In the blink of an eye, it was 1917.
Rhine City's streets bustled with traffic and an endless stream of pedestrians. In barely a dozen years, Rhine City had leapt up to become one of East Africa's newly rising major cities.
Crown Prince Alexei of Tsarist Russia and his two sisters were touring Rhine City under the guidance of East Africa's Fourth Prince, Maxim.
Prince Maxim had been born in 1887 and was Ernst's youngest son. Even so, he was far older than Nicholas II's children.
Among the Tsarist Russian princes and princesses visiting East Africa this time, the eldest was the third Russian princess, Maria. Born in 1899, she was only eighteen years old.
This visit by the Russian Royal Family to East Africa was led by Princess Maria, who was looking after her younger sister Anastasia and younger brother Alexei.
Maxim led them strolling through the streets of Rhine City. Addressing the now-adult Princess Maria, he said, "Rhine City is a new city, so naturally its scale cannot compare with Saint Petersburg. However, our East African capital possesses advantages Saint Petersburg can never have. It is springlike all year round and sits in the heart of the continent, while Saint Petersburg is precisely the opposite."
Saint Petersburg was considered one of Russia's warmer regions, but even its warmth lay close to the Arctic Circle, whereas East Africa's Rhine City was near the equator.
Geographically, the two stood as far apart as south from north, yet both displayed the climatic differences found at the same latitude.
Take Saint Petersburg: its name easily called to mind snow blanketing the land, while Rhine City readily evoked blazing sun overhead. Yet the reality of both places was not quite so.
Saint Petersburg's winters only reached a few degrees below zero. That would