Great Mother River

It’s not really blue.

The Danube, the great mother river of Europe, cuts through the heart of the continent from the Black Forest to the Black Sea, flowing through four world capitals and 11 different countries. Since the time of the Roman Empire and before, the Danube has been the dividing line between cultures and armies, acting as a barrier to conquest, while at the same time serving as a vital transportation route for commerce. No less a figure than Napoleon Bonaparte dubbed the Danube the “king of the rivers of Europe.” While many visitors enjoy a trip along the river thoroughly without delving into its storied past, for a history buff, a sense of what has gone down the river ahead of us adds to the experience.

But despite the classic “Blue Danube” waltz, the river’s color is anything but blue – usually. On our cruise from Regensburg in Germany to Budapest, capital of Hungary, we did see a couple of times when a calm stretch reflected the blue sky above. Mostly, though, the river is brown, laden with silt, and fast flowing. Well down its course, the Danube, or Danau in German, moves briskly downstream with a three-knot current, despite having been reined in by dozens of locks and dams. In ancient times, navigation on the Danube was life-threatening and claimed many sailors and ships.

The Danube is still far from tamed. In its upper reaches, rocky shoals and sandbars pose threats to shipping. Due to the low river level, with “skinny water” not even sufficient for our shallow-draft vessel, we had to join our Viking longship in Passau, Germany, 124 kilometers downstream from Regensburg (by road, more with the twists and turns of the river).

We did visit Regensburg, but by motorcoach. The town is the site of the Steinerne Brücke, or stone bridge, the earliest bridge across the Danube, dating from the 12th century, and the Wurstküche, reputedly Germany’s oldest sausage kitchen (the original fast-food joint?), originally built to feed workers constructing the bridge.

Regensburg and Passau are picture postcard towns of medieval German architecture, with tall spires, clock towers, cobblestoned streets, and homes painted in the pastel colors of a box of chocolates or Jordan almonds. Those cobblestones can be treacherous underfoot, especially when wet, and we did get to experience them in the rain – so maybe, with more water coursing into the riverbed, cruise passengers who came in the weeks after our trip were able to float that stretch of the river.

Sometimes, rather than not enough water in the river, the problem is too much. Just like in Southwest Florida, markers on the walls of the buildings in Passau indicate the high-water marks of noteworthy floods, and they are several feet higher than a person standing in the street can reach with upflung arms. The Viking ships are built with hinged masts and their wheelhouses on hydraulic lifts, so they can be lowered into the hull, but sometimes the water level is too high to allow the ships to pass under bridges and locks.

In medieval times, navigation was not the only danger. The original robber barons, occupying castles which seem to be perched on every outcropping above the river, exacted tolls, or just pirated barges and riverboats. These fortresses, many of them fallen into ruins, lend a picturesque atmosphere to the landscape now, when we are secure from any piracy more serious than being overcharged at a souvenir shop.

One particular ruined castle, high on a hill above the scenic Wachau Valley, has a place in British history as well. This is the spot where, according to history/legend/myth – you choose – King Richard the Lionheart was imprisoned after being captured by King Leopold of Austria while he was attempting to return from the Crusades. His friend Blondel, a minstrel, toured from castle to castle singing a song he had written with Richard, and at Dürnstein Castle, Blondel heard his song being answered from the tower above.

Also rising above the Wachau is Göttweig Abbey, a Benedictine monastery founded in 1083, and built and rebuilt several times after periods of decline and a series of fires. The monastery contains the remains of several saints, an extensive library of historic volumes including illuminated manuscripts, and a Baroque staircase with a fresco on the ceiling depicting Holy Roman Emperor Charles VI as the Roman god Apollo. The abbey’s apricot orchards provide the fruit for their famous apricot jams and wines.

Religion plays an outsized role in the history, and hence the architecture of the communities along the Danube. Each sizeable town has its cathedral, built to dazzle the peasants from centuries ago with their magnificence, to the point where, as one tour guide described it, a visitor can fall victim to “ABC syndrome – another beautiful church,” making it hard to appreciate the vast effort and artistry that went to construct these edifices with nothing but hand tools and manual labor. In every case, the architects of the cathedrals never got to see the finished building, and neither did their children or grandchildren, as the towers and buttresses rose over a period of many decades or even centuries.

And apart from the grand cathedrals, each riverside village, or even hamlet, has its vista dominated by the tower of a wayside chapel. Bloody wars were fought over conflicting interpretations of Christianity, and typically, the population was expected to embrace the denomination chosen by their ruler.

Cities along the Danube also contain memorials to the Jewish population, which after existing uneasily alongside their Christian neighbors for centuries, was virtually annihilated by the Nazis during the Second World War. One of the most poignant tributes stretches along the riverfront in Budapest, where dozens or hundreds of shoes, the everyday footwear worn by victims of the Holocaust, are memorialized in bronze, mirroring the collection of actual leather shoes at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

We packed our bathing suits for our cruise, and I had visions of swimming in the Danube, but the right opportunity never presented itself, and in fact, we never saw anyone swimming in the river during our visit in late May and early June.

But in any case, one of the delights of river cruising, as opposed to a voyage on an ocean liner, is the ability to pop into a succession of little towns along the river, as well as the ever-present scenic vistas streaming by outside our stateroom or from the deck when the ship was on the move. It was great having a veranda opening up from our cabin, except for when docking, the ship put us right up against a concrete wall, or sometimes, another river cruiser rafted up to ours.

This happens quite a bit, as there are dozens of riverboats from a variety of shipping lines offering river cruises on the same stretch of the Danube, and limited docking spaces. On our small, uncrowded, and un-regimented longship, of course, it was always easy to go up on deck, or saunter off the vessel for some exploration ashore when in port. One passenger took that too far. After we departed from Passau, we got to go back for a brief touch-and-go at the dock and enjoy a great view of the city as evening approached, because one passenger managed to go pub crawling in town, without his phone, and without scanning his boarding pass as he debarked. Apparently, his wife noticed he was missing.

Even if you didn’t go ashore, the ship’s culinary staff made a point of offering local specialties, such as wiener schnitzel, goulash and dumplings, as well as a copious supply of local beers and wines. While the river cruisers don’t offer the dawn to midnight feedings of ocean ships, no one was going hungry – and the low-key, adults only vibe with no casinos made for a relaxed, pleasurable shipboard experience. We had the chance to hook up with a few convivial fellow travelers, making friends and sharing the experiences. As always, visiting outside the high season makes for less crowded destinations and sometimes even bargains.

Having never been a fan of the “mega-ship” ocean liner style of traveling with a few thousand of my closest friends and their exuberant children and having had a longtime desire to see this part of the world, cruising the Danube was just what we were looking for.