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CRUISES: Uniworld’s Delightful Danube

Story and photography by
Nancy & Eric Anderson 

 

Our home for the next two weeks, Uniworld’s 360 foot-long River Countess rises lazily on the Danube current. It suggests our time aboard may be equally languid.

We begin in the capital of Austria, Vienna, the city of Mozart and Strauss, listening to their melodies and waltzes in the famous 140 year-old Kursalon concert hall, and watching their horses and carriages prance through the city. We end our cruise in Romania’s fascinating capital, Bucharest, the city of Vlad the Impaler and the late, unlamented megalomaniac Nicolae Ceausescu, gaping at the Palace of the Parliament, the second largest edifice in the world after the Pentagon, the monument he bulldozed one sixth of the old city to create. The natives speak nostalgically of Vlad; at times he drove the Ottoman empire out of his country. No one speaks kindly of Ceausescu; he raped the land and with his wife rapidly faced a firing squad

Our cruise was a delight. There are other river cruise lines, to be sure, but Uniworld got there first, decided its market was North American and designed its boats with that fastidious clientele in mind. As its boats aged, they were sold off to companies essentially dealing with the European market, and Uniworld designed its boats anew. The staff is all-English speaking and its passengers tend to be American, Canadian, Australian and British.

The cruise starts with the captain’s traditional safety talk. There’s really no danger. Uniworld, based in California (800-733-7820) has been catering to American passengers on Europe’s rivers for 30 years -- the ships are taller than the rivers are deep.

“But we do have one lifeboat,” says Jord Zwaal, the young but confident captain, “Anyone know why?”

“It’s for the captain!” shouts a passenger.

Ouch. It’s actually for the remote chance of “Man Overboard!”

But none of us will go overboard on this ship; we’re too well looked after. Uniworld once had a passenger who’d never noticed how hotel maids often fold the ends of toilet rolls into a V. Thinking this must be the protocol for passengers, he creased his roll into a similar V each time he used the toilet. A few days later a bottle of prune juice appeared on his bedside table. Now that’s service!

You expect service on any upscale cruise but on river cruises you get more: the motor coach-like convenience of a professional escort to diverse locations without having to unpack each night. Uniworld cruise prices, on detailed comparison, turn out to be very competitive, for example, it charges less for its three optional shore excursions on the river Danube than you’d pay from local tour operators. As a further bonus, Eastern Europe seems unaware the dollar has collapsed against European currencies.

The Danube cruise leads right into the very heart of the foreign cities (because the river was there long before the roads) and into lands practically unknown to American visitors, lands not groomed up by national tourist offices and jaded by too many visitors. We’ll see a lot: the Danube is the second longest river in Europe after the Volga and much of the continent’s tempestuous history lies alongside its banks. We’ll sail into Budapest, visit a famous Hungarian horse farm and visit places less familiar.

Discovering the unknown is the ultimate reward from this cruise.

We never knew, for example, that Bratislava, Slovakia was such a jewel. Hans Christian Andersen once called it “the most beautiful city in Europe” which explains why Bratislava has a statue of the Danish storyteller with his muse perched on his shoulder -- one of the many whimsical statues found while walking Bratislava's cobbled streets. Other statues represent a tourist with the inevitable video camera while others imitate street performers imitating statues.

We never knew a vacation village for Roman emp at Viminacium in Serbia; that politics still prevents the completion of the magnificent St. Sava Cathedral in Belgrade (the world's largest Orthodox church); even that Belgrade had been destroyed 44 times in 2500 years or that, in the inflation of 1991, an already depreciated 500,000,000,000 Dinara banknote went from a value of US$1 to US10 cents in one day.

We never knew in Baba Vida fortress, Bulgaria, a restored castle and prison had withstood attacks as far back as AD 1003 and was now a stage for folk dances performed by costumed children; or that the Varna Archaeological Museum had a 6,000 year-old necropolis exhibit, “the oldest gold treasure in the world.”

We guessed but never knew some of the poorest of European cities could have such delightful children, rich in contentment. And, despite the TV coverage, we never knew how much Croatia had suffered in the Balkan War until we saw the destruction, had an arranged lunch with local families and saw, in shop windows, our own 1917 army recruiting poster, Uncle Sam pointing but saying “I Want You -- in Croatia.”

Tourism may be Croatia’s salvation.

Indeed, Eastern Europe may be the new destination for today’s world-weary, seen-everything travelers. And in many ways it may be a bargain. 

 
 

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