Vienna

Unfortunately, when we awoke this morning it was raining, again. That meant that our tour around the City was disrupted somewhat as seeing the sights was not very easy through the rain spattered windows. Never the less we did see some really Grand buildings and quite a few nice statues. We eventually got out of the bus and had a walking tour around one area of the City, (there are apparently 22 areas of the city), one could say the busiest part of the City really. We battled numerous other tour groups, all with our umbrellas, as we sought to keep up with our guides, and that wasn’t easy. The rain had eased off a little so we were able to see some of the buildings ‘in the flesh’ and they certainly are lovely. The Opera House and the nearby St Stephen’s Church were sights not to be missed. We had hoped to see the Lipizzaner Stallions but they were safely tucked away in their stalls and out of the rain today.  Most of these horses/stallions are white and they apparently perform similarly to the Andalusian Horses back on OZ.  Rain has continued during the day, so we have stayed on the boat for the afternoon. We are off to the Royal Waltz Concert in one of Vienna's Famous Concert Halls tonight after dinner. We are to see some ‘elegant ballet dancers and hear some Opera singers present famous tunes of Vienna’, so we are looking forward to that experience.  It will be something totally different for us.

 Tour Group

Bratislava

Today we arrived in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. We had a full day ahead of us as the passengers finishing in Vienna were getting off here, and as the crew wanted to do a ‘deep clean’ of the boat, all the rest of us had to get off and go on tours as well. We were on the buses and gone by 8:45 am.  Our tour took us for a drive all through the City of Bratislava and up into the hills. Then we stopped at the Castle which sits overlooking the city and had a bit of a tour here. The locals call this Castle the’ upside down table” as it is a rectangle with a tower/turret on the 4 corners….understandable. Across the road from the Castle is the Parliament Building. This is a nice building which houses some 150 Politicians for the 5 million people whom live in this City. Overkill or what? From here we ventured into the busy centre of the city. After a walking tour where the special features were pointed out to us, we had some free time to explore by ourselves. Being a Sunday morning the many cafes were quite crowded with the locals all being somewhat amused and entertained by the many tourists I guess. We had a very nice lunch at a local restaurant, before boarding the bus to continue our tour.

We crossed the border and entered into Austria. Not a lot changed with regard to scenery here but there did seem to be lots of little villages along the way.  We were headed for Vienna but on the way, stopped in at the Schlosshof Palace for a couple of hours to tour the Palace and the ample grounds. This Palace is set on 50 hectares of land and is beautiful. The gardens are set out so nicely, they look like embroidered carpets. The inside of the Palace was grand of course, but the explanations of all the rooms took too long, so Dave and I left the group and did our own exploring. We actually saw more this way. We were entertained by a Stork who was re arranging his nest. The storks build their somewhat large nests on the top of poles or chimneys and the locals don’t discourage this as, of course, the Storks bring the babies. It did start to rain just as we were finishing our tour, so we were lucky with that.  As we continued our drive to Vienna we went through a couple of thunder storms and heavy rain, but this had stopped by the time we got to the boat, thankfully. The new passengers are on board and they do seem a little more ‘upmarket’ than the rest of us mere mortals on here… but, time will tell.

 Stork

Budapest

We arrived in Budapest very early this morning and were off the boat and on a city tour by 8:30 am. This place is beautiful. We started off on the Pest side of the town. The two sides of the town (Buda and Pest) are separated by the Danube River and there are about 7 bridges to cross from one side to the other, along the River. The many attractive buildings and parks are just lovely. The Hero’s Square is a huge area with 2 half circle structures with statues of the ‘brave’ in between every pillar (not unlike the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin). In the centre of the square is an obelisk with the angel Gabriel on top, and at the base are statues of men on horseback, but in the front and centre is King Stephen, the 1^st King of Hungary. After touring around the city seeing the HUGE Jewish Church and many of the Museums, we crossed the water over to the Buda side of town. Our stop here was at the Castle Area which is set high on a hill overlooking the water.  Here there is a huge Church, the Matthias Church, with an unusual coloured/patterned roof. Also up here is the Fisherman’s Bastion where the views over the water and city are spectacular. Right opposite this area, across the River, is the Fabulous Parliament Building. It is sure something to behold!! Nearby to the Parliament Building is the famous “Chain Bridge”, the oldest of the bridges, dating back to 1849.

We had intended to stay in town and wander round the place, but mid morning the temperature got to around 30 and we would have had to fill in 5 hours in the city. We chose to stay on the boat and we are glad that we did.  The views of the City as we sailed out of the town were just lovely.  There are so many grand buildings. We really enjoyed our trip today. It seems that the scenery is getting more interesting along the River now.

 Heroes Square

 Matthias Church

 View from Castle Hill

 Lots of River boats here

 A real "Water Bus"

 Parliament

Mohacs - Hungary

Well, today certainly started off differently!!  We had been warned that as we entered the Schengen area of the European Union, the free roaming area for EU citizens, there would be stricter control of passports. We were rudely awoken at 4:15 am and had to present ourselves, with our passports, to the Hungarian Border and Customs people for a face to face passport check.  That was certainly a little comical as people stumbled out of their rooms in various modes of dress, most in the ships dressing gowns, and lined up for the face check. Not sure how some of the women passed this test without their make up on though. By the time we got back to bed, there wasn’t a lot of point trying to go back to sleep, although, after sending a couple of pre-prepared emails (yes, the internet was working for a little while), Dave managed to go back to sleep for a half hour or so.

We are in Hungary this morning at a place called Mohacs. We will be doing our own thing here as the offered tours don’t grab us at all. Who wants to taste wine at 8:30 in the morning? And the Museum visit doesn’t interest us either. We only have 3-4 hours here, so we’ll ‘leg it’ again and discover the place for ourselves. Well, we have ‘done the town’ and it was a very nice town at that. The place is pleasant and clean. Shops a little on the small side, so browsing wasn’t all that easy, but we did go in couple and look around.

We are now steaming towards Budapest where we will reach around 2 pm tomorrow afternoon. So, this afternoon, most people will be trying to catch up on their sleep after this mornings interruption. 

Vukovar-Osijek

Today we were in Vukovar, Croatia, once a part of the communist state of Yugoslavia. On our walk around the town centre we were able to see that the place had taken quite a beating in the Civil War in 1991. Some buildings are still in disrepair, evident by the gaping windows and bullet holes in the many crumbling walls, but then other houses have been renovated and are looking quite good. The town has around 30,000 people, and is situated on the Danube River. There is a huge unemployment rate here, 35% in this area and 25% in the country itself. That’s a big sad! The City’s  fruit and vegie market seemed to be the place to be today as people bustled about scanning for the best bargain. Flowers markets are also very popular in most of the places we have visited since staring the River Cruise and they have some lovely ones.  Guess they need something to cheer themselves up with. Not sure if it’s just that these people are a little different to us and have had a hard life, but most of them look quite dour, we get the occasional smile, but they don’t exude warmth really.  We have been entertained by a local group of 4 young men playing some interesting and incredibly different musical instruments around lunchtime today. They were great. One particular instrument, the Bisernica Prima sounded like a violin but looked like a very small guitar or Ukelele, a lovely sound.

 Water Tower attacked in war

After lunch the boat moved upstream about 40 kms to the city of Osijek, still in Croatia. This place has 100,000 people and looks totally different to Vukovar. Although this town also took a bit of a beating in the Civil War only 30% of the place was wiped out. The town is quite vibrant and the River’s edge has been enhanced with bicycle paths and pleasant Restaurants lining the banks. Lots of people out and about riding bikes, rowing on the River Drava and generally enjoying themselves. A totally different feel to this morning’s visit. We walked all around the town for nearly 2 hours and discovered nice parks and some interesting shops. Tennis is a BIG thing over here too, all the tennis courts we passed were full of people having a game. All these little places we’ve visited seem to have a Macca’s in their towns and they are usually housed in grand old buildings and are much larger than our Macca’s. As with all the towns we have visited so far, there are a couple of lovely Churches here in Osijek, a tram system and trolley buses, but riding bikes is certainly a favourite mode of transport. I guess it helps that the countryside is fairly flat.