Two or three months before we had hoped to go the realization set in that we had tried and failed to plan a month beginning in Amersterdam with stops in Brussels, Munich, Salzburg, and Vienna.  The sheer volume of differences Americans face in Europe proved too much for newbies to master.  There were currency conversions, credit card use, pickpocket avoidance, multiple language barriers, customs, finding compatible electrical outlets, driving directions, or catching (and exiting) trains, plus where to sleep, and figuring out the cash required.  To say this was a daunting prospect understates my apprehension by a chasm roughly wide as Grand Canyon. 

We just can’t do this.”  Kat suggested a river tour of one week.  She landed a killer deal with Viking in Rick Steve’s “shoulder season” — after the summer crowds and before those icy winters.  Viking called this one the Romantic Danube cruise.  The bargain meant we paid for the stateroom and gratuities, and Viking paid Delta and Lufthansa. 

It turned out to be a lot of fun and yes, enlightening.  Everything in Europe is old and almost all the castles were built for military reasons on hilltops or mountains.  Any ‘new construction’ was built after WW II.  The oldest dates back to the Romans.  Stone and oak seriously outlast plywood and drywall.  They have so much history: wide swaths of Europe had been conquered in turn by the Romans who stayed for about 400 years, then the Mongol hordes first led by Attila then by his offspring for 1,000 years in the east, then came the Habsburgs, then the Ottoman Empire.  Each ruling empire left customs, religions, building styles and techniques, and usually language. 

Many of us fortunate enough to be born in the USA think of the peoples of the world along the lines of Us and Them.  But travel teaches you that all the Them’s are only somewhat different from most of the other, different, Them’s.  The cuisine, climate, political systems, and especially histories vary sometimes narrowly but often widely.  The differences are not just in terms of winners and losers of wars, but in collective memories of previous regimes that somehow have been passed along over centuries. 

Our ports of call began with Budapest, Hungary on November 1, 2024.  This was followed by stops at Krems, Austria, the Wachau Valley of the Danube, with a bus trip to a brief tour of Vienna.  It ended with Passau and a bus to Salzburg, then Regensburg, Germany and another bus ride to Munich and our flights home. 

Kat brought her trusty Nikon and took a few hundred pictures.  Photo editing and selection is labor intensive (now that it’s a year later, even moreso).  We hope to weave a few of her best shots into these blog posts, but I need to write now and in the coming days while memory remains fresh.  This one will serve as an outline for later posts with a few specifics. 

For now, “Szia, szia!” which is the Hungarian version of “Good-bye”.  Oddly, “Szia” is a Hungarian “Hello”, pronounced “See-yah”.  Two see-yahs is good-bye. 

Here is the itinerary from last year’s river cruise.  In a day or three I will post another two or three with specifics about our experiences.

https://www.vikingrivercruises.com/cruise-destinations/europe/romantic-danube/2025-budapest-regensburg/index.html#itineraryday/1