Our Next Great Adventure: The Right Wing to Left Wing River Cruise

During Covid, when very few people were traveling, I had the opportunity to book a Viking River Cruise at a terrific rate. I had heard several people give rave reviews about these cruises so I had my eye on one for a while. The one I booked covered Europe from Budapest to Amsterdam, on the Danube, the Main and the Rhine rivers. And so, on October 30, Bob and I boarded a United flight first to Newark, from Newark to Frankfurt, then Frankfurt to Budapest. I had heard that Budapest was one of the most beautiful cities in the world, so that alone was a draw, and the next 10 days or so would be traveling to numerous cities in Germany, then on to Amsterdam, which boasts legal prostitution and ‘soft’ drug use. Sounded like an adventure to us.

My maiden name was Dommermuth, a good German name, so I was interested in seeing where some of my ancestors came from. My father had always told me the name meant ‘dumb raiser of dogs’, or ‘raiser of dumb dogs.’ This was not very auspicious and I shared it with very few people. Recently however, recognizing that dad was not always the most trustworthy of interpreters, I looked into the name a little deeper. According to genealogy records, the name means unpredictable, adorable and confident. Wish I’d known that in high school—might have helped. Dommermuth’s mostly come from Germany, to no one’s surprise, and we were apparently, carpenters and bookkeepers in the old country. I have neither of those skills.

We elected to pay for the upgrade to business class on the European flight since we need our sleep. When we arrived in New Jersey, I realized I had two free passes to the United Polaris lounge, so we relaxed there for an hour and got a bite to eat. We also were fed dinner and breakfast on the flight to Europe so we sure weren’t hungry. Those flights were all without drama, and we both got a few hours sleep.

Once we arrived in Frankfurt, we were met by an airport attendant who informed us our flight was waiting for us but that we had to hurry. And they weren’t kidding. The Frankfurt airport is pretty big, and we initially traveled by van to an area where we were assured we could get our passports processed quickly. This turned out to be incorrect, as the area was closed. Our intrepid guide then death-marched us about a mile through the airport to a VIP area where we were processed without further incident. Our guide was young, long-legged and our group of five was three seniors and two younger women who were not fans of brisk walking so I’m sure we got our exercise in for the day. I mostly ran to keep up with her. She was an uber-efficient German. Once on the plane, we were fed again. We certainly did not go hungry getting to Hungary.

Sadly, however, once we arrived at the Hungary airport, I received a message that one of our bags, the one with all our toiletries, had not yet left Frankfort. This was our first realization that most of the signs in the Hungary airport are in Hungarian, many without any English interpretation. It took a bit to find the lost luggage counter, but we did, and filled out the paperwork. The lovely woman at the desk let us know that our bag would arrive at the airport around evening, and it would be delivered to our hotel, so everything seemed fine.

We grabbed a cab to the Intercontinental Budapest, which took about 40 minutes. While Hungary is a part of the EU, they do have their own currency; the Hungarian Forint. The exchange calculation is complicated, but essentially 1 Hungarian Forint (HUF) equals 0.0027 USD! And while the euro is accepted in Hungary, they much prefer either credit cards or HUF’s. So don’t be put off by things costing thousands of HUFs. Our check in at the Intercontinental was easy and our room had a spectacular view of the Buda Castle. This is the palace complex of the Hungarian Kings and is eclipsed only by the Parliament Building. The foundation of the Buda Castle dates back to the original structure from 1265 AD, although the original castle was destroyed by bombs in WW2. We have a trip scheduled tomorrow with Nikki Cosmos, with whom we contracted through Tours By Locals, and we expect a full 7 hour day. But since we had some time our first night, Bob suggested we book a night river excursion on the Danube to see the entire city lit up for night. We found one through the hotel website so we booked it.

I usually do a lot of research when we travel, in part so I know what we want to spend our time on, but also because I am relentlessly type A. And it is always fun when I fail to do that and we are surprised by something we didn’t expect. That was the case for our night river cruise. We got the hotel to drive us the 2 miles north on the Danube to the dock for our riverboat, and shortly after we arrived, we began the boarding process. But we had missed the fact that tonight’s cruise, October 31st, would be a Halloween cruise. Many of the people and all of the staff were dressed in costumes, and the cruise had clearly attracted a fairly young adult crowd. The drinks were included in the price, were unlimited, and the music was pretty much from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, which was fine with us. The Danube in Budapest at night is beautiful, and we had a great time with all the ghouls and monsters.

When we returned to the hotel, our lost luggage had arrived, so all was well. The bed was comfy, the pillows were filled with down and were delightfully plump and inviting and we slept like babies.

Next morning, I was looking out our window at the Danube and saw our Viking ship, the Vali arriving. We had a quick breakfast, showered and got ready to meet Nikki, our guide for the day. I had booked her for 7 hours for a comprehensive walking and public transportation tour of the city, and she turned out to be a wealth of information, personable and very knowledgeable and adept at navigating Budapest.

I have to say that I started out by thinking that Budapest was pretty conservative and even right wing, and while that is true, Budapest is surprising, complex, beautiful, full of history, and presents a cautionary tale for our present day. More about that later. Budapest has been ruled by the Mongols, the Ottoman’s, was the co-capital of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, ruled by Kings before joining the Germans and being part of the Nazi’s in WW2, then conquered by the Russians becoming a communist government, and finally growing into a parliamentarian democracy, which currently appears to be becoming an authoritarian state. If there are lessons to be learned in history, Budapest has been exposed to them. Nikki was the perfect guide for us. Smart, curious, open to all questions, and willing to discuss historical and current politics, she proved to be a great educator of all the iterations of Budapest, the positive and the negative. She shared with us that she was fortunate under communist rule to be identified as a 16 year old teenage exchange student with England, where she learned to speak perfect English, and was exposed to a very different way of life than she saw at home. Her parents were not allowed to go to England with her as they were denied visas, but she went alone. Brave girl! I could never do justice to all the things she taught and showed us, but a few things stood out. The Shoes on the Danube Bank is a memorial to the Jews who were murdered by the fascist Hungarian militia, known as the Arrow Cross party during WW2. The Jews were tied together in a line and marched to the edge of the Danube, where every person was told to remove their shoes (shoes had value and could be sold), then every third or fourth person was shot in the back, causing that person, and others tied to them, to fall into the Danube and either die from the bullets or drown. They didn’t shoot them all to preserve the bullets. We also saw a cemetery dedicated to scores of Jews slaughtered by the Nazi’s. There is some difference of opinion of the arrival of the Russians during WW2. To some they were liberators, especially for the Jews, but for others they brought communism and were hated for upending the economic structure of the nation. Another impressive sight was the Emanuel Tree. This is a metal weeping willow tree meant to suggest a menorah upside down with the names of the Budapest holocaust victims inscribed on every leaf. It is beautiful and tragic.

Budapest has incredibly safe and efficient public transportation, so we rode busses and subways, but the subway designed by the communists, which is still in use, was an example of how the party tried to change the face of Budapest with its ‘modernization’ of Russian construction, which was nondescript and plain compared to the beautifully constructed wooden and tile subways designed by the locals. We saw numerous examples of this plan for modernization and in every case the communist version was dull compared to the previous.

The City is divided into various sections, mostly around the triad of the Catholic, Jewish and Protestant churches and cathedrals, and they are something to behold. We were in the City on a holiday, and while there were a lot of people, nothing seemed crowded. The streets were clean, safe and each area we visited was different from the last. We had lunch at a restaurant that had a long history, only closing during the worst of the WW2 years, and the Hungarian food was delicious and substantial. We finished the meal with a couple of Hungarian cakes, and didn’t need to eat again for the rest of the day. If you ever get to Budapest, look up Nikki on Tours by Locals. She is outstanding.

My final impression of Budapest is that it is a cautionary tale for Americans. After dealing with the Nazi’s, the Communists and finally managing to affect a democracy, they are in grave danger of losing that, having elected a ‘populist’ leader who plans to be in charge for life. Hungary is no longer considered a democracy and European values are being undermined by the current government. There are concerns with the electoral system, which has been systematically excluding people who think differently than the Orban majority, and vulnerable groups, such as ethnic minorities, LGBTQ people, human rights defenders, refugees and migrants are at risk. Orban is feuding with the EU and has modified the political system to strongly favor his majority party. Think gerrymandering in the US. America is in grave danger of following this path, and people who currently delight in the limiting of rights for those they feel superior to will ultimately find their own rights in danger. I hope we are smart enough to recognize it.

We were completely exhausted after our long day and turned in as soon as we returned to the hotel. Next day was warm and beautiful and we were so grateful for the excellent weather. We packed and headed down to the checkout area, where we quickly found a cab to take us and our very heavy bags to the Viking Vali. (We are the worst packers!) Our information suggested that we wouldn’t be able to get into our room until 4, but it was ready at noon, so we gave our bags to the Viking helpers and headed to our room. We sailed with Viking on an ocean voyage to Cuba many years ago, and we knew this room would be much smaller. But it was designed with utmost efficiency and we felt everything would fit. While we waited for our luggage to arrive, we decided to walk over to the Budapest market, which had been closed yesterday for the holiday. That was amazing. The market is huge and filled with every type of meat, fish, vegetable, fruit, spice and craft imaginable. The only problem was that very few people spoke English.

We had a moment of anxiety the day before when I got a call from Bob’s cardiologist. Bob had been wearing a cardiac monitor for the month prior to our trip after a visit to the ED and an admission for syncopal episodes. There was no repeat of those during his hospitalization, so we figured we would never know what happened. But apparently the cardiac monitor, which we removed just prior to leaving the States, showed a run of atrial fibrillation, and Bob’s doctor wanted to add an anticoagulant. That wasn’t going to work in Budapest. We carry a Kardia six lead cardiac monitor with us, so we ran a strip and he was in normal sinus rhythm with no symptoms. So with some expert support from my brother, we decided to up his baby aspirin dose and cross our fingers. But that meant we needed to get additional baby aspirin. So we decided to see if we could find an apothecary near the marketplace. Our lack of proficiency with Hungarian threatened to be a problem, at first, and google translate doesn’t include Hungarian. But between looking up words, smiling a lot, and making a concerted effort at finding patient people to help us, we found a drug store and got what we needed. Not being able to speak the language is a great way to make you humble.

Back at the Vali, we explored the ship, had a delicious lunch, and enjoyed the beautiful day on the deck. We attended the welcome meeting with the 190 other guests and met a few. Dinner on the Vali had several choices and we are told that in each city we will be offered a dinner choice using the local cuisine. Tonight was Chicken Paprikash, which uses the apparent national spice of Hungary, Paprika. In the marketplace we were literally surrounded by the various iterations of paprika, which can be sweet, spicy and blisteringly hot. The chicken was yummy and the sponge cake dessert was fine, although it couldn’t hold a candle to the sweets we had at our restaurant with Nikki yesterday. Tomorrow, we have time to sleep in and then a tour of the Communist years in Budapest.