xx Austria

Ports of call. Far at the world then, strange fascinating lands beckoneth, fittest rebel and their exotic spangers. Come with us as we head for Ports of call.

High up in the Swiss Alps, the eternal snows of the Matterhorn and the Jungfrau, melting under the warm embrace of the summer sun, trickle down rocky slopes toward the distant black sea. Reveal at Join's Brook. Brook joins stream to form the mighty Danube, the blue Danube whose swelling breast carries our little riverboat south eastward toward Vienna, heart and

soul of Austria, our port to call. Vienna, gay, laughing, glittering Vienna, has known much sadness since the World War. But in spite of the marching brown ranks of the Heimbehr and the never-ending strife between communist and socialist, some of the old Vienna still remains.

Laughter still rings to the twilight streets, and across the tiny squares comes the lilting strains of awards, and after the last red ray of the setting sun has slipped off the towering steeple of St. Stephen's, the ghosts of Vienna's glamorous past, tread through her storied streets, the brilliantly uniformed officers, the beautiful women of the court, fleeting nostalgic memories

of the Vienna of the Empire, the Vienna of the Hopesburg. The name of Hopesburg has dominated Austria's history for 700 years, but back in the 13th Eventually, the House of Hopsboor was merely one of the many warring feudal houses which made central Europe a constant battleground.

Count Rudolph Hopsboor, impetuous young nobleman but recently returned from a sortie against the city of Baal, is interrupted in the banquet hall of his castle by the arrival of a travel stained messenger. My liege, a messenger has but just arrived from his holiness to Pope.