It has been said, on learned sites around the internet, that river cruising is a crap shoot. River levels can beach the boat or render it unable to pass under the low bridges. There are 60-some locks on the Danube and the Rhine and it's mostly one boat at a time through the locks. And when one comes up snake eyes, the cruise turns into a bus tour.
We, of course, were in denial.
About a week before we left for Budapest, we were advised that instead of the Viking Kvasir, we would be aboard the Viking Idi because the Kvasir could not get through. No other changes to itinerary anticipated. OK, no problem. Shortly thereafter, we received the cruise details paperwork...well, it was someone's paperwork, but not ours. It was actually for two different people who were on two different cruises, neither of them being the one we were on. This did not bode well, especially since Viking didn't seem to care much when we called about it.
Fast forward to July 29, 2014, the day we boarded the ship. Having dumped our luggage off, we cheerfully set off to spend the rest of our Hungarian Forint. The result: a case of wine and two bottles of the official Hungarian liquor, Unicum. By the way, Unicum is great, but good luck finding it outside of Hungary.
Back on board, at the "6:45 p.m. daily briefing", we're advised that the ship won't sail tomorrow night after all. The first lock through which we must pass has mysteriously broken.
Now, as an aside, we learned the next day that the broken lock was no mystery to the local hydrofoil operator...they knew that it was undergoing maintenance and would be closed, and had posted the information on their website. In English.
So we sat in Budapest for an additional day. At the "6:45 p.m. daily briefing" on July 31 we were told in the lounge that we would sail at 10:00 p.m. and then we were bombarded with choices for the coming days, many of which needed to be made before dinner at 7:00 p.m., less than 15 minutes. At this same time, we were also told that we would spend the night in Komarno and be bussed to Vienna for two nights in a hotel. No information was given on what was to follow those two nights. With this, we finally sailed for 60 miles or so to someplace called Komarno, which was not on the itinerary. The departure from Budapest was beautiful though.
Arrived in Komarno and sat on the dock all day while other passengers were sent on busses to Melk and/or Bratislava. On the 1st, having packed everything up, we were bussed to Vienna for two nights. Thus begins the adventure for the case of wine. We will say that the crew went out of their way to find us a box and help us get it sealed up for the trip to Vienna. Much to our surprise, the box was in the room at the Grand Hotel Vienna when we arrived. One of our suitcases was not.
In Vienna, August 2-3, walked around the centrum with a guide and visited the first of many St. Stephans churches. Here, the church spires and an interesting take on a rose window:
On our second day, we visited Schonbrunn palace, summer home of the Habsbergs. The grounds are beautiful and we wished we had more time to walk in them:
We had lunch in a winery call Weingut Wolff. Good food (OMG the potato salad!), too much of it, and entertainment by a yodeling guy with an accordion and a gal who sang a powerful soprano. Kinda loud, but fun. They even got some folks dancing:
Look, this is a condensed version of what to us was a horror story. There's more to tell, believe it, but we won't belabor the point here. We'll belabor it in correspondence to Viking. In spades. Spending another night in a hotel, we pined for the "cruise" part of the river cruise, drowning our sorrows in a bottle of Renner Heideboden 2010 Burgenland from the local Spar Store. Try it.
On August 4, we bussed to Passau to meet the ship. We hoped. We walked around Passau, where there had been a flood recently (we guessed that was the flood that stopped our original ship, Kvasir, from getting to Budapest) and some sidewalks were still covered over with water and impassable. Visited the next St. Stephans Cathedral, home of the world's largest pipe organ, which we did not get to hear because we arrived too late in the day. Oh, well, at least we got to see it!
Ship finally arrived at 5:30 p.m., everyone ran aboard and we left. After this point, the ship will never sit in dock again. Each day, the passengers will rush off to the bus tours and the ship will move on, collecting everyone downstream somewhere. Rush, rush, rush. Again, much to our surprise, the wine showed up in one piece, in one box, and delivered by a crew guy who apparently had ridden herd on it all day. He got a tip.
