accede to every request made to me to lecture around the country and around the world.  I was home watching my kids grow up for the next 25 years.   I have never regretted that decision.

TRIP #2 Marcia

        In the summer of 1995, Kristin (our youngest) wanted to do a month at Oxford University in England between her junior and senior year in high school.  When she was finished, Marcia wanted to go and pick her up and bring her home.  After she was finished with Oxford, they traveled to Scotland and visited Edinborough and the Isle of Skye and then returned to England and visited Bath and London before returning home.  Two years later we go on our Italy trip and then Marcia's choice for our next trip was to the British Isles.

TRIP #3 Marcia

        Marcia and Kristin went to Egypt in November 2008.

THE RECURRING PLAYERS:

    Dimitrii & Tania in San Francisco 1997

Throughout the diarios, you will hear mention of my Russian eye surgeon friend living in Italy, Dimitrii Dementiev and his darling wife, Tatiana.  They did so much to make our trip in Italy special and have been extremely wonderful on all our subsequent trips.  In 2001, I became their daughter Anastasia's godfather (Padrino).  We have stayed at there house in Arese on every one of our EU trips.  Dimitrii met us in Moscow in 2003 to show us his native city for 3 days.  They were at Kevin and Gisele's wedding in Rome during our Germany trip in 2007.

Brian & Krisha with us in Stockholm 2003 

 Brian Thornhill & Krisha Ford are the friends we met in England at the beginning of our 1999 UK trip.  He graciously invited us to stay for a week at his home in Thurgaton near Nottingham.  In 2001, while traveling in Iberia we stayed at his other home in Orba, Spain where he shuttled us to and from the ferry for our excursion to the Balearic islands of Ibiza  and Majorca .  In 2003, they flew to meet us in Stockholm (photo above) for several days (they had never been there).  They are great friends and fun to be with.  In 2005 on our trip to France, Brian met us in St-Malo for 3 great days in Normandy with his new friend Alex White. They visited us in Santa Monica and we took them to see the Sequoias.  They were at Kevin and Gisele's wedding in Rome during our Germany trip in 2007.

  We met Irene Calatayud on her birthday in Barcelona Spain on August 8, 2001.                     Marcia & Irene with us in Cordoba, 2001

     She, along with her friend Manuel Cortiñas, guided most of our trip through Iberia, suggesting the best places to visit and booking some of our hotels.  Our trip would not have been the same without them.  During our trip, she flew to meet us in Bilbao and again, a month later in Cordoba (we were there 3 days after 9/11).  In 2003, she flew to Moscow to be there with us for 3 days (she had never been there) and flew to Copenhagen for a few days.  In 2005, during our trip to France, we drove from San Sebastian, Spain to her home in Manzanares near Madrid and had a wonderful visit with her for 3 days.  She has visited us in Santa Monica and Carmel.  She was also at Kevin's wedding in 2007 with her new friend Carlos Palomino, MD, an eye surgeon from Madrid.  She is an elegant, gracious lady and we our proud to be her friend.  We owe her so much.

    Above left, Irene & I in Lake Arrowhead, 2005

Irene with us at Ground Zero in Manhattan             Manuel & Marcia in Barcelona 2001

        Dimitrii, Tania, Brian, Alex, and Irene have all visited us here in Santa Monica over the years. This allowed them to meet and get to know the rest of our family.

            I first met Bo ("Boo") Phillipson, MD many years ago through the International Intraocular Implant Club.  He is a famous professor and practicing ophthalmologist in Stockholm and has been very involved with European eye societies.  We had the pleasure of visiting with him and his lovely wife, Agneta (also a physician) at the beginning of our travels through Sweden in July 2003.  They were so helpful in completely revamping our planned schedule for touring their country.  They also invited us to join them for a traditional Swedish family crayfish dinner at their country house in Rörk in central Sweden.  We will be forever grateful to them for our outstanding Swedish experience, which is reflected in the Diarios of Sweden.

The two people I most wanted to meet.

           President Ronald Reagan in LA in 1994                        Pope John Paul II in Rome in 1997

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© Copyright 2010    Kenneth J. Hoffer, MD