Budapest

We pulled into Budapest first thing this morning, just before daylight. Big City on both sides of the Danube.  We parked on the Pest side. Budapest started out as two separate cities during the middle ages, Buda on the west side of the Danube, and Pest on the east. Today thay are one city joined by at least six or seven bridges, the most famous of which are the Chain Bridge and the Elisabeth Bridge. 



Note the monument to St. Gellert on the hill at the end.

We rode a funicular railway up to the Buda Castle high on the northwest hill.

We walked around for most of the day until our feet hurt and we were really hungry. Ate dinner in a cool place called Apostolok (potentially "The Apolstles' Cellar") with booths and mosaics of the Apostles on the walls.

Some of the big buildings here have the same type of Eosin tile roofs as those made in Pecs.

Hungary

We got up this morning docked at Mohacs, the southern entry point to Hungary on the Danube. Since we were entering the European Union from Serbia, the Hungarian customs police did a "face check" with our passports.This was the first time anybody really seemed to care since we got here.

After breakfast we got on the bus and drove to Pecs with a fortress on the hill, and a big church built on an extensive early Christian burial ground. The archaeological artifacts and ruins have been turned into an underground museum, with heavy glass skylights so one can look down into them from the sidewalk.

Many buildings here and elsewhere in Hungary and around the world have very brightly colored tile roofs. The tiles are made by a special process invented here by the Zsolnay family, and the formula has been kept a secret for many years , kept secret even from the Germans and the Russians.

We walked around for awhile, even outside the fortress walls which are nicely restored and integrated into the traffic pattern.

We ended up eating lunch in a restaurant connected to a famous sparkling wine factory where they are making and aging millions of bottles of wine. Of course we had a tour of the cellars before lunch and tasting.

After lunch we drove to Kolacsa, a town famous for the growing of Paprika, the Hungarian national flavor. They say that almost every Hungarian dish has some paprika in it. Opa Dave and I opted out of the walking tour of another church and a paprika museum, walking around some neighborhoods instead looking for a certain German type of architecture. We got on board the Avalon Imagery for the final night and sailed upstream to Budapest.

Novi Sad

This morning I watched the sun come up up on the great Imperial fortress of Peterwardein opposite the second largest city in Serbia, Novi Sad. Despite the efforts of Tito and the nationalist tendencies after WWI, German influence was everywhere and is being celebrated more and more as they realize what brings in tourists.

How many towns do you know of with city maps on display everywhere?

Also evident are the houses of the nouveau riche, sometimes the result of black market activities as I said before.  But at least not everyone is poor now. Modernization is being carried out at an alarming rate, the whole town is a free wi-fi zone. Everyone seems to have a cell phone or a tablet or a laptop.

Yet the socialist past is not too far distant. The ubiquitous, ugly, uninspired flats are just on the outskirts of town, like everywhere else we've seen so far.

Along the river later, we saw many small Serbian towns to the east and Croatian towns to the west, many with a little church on a hilltop.

Belgrade

After going through the Iron Gates we sailed with Serbia on the west and Romania on the east until we had Serbia on both sides. We sailed on into the night. The next morning we woke up docked in Belgrade, the capital of Serbia. After breakfast we went on a bus tour of Belgrade and we saw many old buildings that are new because they had a war there recently. 

We saw some buildings that are still bombed out from the recent Balkan wars. This was a foreign consulate or something, a direct hit by NATO bombs. Yeah, we did that.

Belgrade is at the confluence of the Danube and the Sava rivers and has been a strategic position for many hundreds of years, changing hands over and over again numerous times. The tour guide made it kind of a joke telling us how many times ownership has changed.

Currently Belgrade is a bustling capitalist city, marketplace and tourist destination. We went by local bus to the central marketplace where they try to sell you anything. A guy there tried to sell me a TV remote control. I told him I didn't have a TV. He questioned me and the I told him I didn't need one in Serbia but at home I have four remotes for one TV. He laughed and said that he had the same problem.

Belgrade is dominated by the Kalemegdan Fortress on the hill above the confluence of the rivers. After hearing how many times it had changed hands over the years, I thought to myself that it really wasn't a very good defensive position after all.

One interesting thing is that there is a Danube River Bike Trail that follows the length of the Danube through Serbia and evidently one can check one's progress at certain places.

Balkan Countries

I guess that's why these are called the Balkans - 'cause the internet has been balkin' for the last three days. Sorry for the delay in postings, but on the days that I had the most time to write, we had virtually no service. Now we are officially in Hungary and service is lightning fast.  Be sure to check the previous pages again because I have a lot of stuff to add.


After setting off from Nikopol, we sailed all night, the whole next day and the following night until we docked in Belgrade on Thursday morning.

Iron Gates

Today we sailed all day.  I woke up about 0515 by accident just as we were sailing under a huge bridge.  I tried to take a picture of it, but it was raining, and by the time I got my camera out, we were past it. I later asked a couple of crew members where the bridge was, but they seemed confused. After a little research, I decided that it was Vidin.  I saw a big crane on the bridge, and as far as I can tell this bridge is still under construction.

There are all kinds of things to see along the shore, unfortunately it's pretty murky; as I said it's raining. The Danube is pretty big, like the size of the Columbia in the gorge.  Mostly we are near the middle, but sometimes we a closer to one side or the other.

We passed some really big houses at one point and we were told that during the recent Bosnian/Serbian war, a lot of money was made on the Black Market. We have been told that some people have become really rich since the end of Communism, while others remain poor. We have been passing lots of barges along the way; aside from river cruise ships, barges are the main traffic along the Danube.

About 0830 we reached Iron Gates Dam #2. It was quite an experience going through the lock and they made a big deal out of it. The best views are from the sun deck, unfortunately - rain. 






They are very worried about fire occurring on ships in the locks for some reason, thus they have these water cannons all over the place; seriously, there's about ten or twelve on each side along the top of the walls.

Lunch was a buffet on board, then on to Iron Gates Dam #1. Something was apparently amiss as this time it took much longer than expected to pass through the locks (there were two of them this time). Altogether I think we went up about two hundred     feet in elevation through the locks. This area was a very dangerous river passage until the 1970's when the dams were built. Unfortunately a lot of collateral damage occurred.

As I said the water level rose about two hundred feet during the 1970's because of these two dams. As a result many towns and structures were flooded. 

In the first centuries after Christ the Roman emperor Trajan built a road along the shore of the river that still functioned.  A plaque was installed to commemorate this historic feat, a plaque that was raised to just above the current water level when the dams were built. The lower levels of the town of Orsorva were relocated to higher ground, and a whole island, Ada Kaleh, was drowned, the people relocated along with some of the buildings and a mosque.

Recently a huge stone sculpture was commissioned by a rich Romanian businessman to commemorate an early Dacian ruler, Decabalus, who stood up against the Romans.

Veliko Tarnovo

We sailed all night and finally pulled over to dock during breakfast. There wasn't much time to gather our things and hop on another bus headed for the interior old capital of Bulgaria - Veliko Tarnovo.

On all these excursions, they stop somewhere along the way, usually at a big commercial rest area or a hotel for a bathroom /coffee break and a chance to exchange some money and buy some souvenirs.  They provide some little biscuits or cookies and coffee or tea. This is a typical four-star hotel from the communist times.

This part of Bulgaria is more mountainous than the southeast was, as these are the foothills of the Balkan range, and Veliko Tarnovo is a very tight old hillside town, running from a river up to a high castle, Tsarevets, on the hilltop, probably at least a thousand feet above the valley floor below. 

Between the hotel, the castle and the tight, twisty, hilly streets, I thought this place would make a great set for a James Bond movie and car chase. The church on top of the castle was reconstructed during the communist time, but because religion was frowned upon, concessions were made, and the frescoes inside are quite modernistic in style.

After lunch they took us to another small town nearby, Arbanassi, where they showed us an ancient church completely covered in frescoes on the inside, while looking very low key, in no way like a church on the outside because it was built during the time of Ottoman domination.

This is a typical Turkish style house, very similar to one we toured in Mostar, Bosnia five years ago. No chairs anywhere, the inhabitants sit on raised platforms in every room. I also got a photo of the toilet which I can show you individually if you care.

In the afternoon we drove back to the ship passing many donkey carts and storks' nests along the way. Note the guy with the cell phone.

We pretty much sailed right away after boarding the Imagery and sailed all through the night.

Sidetrip to Varna

We got on the river cruiser Avalon Imagery in the evening, and after casting off we were treated to a four course dinner.  We left Romania, turned downstream for a couple of hours and docked at the Bulgarian port of Silistra.

When we got up in the morning, after a buffet breakfast, we boarded another tour bus and headed further southeast to the shore of the Black Sea, to Varna. The countryside south of the Danube in Bulgaria is very flat, rolling hills, river delta land.

Varna is a popular spot for all Europeans to vacation because it's warm and sunny, very cosmopolitan, and cheap. We got a tour of the archaeological museum which contains artifacts dating back to the 7th century, including the oldest gold relics in Europe. Maggie and I are having fun trying to read the signs in the Cyrillic alphabet.

My travel companions rest in the shade in a park near the beach. Interestingly, we learned that yogurt was invented in Bulgaria.

In the afternoon as we drove back to the river, we passed some apartment buildings left over from the "communist times".  Actually we saw many examples of this fine style of architecture in and around Bucharest, on our previous drives through towns, and elsewhere in Romania and Bulgaria.  At least many people can own their own flats now.

We reboarded our ship and sailed upstream  to our next port just as the sun was going down.  The cruise director tries to keep people occupied most of the time, and believe me, many of these people need it. We had a Bulgarian folk dance show and there is an on-board keyboard player. We sailed all night until we docked the next morniing at Svistov.

On The Boat

A couple of hours south from Bucharest we arrived at the Danube to board our ship, the Avalon Imagery.  

The first order of business is to meet the crew and the other passengers, and then to talk about safety measures. After some speeches by the cruise director and the captain and crew, we had a tailgate safety session.







They told us about emergency procedures, where the muster stations are, and what the options are.  Since we are on a river, the shore is always close by, and in many cases the Danube is not very deep, relatively speaking. Maggie enthusiastically volunteered to help out with the life vest demonstration. But they told us the biggest danger on board a river cruise ship is fire. More than 200 people are on board, gangways are tight, and passageways are clogged. I saw many reminders throughout the trip of the fear of fire.