Eastern Danube Cruise, May 2017

Seven of us arrived in Warsaw for the pre-trip: Chris Davis, Martha Shepherd, Gretchen Turner, and Marguerite (photo at left) and had dinner at a local restaurant. Donna Gebbis, Sandra Thornton, and Margaret Pudvin (not pictured) were also on this part of the trip. We tried some Polish food but found it very heavy and not particularly tasty.

While in Warsaw we took a city tour and visited Old Town, the historic heart of the Polish capital and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We visited remnants of the Warsaw Ghetto where some 400,000 Jewish citizens were imprisoned after the Nazi conquest of Poland in WWII; three quarters of them perished in concentration camps. We also saw the monument erected to Fryderyk Chopin and visited the Chopin Museum.

We left Warsaw with 67 other travelers who were on the pre-trip. It took two buses for all of us and was more people than we like to travel with -- long lines for bathrooms and crowded restaurants.

En route to Krakow we stopped at the Jasna Gora monastery in Czestochow. The monastery is famous for the portrait of "The Black Madonna" that was painted many years ago. The paint has aged so that the madonna looks dark. She was not painted to be black!

During the walking tour of this elegant city, once the seat of Poland's royalty, ten centures of architecture are on display. The route included Wawel Castle, the coronation and burial site of Polish kings.

Marguerite, Chris, and Gretchen enjoyed the tour in their rain gear!

The castle is a popular place for children and many were there that day. A scale model of the castle showed how very large it is. There were also small chapels built inside the grounds that are almost on top of each other, one with a beautiful gold dome.

We spent a somber afternoon at the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz and the nearby "death camp" of Birkenau. There is also a museum and memorial dedicated to the 1.5 million people who perished there. There is a "killing wall" where thousands of prisoners were shot; displays of suitcases, shoes, and other personal effects, and many posters of statistics. All very, very sad.

We arrived in Budapest, Hungary, and were joined by Nedra Mathis, Marguerite's dear friend from when they were 10 years old, and 7 other travelers from the Atlanta area. Our group of 15 was known as "Gretchen's Cruisers" and usually ate together and traveled on the same bus. Nedra and Marguerite shared cabin 427 on the top A deck.

The first night on the ship was the Safety briefing and dinner, then the next day started with a city tour of Budapest, Hungary's capital. The tour included views of the city from Fisherman's Bastion, a magnificent terrace overlooking the Danube and lots of walking to see other sights.

We began with a city tour with a visit to the beautiful Kolocsa Cathedral that had recently been renovated where we heard a brief organ concert. The Cathedral is the home of one of four Catholic archbishops of Hungary. The campus also includes a seminary for priests, and colleges for training teachers. Then we went on to a restaurant where travelers were invited to participate in workshops on folk painting, folk embroidery, and making of traditional Hungarian paprika bread. We also visited the Paprika museum that included lots of information about how paprika is made as well as some lovely embroidery.

The Baroque city of Vukovar is situated on the banks of the Vuka and Danube rivers. We visited a very interesting church that was badly damaged during both WWI and WWII. The Alter of Our Lady of Sorrows was built in 1919 in memory of parisioners killed in WWI. In the Croatin War of Independence (1991-1997) the alter was destroyed. The remaining fragments were built into a new alter. The Vukovars wounded Jesus was found in the pile of rubbish in 1998.

The city of Belgrade is located on the edge of the Carpathian Basin, at the confluence of the rivers Sava and Danube. It is a very old city. Belgrade's recent history has left the city somewhat disheveled, but bold redevelopment is currently underway. We visited the Kalemegdan Fortress and Military Museum that included lots of big guns as well as some beautiful views.

A full day in Veliko Turnovo, a 12th century Bulgarian capital, was very interesting. Houses perch above the winding Yantra River much as houses perch beside the Pacific ocean in San Diego!

We had lunch with delightful university students, then continued on to the village of Arbanassi where we visited an old home and heard a wonderful performance at the Church of the Archangels Michael and Gabriel.

We disembarked after breakfast and took a city tour of Bucharest, Romania's capital. There was lots of evidence of communist times, including scores of ugly apartment buildings wherein each person was only allotted 150 square feet of space and most apartments were only about 500 square feet. There were also some huge buildings, the largest of which, the Palace of Parliament, is the second largest building (after the Pentagon) in the world. For the past ten years things have gotten much better (according to our tour guides) as the people are now free; however, the older people often miss communist times because their needs were met and they didn't have to work very hard. Now the young people are leaving the Eastern European cities for jobs and a better life in other countries.