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Danube trip

on the A-rosa Mia

Home; Oettingen Heidenheim Donaufahrt Vienna Esztergom Budapest Bratislava Melk Messel

Donaufahrt

arosamia

Sunday, July 17th was the start of our trip on the Danube. But first we had to drive through the "rolling Bavarian Hills" from Oettingen to Passau. Actually, compared with the trip through the Gulag to get onboard the Norwegian Pearl in Vancouver for the Alaska cruise, this was a piece of cake. We found the garage without problems, parking and transfer to the ship was almost instantenously. There was no standing in hour long lines, no TSA, no INS. Instead we walked on board and each lady was given a red rose. Although we would be stopping in three countries (Austria, Hungary and Slovak Republic) there was no fuss. We had to show our passports after we boarded the ship and that was that. We were welcomed with hors d'oeuvres in the lounge, followed by the obligatory safety lecture. Since we would only be travelling on the river, there are no life boats. Life jackets are sufficient to keep everyone above water until one could either swim to shore (ore drift with the current to the next lock!) or be rescued. Once the safety lecture was over it was anchors away and we were on our way to Vienna.

We checked out our cabins and received our luggage almost as soon as we entered. Time to unpack and settle in for the next week.

cabin

The trip from Passau to Vienna took until the next morning and was punctuated by nine locks. The picture above shows my cabin during passage through a lock. The pictures below show how limited the clearance on either side was in the locks. Some locks are long enough to contain two ships at a time, however, the width of the ships as well as their height is limited by the locks, as well as the many bridges that span the river. There were a number of occasions when the announcement came that the upper deck would have to be cleared, sun sails trimmed, even the bridge had to be lowered sometimes. To quote the old song "low bridge, everyone down..." Except, of course that we were not heading for Buffallo! All passenger ships on the river are pretty much built the same way due to the constraints imposed by locks, bridges, as well as the channel in the river. Consequently, they average around 200 to perhaps 250 passengers.

lock2