Moving right along...to our next cruise!: The rain has paused…

Sunday, May 18, 2014

We may have discovered our new love, river cruising. We have SO enjoyed the past few days, even though it’s been raining cats and dogs much of the time. We just didn’t how many cats and dogs had dropped from the skies.

Yesterday, May 17, 2014, we were in Belgrade. I am specific about the date because, even though we were on a tour, none of us heard even one word about the fact that Belgrade made the international news because of the flooding on the very river on which we were parked (does one park a boat—uh, ship?). Our tour guide (and the other groups’ guides) just spent the day talking about the damage done by our (U.S.) Tomahawk missiles to the city’s buildings a few years back. And telling us what a great guy Tito was (we had a tour of a museum dedicated to his memory and containing probably every gift he ever got—and I think we saw every one of those gifts!). He was so wonderful he wouldn’t allow anything to be named after anybody but him. And people were not exactly free to speak their minds. But he did keep Russia out of Yugoslavia, so I guess that makes him an OK guy. Is the cynic in me rearing it’s beautiful head?

I only knew what was happening on the river after we got back to the ship and talked to one of the stewardesses (whose family was OK but they were in the area of the flooding). Then feeling completely stupid because I had absolutely NO idea that there was massive flooding of the Sava River and the area around Belgrade. It has been the worst rain in 100 years; two months of rain fell in 40 hours. People are being evacuated from their homes. Twenty have died. And we knew nothing. Arrrggghhhh!

Moving on.

The sun has come out and we put into Vukovar (where the tours departed). Randy and I had been warned to not leave our curtains open when we go to bed because we might park next to another boat. Wouldn’t you know, last night was so pleasant that we did just that and this morning, there was another ship! We could have been eyeball to eyeball in our jammies with some Danish tourists! Quickly closing the curtains, we prepared for a day of leisure. The River Princess will depart Vukovar for Osijek, arriving there about 3:00pm to pick up the bus crowd. We, meanwhile, will enjoy a sunny day cruising down the Danube (which isn’t blue, by the way, it sort of baby-shit-brown) from the deck (where I am right now) in the sun. You know the sun? That big yellow thing in the sky? It’s been so long I had almost forgotten what it looks like.

The evenings on the ship usually have some entertainment from the locality where we are docked (see, I do know the right word!), and last night it was awesome young dancers from Belgrade. Tonight there will be more dancers, this time from Osijek (we won’t depart Osijek until after 10pm). In the daytime, in the lounge there is a piano player. I can tell you it doesn’t get much better than sitting in a comfortable chair in the beautiful lounge, floating down the river, listening to live piano music, and being waited on hand and foot! This is a life I could easily get used to!

Monday, May 19, 2014

Life has a way of throwing a monkey wrench into the best laid plans. Luckily that monkey wrench often opens up some other great things. Yesterday was like that. We stayed on board and got to see the meeting of the River Duchess and the River Princess to exchange goodies (wine to the Duchess and beer to the Princess). You can see the photos on my previous post. And we couldn’t get to Osijek so we made an unscheduled stop in Aljmaš (pronounced Al-MAHSH), Croatia. This is a lovely little town with a spectacularly modern church. Last year they built a dock for river cruisers. The guide who lives in town was asked when she thought the first river cruising ship would stop there. “Never!” But here we were. The whole town turned out and the Captain and his girlfriend and several others got an impromptu football (soccer) match going. Two shirts at each end were the goals and when the Captain’s girlfriend let in a goal within about 2 nanoseconds, she was replaced in the goal. It was great fun to watch!