Happy (Gray) May Day.

We've been saying "spring is just around the corner" for so long that it MUST be true. Still, winter jackets feel good (never mind that every time the sun comes out, the warm-blooded young immediately shed half a dozen layers!)

Now that it's May, I look forward to travel. On the 31st, a friend and I leave to spend a few days in Holland before moving on to Prague to join a tour that will take us all the way to the Black Sea, via "deluxe motor coach" and a river boat. Stops include Bratislava, Vienna, Budapest and finally Constanta and Bucharest. Also on the itinerary is Melk, where I took this picture a few years ago. The abbey church has a spectacular setting above the Danube.

A film I hope to watch again, perhaps after we return, is "Donau, Duna, Dunaj, Dunav, Dunarea,", which I saw at a film festival two or three years ago. It's a road movie, set on the Danube, and the film it most closely resembles is "L'Atalante," that hypnotically beautiful 1934 Jean Vigo film.

The title of the film is simply five ways to name the river we call the Danube - in German, Hungarian, Serbian, Bulgarian and Romanian. Its setting, a battered river steamer, is far different from the sleek river boat on which we will be traveling, but memories of the movie will certainly crop up during the trip.

Perhaps I'll do my own double bill later in the summer. With chocolate instead of popcorn.