One of Grand Circle Travel’s (GCT) most popular European river cruises is the Danube River Cruise between Budapest, Hungary and the Black Sea. I was hoping to go on this cruise over 10 years ago but then NATO bombed Serbia and GCT dropped Belgrade from their itinerary. Since the Tesla Museum in Belgrade has been on my “must see” list, I waited until Serbia’s dictator Slobodan Milosevic was ousted, war memories had somewhat faded and the Serbs would welcome our tourist dollars once again. Kathy had been to the U.K. but not any other European countries and was not real enthusiastic about seeing this less visited part of Europe. But since I suggested we spend some time in Paris after the cruise, she agreed that this could be a great trip. I’ll write about our time in France in a separate report.

We arrived in Budapest, Hungary at 11:40 a.m. after what seemed like two days of flying with stops in Minneapolis, Cincinnati and Paris. Kathy works with a travel agent who was born and lived in Budapest and she arranged for her brother to pick us up at the airport and take us to our ship.

GCT owns or charters 60 ships worldwide. Our ship, the MS River Adagio is a typical river ship – long, low and narrow in order to navigate rivers as opposed to lakes or oceans. It has most of the amenities found on large cruise ships – dining room, lounge, library, gift shop, fitness room with spa, etc. - only scaled down. Unlike our Nile River cruise ship, there was no pool on the top deck, just plenty of lounge chairs, a bar and the pilot house.

There were 160 passengers on our cruise. We were divided into four groups, each group having its own Program Director. Our Program Director was Cristian from the Transylvania region of Romania. He claimed to be an expert on Dracula. He also went above and beyond several times for us. Once after I told him I collected paper money from each country I visited, he went out of his way to change money to smaller denomination bills for me.

We spent the first three nights on the ship docked in Budapest. Budapest has been called the “Paris of the East” and rightly so. It is a beautiful city (actually two cities, Buda and Pest on opposite sides of the Danube River). It’s hard to imagine today that Budapest was heavily damaged from fierce fighting during World War II. I had been to Budapest on a previous trip several years earlier but was glad to be able to enjoy its sites again. Budapest is especially beautiful at night when the large parliament building, royal palace, bridges and churches are all lit up.

We had plenty of free time to walk around Budapest. We walked to the Western Train Station which was built by Gustav Eiffel’s company (of Eiffel Tower and Statue of Liberty fame and known for its failed attempt to build the Panama Canal). The station itself is nice but inside the station is what has to be the most beautiful McDonald’s restaurant in the world. We looked inside but didn’t eat there.

Walking around the Castle District on the Buda site is like stepping back in time. There are the old restored buildings, cobblestone streets, ruins of an old castle and the Mathius Church with its beautiful colorful tile roof. At one end, there is an old boarded up building with bullet holes and artillery damage from World War II still evident. Ironically, this was the Ministry of Defense building before the war.

One of the highlights of Budapest for me was not your typical fun, pretty tourist site. In fact the name of the place is The House of Terror. No, it’s not a museum filled with Universal Studios horror movie props. It’s a museum/memorial that tells the story of the dark history of this region.

After allying themselves with Hitler to save their own skins, Hungary was overtaken by the Nazi-affiliated Arrow Cross Party in the waning days of World War II. The museum is contained in the former headquarters of the Arrow Cross/Nazi secret police. It was here where people were interrogated, imprisoned, tortured and executed. After World War II when the Communists took over Hungary, this was also the building where “enemies of the state” where interrogated, imprisoned, tortured and executed by the ÁVH (which was similar to the Soviet Union’s KGB secret police). During the last part of the self-guided tour, you get into an elevator which takes you to the basement. Here you can walk inside cells, some so small that you can’t sit or lay down. This museum isn’t for everyone (Kathy didn’t go) but to me, travel includes history and history is not always pretty. Without places like the House of Terror which honors all the innocent people imprisoned or killed here as well over 2,500 people killed by the Soviet army during the 1956 anti-communist uprising, we may forget or ignore that history.

When I was in Budapest in 2001, I went to the Great Synagogue (largest synagogue in Europe) and Jewish Museum there. During WWII, the Hungarian government (a puppet of the Nazis) actually resisted letting the Nazis ship Hungary’s Jews to concentration/extermination camps. Unfortunately, the Nazis eventually gained complete control and most of Budapest’s large Jewish population was shipped off to die in the camps not long before the Soviet army “liberated” Budapest. At least 400,000 Hungarian Jews died in the Holocaust.

Just a short walk from where our ship was docked, there is a memorial to a group of Jews who were shot and then thrown into the Danube River. The memorial consists of about 50 pairs of bronze shoes at the river’s edge and a few plaques. The memorial is quite a sober reminder of the horrors that once took place in this now beautiful and peaceful city.

We took an optional bus tour from Budapest seeing a large area of Roman ruins, the Esztergon Basilica, the town of Visegrád with its Renaissance Palace ruins, the famous “Danube Bend” (a big bend in the river) and had a “Medieval” lunch complete with kitschy paper crowns before returning to our ship. After we returned, Bea, a local woman I met on my last trip to Budapest and have kept in touch with visited us on the ship.

That night, they showed the movie “Sunshine” on the ship. It’s an excellent movie about several generations of a Jewish family from Budapest and all the hardships they endured under the Fascists and then the Communists.

The next day, we took a bus tour to the town of Szentendre, Hungary where we got a tour of a jewelry factory (almost all tours have a required stop like this that you have to endure) and walked around the old town.

It was finally time to cruise down the beautiful “Blue” Danube. Actually the Danube isn’t blue here but it’s still scenic. Our first stop was at the 1,000 year old town of Kalocsa, Hungary where we walked around and saw the Kalocsa Cathedral and a paprika museum.

That afternoon I had a one hour full body massage. This was the first time GCT offered this on one of their river cruises and they weren’t really set up for it. They had part of the fitness room partitioned off for privacy and put a sign on the door stating “Massage in progress, quiet please” but it didn’t work. I could hear several people using the spa and talking over the new age music the massage therapist had playing. I think one woman even peaked around the curtain to ask if she could use the shower. The massage therapist was a woman from Indonesia and had more bookings than she could handle. The massage itself was very good but they need to get a completely private room. Kathy also got a massage later and while she was in the sauna afterward, a large guy came in and his towel fell off…not a pretty sight!

The next day, we stopped at the town of Vukovar, Croatia where we took a bus and walking tour seeing many of the still damaged buildings from the war between the Serbs and Croats there. 90 percent of the town was destroyed in 1991 when the Serbs attacked to “protect” the town’s Serb population. I’ve read a lot about the Balkan wars but I’m still not completely clear on who was fighting who (Croats, Serbs, Bosnians, etc.) and why, and who were the good guys and who were the bad guys (if there is such a thing in war). There were atrocities on all sides and I was amazed that the people there seem to have learned to live together again so soon after the war.

Our next stop was the town of Osijek, Croatia where we had a walking tour of the monastery, church, fortress and town square where there happened to be a parade of school children celebrating spring. Some of the buildings there also had war damage.

We then took the bus just outside of town to our home hosted lunch. This is something that GCT includes on their tours and it’s a great way to meet the local people and learn about them and their culture (and they learn about us too). We were broken up into smaller groups and taken to different people’s homes. Our group went to the Lacković Bed and Breakfast run by Srđan Lacković. Srđan’s mother cooked our lunch consisting of soup, meatloaf made with pork, mashed potatoes with paprika and cake and waffle for dessert. They also served homemade plum brandy which was really strong and cleared out my sinuses! After lunch, Srđan gave us a tour of their small farm.

The next stop on our cruise was Belgrade, Serbia where we took a city tour by bus. We saw the Tito Memorial/Museum. Field Marshall Josip Tito seemed to be really beloved by the Yugoslav people. As the leader of the Communist Yugoslav partisans, he fought against the Germans during World War II but he also stood up to Stalin who tried to have him assassinated a few times when he wouldn’t totally submit to Soviet wishes. In a correspondence between the two leaders, Tito openly wrote:

Stop sending people to kill me. We've already captured five of them, one of them with a bomb and another with a rifle…If you don't stop sending killers, I'll send one to Moscow, and I won't have to send a second. — Josip Broz Tito

Yes Tito ruled with an iron fist but he was able to keep all the different ethnic groups in Yugoslavia living together peacefully. He was also smart choosing non-alliance with both the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. thereby receiving aid from both nations. And under Tito, Yugoslavia was the “freest” of all the communist countries in Europe. On January 1, 1967, Yugoslavia was the first communist country to open its borders to all foreign visitors and abolish visa requirements. In the same year Tito became active in promoting a peaceful resolution of the Arab-Israeli conflict. His plan called for Arabs to recognize the state of Israel in exchange for territories Israel gained.

In Belgrade, we also saw the huge unfinished St. Sava Orthodox Church and the pedestrian mall. I skipped part of the tour so I could see the aforementioned Nikola Tesla Museum. The tour bus dropped me off within a few blocks of the museum while Kathy stayed and finished the tour. I got to the museum about an hour before it closed and they were just starting a tour of the museum in English. I have read several books on Tesla and have found him and his inventions fascinating so just barely getting to see the museum was a real treat! I took a taxi back to the ship and Kathy became my tour guide as we walked back up to the Kalemegdan Castle and saw the only place I really missed on the tour.

You can still see reminders of the 78 days of NATO aerial bombing of buildings in Belgrade in 1999. For the first time in more than 50 years, European powers had attacked another European country. NATO did this to try to halt the humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo. We passed several heavily damaged and abandoned buildings while on our bus tour of the city. This happened eleven years ago, but apparently they still don’t have the money to tear down and rebuild these buildings.

On the bus tour, our local Belgrade tour guide told us several Yugo jokes. For those who are too young or don’t remember, the Yugo was the very cheap car built in Yugoslavia and sold in the U.S. back in the 80’s. The jokes were familiar but funnier coming from a Yugoslav. Here are two that I remember:

Q. Why does a Yugo have a rear window defroster?
A. To keep your hands warm as you push it.

Q. What do you call a Yugo at the top of a big hill?
A. A miracle!

That night, we had two female Serbian university students come aboard and tell us about their lives in Belgrade. I asked them about universal health care since that was the hot topic back home.

The next day, we spent mostly on the sun deck as we passed through the scenic section of the Danube River known as the Iron Gates. The Danube was actually blue here! A hydroelectric dam was constructed here and there are two locks that you have to enter to get past the dam. The weather was great and we had a Balkan party outside on the sun deck – beer, sausage and traditional folk music.

During the day, the four Program Directors each took turns talking about their lives under communism. They were all from former communist countries: Romania, Hungary and Croatia (part of the former Yugoslavia). Some of their stories were sad but some were also humorous. You could tell they all now enjoy their new freedom but they also don’t seem bitter about what they had to endure in the past. I really enjoyed all their stories!

That day, we also got a tour of the ship’s galley. The head chef’s name was Attila and you could tell he ran a tight kitchen. After the galley tour, we got a Cyrillic alphabet lesson which wasn’t so great but I did figure out how to write my name in Cyrillic.

Our next stop along the Danube was Bulgaria where we saw the Baba Vida Fortress in Vidin and took a bus to Belogradchik to see the rocks and fortress. The fortress is actually built into the rocks. We hiked to the top of the rocks and were rewarded with a spectacular view of the different rock formations (a UNESCO World Heritage Site), the town below and the Balkan Mountains off in the distance. The hike up the rocks and stairs was fairly steep and only a few of us made it to the top but it was worth it – one of my favorite places on the whole trip.

Our last stop on the Danube was the town of Ruse, Bulgaria and after a bus tour around Ruse, we headed by bus to the resort town of Varna, Bulgaria located on the west shore of the Black Sea. This was the farthest east we went on the trip. We got a tour of the archeological museum and cathedral in Varna and ended up having lunch at the 5-star Palace Hotel Resort and Spa. After lunch, we walked on the beach and pier enjoying both almost to ourselves as this was still the “off” season here.

We spent one more night on the ship and the following day took a bus across the Friendship Bridge border crossing (and got a rare passport stamp) into Romania to the capital, Bucharest. Bucharest is a large city with many old apartment buildings evident from the communist years. I call them the commi-projects. We saw the Revolution Square with its controversial sculpture. The odd looking sculpture has been criticized for being devoid of any symbolism, being too abstract, and thus not adequately representing the suffering and magnitude of the 1989 revolution, which claimed around 1,500 lives. One not-so-pretty sight in Bucharest is the large loops of cables hanging from poles on what seemed like almost every street corner. I believe this cable is for either TV or Internet use and I guess they haven’t figured out a way to hide it yet.

The highlight for me was a stop at the Parliamentary Palace, with 1,100 rooms, the second largest building by service area in the world after the Pentagon in Washington D.C. This still unfinished building was built during the reign of Romania’s last communist president, Nicolae Ceauşescu. He had most of Bucharest’s historic districts demolished to make room for the palace and other related buildings along with a grand boulevard two meters wider than the Champs Elysees in Paris. He also caused mass starvation of the Romanian people in order to finance his grand project. Pop star Michael Jackson once greeted a large crowd of fans from a balcony of the palace. He yelled to the crowd, “I love Budapest!”. Oops – wrong city.

In late 1989, a large number of Romania’s population had had enough of Ceauşescu’s policies and staged an uprising which turned violent. Ceauşescu and his wife, Elena tried to escape but were captured. On December 25, 1989, Nicolae and Elena were put on trial. The trial last two hours and both were found guilty of genocide and other crimes and immediately taken out and executed. This was the only time an Eastern Bloc country overthrew its communist leader in this manner.

Our tour groups were taken to a modern indoor shopping mall in Bucharest for lunch. This mall contained many upscale shops and we were wondering if the average Romanian could afford to shop here. It also had a food court with mostly American restaurants. We ate at Ruby Tuesday’s. I think Ceauşescu must be tossing in his grave knowing how this bourgeois western capitalism has overtaken his country. Kathy found out that at least one freedom is missing at this mall. She got busted by the mall cops for trying to take a photo inside of nothing in particular. I guess McDonald’s must have some strategic importance.

The last night in Eastern Europe, we stayed at the deluxe Ramada Plaza Hotel. I took one last walk about a mile to see another building – the Casa Presei Libere building. It is a typical large building built during the communist era and looks very similar to buildings I’ve seen in Warsaw, Poland and Moscow.

This was another outstanding package river cruise with GCT. We have gone on several other trips with them and their affiliate Overseas Adventure Travel (OAT) but this was only the second river cruise; the other being their Nile River cruise through Egypt. Everything about this trip went just about perfect. We even lucked out with the weather as just a week or so before we arrived in Budapest, this whole region had snow and was very cold. We had mostly mild weather with very little rain.

I think many people still don’t consider Eastern Europe as a travel destination. Yes, part of the allure for me is the history of the area – the Roman and Ottoman Turk occupations, Vlad the Impaler (inspired the Dracula stories), Attila the Hun, the World Wars, the communist regimes and finally democracy. Many of these countries are now joining the European Union and even NATO making Russia nervous again. But you don’t have to be a history buff to enjoy Eastern Europe and the Balkan States as the scenery, culture, food, people and the “Beautiful Blue Danube” are all wonderful!

To view a slideshow (can be paused) of 58 photos from this trip, click here: Cruise photos

Music:
On The Beautiful Blue Danube - Johann Straus, Jr.

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