2025 Danube Cruise

 Cooler and cloudy this morning with the temperature around 70. A bus took us up to a main plaza where we walked through the Belgrade Fortress which is now a very large and green park with the main fortress buildings in the center although there are ruins of the old walls extending quite a way around. This Belgrade region changed so many times, I won't even try to recount it all but it included the Romans, Ottomans, Austro-Hungarians and at times an independent kingdom.  It has been destroyed many times. During the second world war, Serbia was on the Allied side and was bombed heavily by the Germans who eventually occupied it. It was then bombed to defeat the Germans. Much of the city was damaged in the civil war of the 1990s after the breakup of Yugoslavia. We passed buildings which were still largely destroyed - several of which have been purchased by Jared Kushner to build new Trump facilities - very depressing. We then went to the Saint Sava church which is very new, const...

 Going into Serbia we had a time change to Central European Time so we gained an hour, 7am became 6am. Around 6am we came into the Iron Gates Lock, the first lock of the Danube and one of the largest. The total height of the lock is 35 meters, around 105', and needs two stages to get to this height. The ship pulls into the first chamber which closes and the ship rises to the top of the chamber. Then the gate between the two chambers drops down and the ship moves into the second chamber which then raises the ship to the top so that it can go further up the Danube. Each chamber is just long enough for the Viking ship but looks like there is room for two side by side. There is a set of locks on the Serbian side and an identical set on the Romanian side with a large dam for hydroelectric power and a road over the top. This was only built in 1972 and flooded a huge area upstream, flooding numerous towns, roads and Roman ruins. Towns had to be relocated and new roads constructed along th...

 We arrived at Vidin at 7am this morning. On the way to the bus, I thanked Sonja, our program director, about her talk last night and said that I was concerned about the direction of our country. Although we try to avoid politics, she said she was concerned also for the world. Vidin is a very old city and the area is ancient. It is famous for cave paintings in the paleolithic era, 8,000 years ago. The city itself was an important outpost on the Danube in 350AD, the boundary of the Roman empire. It was subsequently part of the Ottoman Empire, a more free country after expelling the Ottomans, then under communist rule and after 1989 moving to western democracy. The country suffered greatly with the communist takeover but also suffered greatly after communism. At the communist takeover, all private land and businesses became property of the state and people worked for the state in collective enterprise which was often inefficient as there was no motivation to do well. There was comple...

 It turns out the reason why we are in Nikola and not Rusk is that the water is too low for the ship to continue further downstream and had to dock here. Fortunately it is not much further from Bucharest. I'm not sure whey the river is shallower further down - maybe it is because it become wider, eventually turning into the Danube Delta before entering the Black Sea. There is a small ferry carrying tractor trailers across the river, 3 or 4 at a time. When we got on the bus this morning, there were dozens of trucks waiting to cross, some from as far away as Iran. We went to Pleven instead of Rusk as that would have been 2 1/2 hours away - too much for a morning tour. We traveled mostly through agricultural areas where they grow sunflowers (many waiting to be harvested), corn, wheat and barley. We went through many small villages with just a few houses, many of them abandoned and in poor shape. When the communists took over, the land went into farm collectives which were industrializ...

 Another early morning. We had to have our luggage outside the room by 7am and then check out of the hotel by 8:30. We were surprised that there were 3 Russian-speaking couples in front of us on the bus - most Viking customers are from the US with a few from the UK, Australia and New Zealand. One man we spoke with had parents who were at Aushwitz (they survived and lived to 100). He was the manager at a factory with 750 employees at age 22. His wife said she would have to wait in line after school for a little bread and margarine while he had plenty of food as a manager. They all live in the Russian area of Brooklyn. Adrian, our guide, is 33 years old and has degrees in film production, although guiding is his "day" job. At the parliament building, our guide gave us information about the modern history of Romania under the communist dictator Ceaucescu. In 1968 he gave a speech in which he indicated that he would be for the people and different from the USSR. This encouraged f...

 A fairly early morning as we had to have luggage outside our room at 6am and depart for the airport at 6:30. It was about a 45 drive to the airport, then quite a long time to check in. The flight to Bucharest is only 55 minutes. We are not sure why, but we were in first class. Another couple who traveled from the US in business class were in business class on this flight and the rest were in coach. We were served a hot meal with roasted chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, salad, a roll and dessert - a bit much for a short morning flight. We took off along the coast of the Black Sea. When we were back over land it was largely agricultural. It looked very dry except for very green patches that were irrigated. After going through customs it was another hour bus ride to the Bucharest Marriott. There is a long tree-lined avenue into the city surrounded by parks and beautiful mansions - it would be interesting to know their history. After getting organized, we went for a walk to the old...

 The day got off to a good start with a drive under the Roman aqueduct and along the Roman city wall. The aqueduct was constructed in 373AD to supply water to the growing city of Constantinople, the seat of the Eastern Roman Empire under Constantine. Our tour guide joked that the Romans had taken care to make sure that the arches would be large enough to allow passage of buses. Along the way, our guide provided information on the development of the modern Turkish state. Mustafa Kemal Ataturk is famous for the Ottoman success at the battle of Gallipoli in 1915 during WWI but the Ottomans were eventually defeated and since they had sided with Germany, were under English and French occupation - this was the beginning of the disaster in the Middle East when the borders of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine / Israel were defined without considering the history of the region. Ataturk was able to establish an army and drove out the British in 1923 and became president of the state of Tu...

 This morning we were off to the Topkapi Palace on the Golden Horn peninsula in Istanbul.  The palace was created for the Ottoman sultans in 1461 and is at the end of a peninsula sticking out into the Bosphorus Strait connecting the Black Sea to the Marmara Sea, then the Aegean Sea and the Mediterranean. Needless to say, the palace it huge and very exotic with many buildings and beautiful tiles on the walls. We first stopped at the treasury which has many jewels and gold object from the Ottoman Empire, including the Topkapi Dagger which was the basis of the 1964 movie Topkapi with Peter Ustinov and Melina Mecuri which they were trying to steal.  We also visited the harem which was guarded by Black eunichs (sic?) and housed the mother and wives of the Sultan along with his concubines and other women. They had toilet and bathing facilities that were far advanced over the European cultures at the time. We visited the huge kitchen which at one point had up to 1300 staff and w...

 The flight arrive just on time at 7:30AM after a relatively smooth flight. It was quite a walk between terminals. My Fitbit recorded 1300 steps and 22 minutes of exercise! Our flight to Istanbul left at 9am for a 3 hour flight and arrived just on time at 1pm - there is an hour time difference. The flight was smooth and most of the time it looked like farmland although as we got closer to Turkiye (now the politically correct spelling) it was much drier. It was pretty straightforward to get through the airport, find our Viking group and make our way to the Conrad Bosphoros Hotel, part of the Hilton chain. We are just 10 minutes walk up from the Bosphorus Strait waterfront. Much of the transportation in Istanbul is based on ferries and taxies that run between many piers to get around as there are few bridges and the traffic is terrible. At the pier we saw ferries coming in regularly and it was impressive how fast they came up to the pier, suddenly stopped and let down the ramp for pe...

 We are finally off on our lower Danube cruise through Eastern Europe. We were supposed to go on this cruise in June 2021 but came down with Covid 3 days before departure and had to cancel suddenly. We are taking the Viking pre and post cruise extensions to Istanbul and Prague. Makes for a long trip but we don't know when we would ever plan to go there separately. A beautiful clear, sunny and not too hot day to start our trip.😁 We were relieved to reach the Lufthansa lounge for a beer, Bloody Mary and snacks after the trip down. The traffic on the Garden State Parkway was very heavy and Google suggested getting off and driving through downtown Newark to the airport. There was no TSA pre-check line for security at Newark and it took us about 40 minutes to get through. Now that passengers aren't required to remove shoes and belts I wonder if TSA pre-check is going away. We didn't even have to show a boarding pass to get on the plane - just look into a camera that took a phot...