I mentioned in an earlier post that we almost weren’t going to be allowed to sail from Passau (our second-to-the-last port) to Regensburg (our final port), due to the Danube’s low water levels. Obviously, that got cleared up, since we did go to Regensburg.
We were supposed to spend the night on the riverboat in Regensburg, and disembark there in the morning. However, there was a concern that the Danube might get so low overnight that the ship would get stranded there. Although we (the passengers) probably wouldn’t care since we were disembarking, Emerald cruise line didn’t want the ship stranded there.
Planned ending: Passau → Regensburg → ground transportation to the Munich Airport
Hence, when the day’s activities for Regensburg ended, we set sail to a place that wasn’t on our agenda at all, Straubing, for our disembarkation tomorrow morning.
Actual ending: Passau → Regensburg → Straubing → ground transportation to the Munich Airport
Because we had an early flight to Paris, we had arranged private transportation from our disembarkation point to the Munich airport to be picked up at 5:30 a.m., which turned out to be a huge clusterfuck when the pick-up location changed from Regensburg to Straubing.
But we won’t get into that here, because nobody really cares but us. (Let’s just say that the Emerald Star receptionist ended up carrying our 50-lb bag for a literal half mile to get to the car that was picking us up.)
The full dining room breakfast was going to be available for everyone else getting off the riverboat later in the morning, so Emerald prepared a “breakfast to go” for Bob and me, which we were delighted about and very pleased with.
To-go breakfast bags
Contents of the bags
Close-up contents
Sandwich close-up
We ate it in our (chauffeured) car on the 1.25-hour trip to the the Munich airport.
We flew from Munich to Paris (Charles de Gaulle) and then direct from Paris to Raleigh. Both flights were uneventful, which sadly is the exception rather than the rule in air travel these days.
We did the “Walking Tour of Regensburg with Sausage Tasting” excursion, and you can just imagine the saucy banter among 40 gay men about tasting sausages.
And speaking of sausages, once again for some queer reason, most of the guys gravitated to one particular guide, Daniel Husband. He was a professional baseball player, and it showed.
Daniel and his massive biceps took us through the town:
There was a Dachshund Museum there, and Bob and I popped inside:
In Neupfarrplatz square, there were Stolpersteine or “stumbling stones,” which are memorial plaques embedded in the sidewalk to commemorate victims of the Nazis.
St. Stephens was in the center of town, and we stopped in it:
The last thing on the walking tour was a stop at The Sausage Kitchen, where we sat on the steps and Daniel collected our orders — ranging from all the way (mustard & kraut), to no mustard, to no kraut, to plain, to breadless — for a free sausage sandwich.
Bob’s sandwich – “all the way”
John’s sandwich – plain
After the tour ended, Bob and I returned to a bakery that Daniel had said has his favorite pretzels in town, and we each got one.
Tonight’s entertainment on board was the Bavarian Brass Band, who played “oompah music” for us.
For at least three-fourths of the trip, we’d been ordering regular drinks, and then in an aha moment, it occurred to us to order doubles and save the bar staff 50% of their trips to our table!
This is the only port call that we hadn’t already arrived at when we woke up, so it made for a nice leisurely morning. Bob and I had been getting up at 6 or 6:30 every day, so this was nice.
Bob participated in the 10:00 Trivia with Paula activity, while I worked on my blog. Our friend Ken was the winner!
Spoiler alert: The outside
Paula, the activities director
Bob, hard at work
Ken, the winner
I found this trivia question most interesting:
Who are the only 3 people in the world who can travel without a passport?
Click here to see the answer.
The emperor and empress of Japan & King Charles.
Neither of us participated in the Crazy Gold or the Bike Tour activities.
After lunch, I took the Walking Tour of Passau, while Bob stayed on the riverboat.
Might I remind you that we’re traveling with a group of about 40 gay men? For some queer reason, the majority of the guys in our group gravitated toward this tour guide, Ugur from Istanbul, out of the 6 guides available.
Two funny things with regards to Ugur:
In telling us how safe this city is, he told us that once he went away for two weeks and forgot to lock his bicycle. When he got back it was still there, and it had a note on it that said, “This bike is too cheap to steal.” (He suspects it was actually a friend of his that put it there.)
We’d just passed the courthouse, where he’d told us that they get 2 chances to pass the bar here, and if you fail the second time, you can’t retake it. A few minutes later, a lady holding a bouquet came running toward him, they seemed to be celebrating, speaking in German, and then he said, “This is my friend, and she just passed the bar! It was her second chance, so it was critical that she pass. It seems like she’s been studying for 10 years straight for this.” There were cheers and applause all around from our group.
Within the first 10 minutes of the tour, the bottom fell out of the sky, and all of us were under a tree trying to keep dry. It was a fierce downpour with loud thunder, and it lasted about 10 minutes. We had a pretty view from there, though.
City scenes:
Guess how many total Scrabble points the letters of this sign add up to!
Click here to see the answer.
118!
I was walking ahead of the rest of our BearCruise group, and when I saw this store I thought, “Oh boy. Y’all have no idea what’s about to hit you.” I knew every bear in our group would stop in it!
We checked out St. Stephen’s Cathedral, and like most of the ones we’ve seen, it was elaborate.
“And, yes, I’m talking about that big-bellied schmuck right there!”
Tencalla-Garten
We participated in the Jukebox Jury activity, which was kind of a brilliant way to get people geared up for the subsequent disco dancing.
They gave us a list of 10 disco songs — which weren’t all disco songs, but songs from the “disco era” — and we had to predict which 3 songs (in order) would get the most people up on the floor dancing.
The list
Our answers
The brilliant part, of course, was that everybody wanted to get out on the dance floor when one of the songs they’d voted for was played.
Our favorite pictures are of our favorite bartender, Yuliana, when she joined in on one of the songs. It looks like she’s dancing with wild abandon!
Our friend Kayo won by getting the top 3 in the right order!
The day after we had our fun, fun, fun dinner with Daniel and Michael, Michael sent a text asking if we’d noticed the quote on last night’s dinner menu.
We did the morning Göttweig Abbey tour: “A walk through history and now of the Monastery of Goettweig — a view into the life of the monks.” Full disclosure: We did not see any actual monks even though there are some that still live there.
Our guide’s name was Sophie, and I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard anyone talk faster than she did, not even friends of mine from New York.
Courtyard views of the abbey:
A couple of shots in the Göttweig Abbey church:
The altar
The bully pulpit
The big cheese’s chair
The organ
Bishop Altmann’s parts
A couple of quick things:
What’s better than a candelabra on your piano? Tulips on your organ.
In Bishop Altmann’s coffin, there’s only his skull, one arm, and a rib.
There was a scenic overlook here and we took pics for several other people here and someone returned the favor.
Beautiful! (And the scenery, too.)Bob still totally smitten with me after close to 10 years of marriage. 😂 😂 😂
We did not participate in the Durnstein Castle Ruins Hike or the Wachau Bike Tour excursions. Instead, we took advantage of the free time in Durstein, and walked around the cute little village.
Street scenes
Amusing sights
Rabbit shit!
Variety vending!
Wine sandwiches!
Dogs
A man and his dogs
Doggies!
Shopping
Christmas balls
Christmas tchotchkes
Bobbleheads
Flora
Grapevines
Grapes
Apricots
Such a cute little village. Time enjoyably spent.
Back at the riverboat, while the bikers biked along the Danube for 3 hours, the riverboat traveled through the Wachau Valley to Krems, where the bikers also ended up, and we stopped to pick them up.
Tonight’s dinner:
I had the recommendations, exchanging Bananas Foster for the Kaiserschmarren & Zwetschkenröster (easy for you to say!).
The entertainment this evening was The No-Budget Band, comprising our riverboat housekeepers Heri and Agus.
And at one point they called up Al — our fearless BearCruise cruise director — to sing a song. Within a minute, Al had the room in his hands with John Denver’s Take Me Home, Country Roads.
In his early years, Al sang and danced on cruise ships and for a while in shows at Carowinds or Kings Dominion.
We’ve had a couple of schedule changes because the Danube River water levels are precariously low.
At first, we were going to have to end in Passau instead of Regensburg, because it didn’t look like we’d be able to get to Regensburg before the water got too shallow.
Then we got word that we were going to be able to go all the way to Regensburg.
And just now (mid-day) on Friday, already in Regensburg, it was determined that the river is evaporating/draining so fast that if we stay here over night to disembark in the morning as planned, by morning the ship might be stranded here because of the low water level — fine for us because we’re disembarking; bad for the cruise line, which won’t be able to get out of here.
So at the end of tonight, we are going to sail to a place between here and Passau, called Straubing to disembark there.
We have “private” transportation arrangements, meaning a driver is coming to pick us up to take us to the Munich airport, and we’ve been in touch with the driver (who is great) via WhatsApp to stay on top of the changes.
I’ve decided to order a drink now every time plans change.
My plus-sized Bloody Mary and Al having empathy drink with me.
“Affordances” in the discipline of user-centered design are the things about a product that make their usability “easy” or “intuitive.”
I’ve noted 2 things on this riverboat whose affordances do not advance their usability:
The icons on the water machine, and
The handles on the doors into the lounge and bar.
Water machine
Its affordances: The two icons that indicate sparkling water (on the left side) and still water (on the right side).
I watched person after person put their glass under the right icon when they wanted still water and under the left icon when they wanted sparkling water, which is the intuitive thing to do.
The problem is that both the sparkling and the still water are dispensed in the middle of the machine, so you need to put your glass there regardless of which kind of water you want.
A better affordance would be if those two icons were stacked (like a stoplight) in the middle of the machine above where the water actually comes out, which would make it intuitive to always put your glass there.
Door
Its affordances: The handles on these doors are the same on both sides, and they are the type of handles that one intuitively pulls.
The problem is that you need to push the door to enter the lounge, and you need to pull the door to exit the lounge.
Better affordances would be to have standard handles that people intuitively know how to use — so a flat handle on the side you push to enter and a handle like that one that’s already on them on the side you pull to exit.
Here he is with Yuliana, one of the bartenders extraordinaire on the riverboat!
Bob is someone who likes to try new things, while I prefer things I already know — especially with regards to food and drink. It’s mid-morning here, and we’re sitting in the lounge and bar where I’m catching up this blog.
Bob to Yuliana: I want to try a drink I’ve never had before.
Yuliana: What kind of liquor would you like in it?
Bob: Vodka.
Fast forward a few minutes, and she delivered my third Bloody Mary along with Bob’s “surprise drink.”
Her: Don’t ever ask me to do this again. It makes me very nervous when someone asks me to surprise them or to “be creative” with a drink.
Photo attribution: I shamelessly stole (let’s think of it as “re-use”) these photos from our friend, Jim Shea, whom we met on a previous BearCruise, and who has a similar sense of humor to mine.
Here he is in Bratislava making brilliant photographic use of one of the water jets in this fountain!
And now for our riverboat tour:
Our riverboat
Our riverboat
Our cabin (the top half of the window slides down)
Our cabin
Our cabin
The bar and lounge
More bar and lounge
More bar and lounge area
Main dining area
Forward outdoor sitting area
The sun deck
Sitting area on sun deck
Games area on the sun deck
Sun deck track (8 laps is a mile)
(Mini) gym
Multi-purpose room – group exercise in the morning, movies in the evening (screen comes down from above far window), and pool (it’s under the floor, which slides back)
Sunset over the Danube last night leaving Bratislava heading toward Vienna:
I enjoyed a cuppa cawfee (without the tawk) in our cabin this morning.
Today’s program:
We skipped the “Art Tour of Vienna” excursion, because we like neither art history nor museums. Discuss.
Bob and I took the 2:30 free shuttle bus from the riverboat to the City Center Schwedenplatz and walked around in the light drizzle. Bob was my umbrella aide-de-camp whenever I took a photo.
Other city walk pics:
Our ship provided a city map for our walk
When a male step likes another male step, they turn gay!
I’m sure I’d crash before I could decipher this street pavement sign.
Tonight’s dinner menus:
We forewent the evening classical music concert for several reasons:
Bob doesn’t care for classical music.
I attend the N.C. Symphony somewhat regularly, and I constantly listen to our classical music station — which Bob affectionately refers to as “the oldies station.”
I did the Viennese waltz in Vienna with my then-wife when I was here 45 years ago, which I view as an equivalent experience.
With all that said, the people who went reported that the concert was great! And it was a special concert just for the people on this riverboat cruise.
Bob and I were walking the streets of Vienna when we saw this business:
Struck by the lengths of these words and the frequency of less-used letters in English words that they contain, we thought they’d be killer Scrabble words. We weren’t wrong:
I told my once-grad-school professor and now friend, Susan, about this Danube riverboat cruise and she said she’d always wanted to go on one.
I knew she had a gay grandson, and since the group I’m going with is a gay group, I said, “I said, “You should come on this one, and you should ask Peyton to go with you.” And she did!
Susan and I are both avid readers, and we are each in a book club, but not the same one. I said, “We should both read a (fiction) book involving a Danube riverboat cruise and discuss it on the cruise!”
She thought it was a great idea, so we did. Turns out neither one of us was impressed with the book, and I said, “Sometimes in a book club, the worst books can have the best discussion.” We both said, “Yeah, yeah. Let’s go with that.”
We met today and discussed it.
Afterward, we added a note to the inside front cover and donated the book to the riverboat’s share-a-book collection.
When we’re home, we host happy hour on Mondays on our front porch, and we cheer on the runners of the Pelagic Run Club, which is associated with a bottle shop that’s less than a mile from our house.
Since we’re in Vienna, we didn’t have it today, but we did check our web cam that shows our front yard at the time they pass by and caught a few shots of them going by.
Update: Our friends Sam & Neal picked up the slack by putting signs out at their house, which is one street over from ours.
This morning, relax on board as we sail to Bratislava. An ancient landscape awaits, where remarkable towers add to a skyline that perfectly encapsulates the history of the city, and preserved medieval fortifications tell tales of a turbulent past.
Today’s program:
Excursions at this port:
Coffee and cake with the locals: You will be invited into the home of a local family to learn more about their traditions and culture over coffee and cake.
Bratislava city tour: Your local guide will take you through the heart of the city, as you soak in the sights of the lavish Episcopal Summer Palace and the neo-Renaissance façade of the Slovak National Theatre.
In what undoubtedly will be the most memorable part of this trip, we visited a Bratislava’s home and connected on a intimate, human level.
Matthew (hysterical) was our tour guide. Ondrus (extremely knowledgeable) was the local expert who told us about the country and what we were seeing on the 45-minute ride to the village where Andre (the homeowner) lived.
Andre was adorable which doesn’t really matter — (but, my goodness, doesn’t it help?) — and he welcomed seven of us (Kayo, Ken, Al, Daniel, Michael, Bob, and me) into his home.
He was an interesting and personable guy who told us about his life here and answered a bunch of questions from us. He likes to make homemade spirits, and even though this program is billed as “coffee and cake,” he offered us, and we took him up on, some of his homemade spirits with the cake.
Some pics of his house and hospitality:
And yes, that’s Bob playing the Steirische harmonika! After his third or fourth glass of spirits, the spirit moved him to ask Andre if he could try it.
We returned to the riverboat for lunch and enjoyed a salad bar and fish and chips!
After lunch, we set out for the city walking tour, and one of the guides was Matej from this morning’s home visit, so we got in his group, because we knew how good and funny he is!
A few pics of the tour:
Matej told two stories regarding these two sites:
About the “Man at Work” sculpture, he said the locals laugh at the tourists whenever they see them squat down next to it for photos and rub its head (which apparently many do “for good luck”), because what they know is that dogs relieve themselves on that statue all day long.
“Man at Work” street art
“Man at Work” side view
“Man at Work” close-up
And about the “creeper man,” he said that that guy was a real person, and in fact his grandmother knew him, but he got spurned by a woman and went a little crazy (as in with mental illness) over it. And after that, he started staring and making goo-goo eyes and comments at women and became “creepy,” which today would probably consider what he was doing as harassment.
“Creeper Man”
And tonight’s dinner:
Bob’s salmon
John’s chicken
Bob’s Jello
John’s bananas foster
Tonight’s activity was “An Evening with the Stars,” where video or audio clips of movies were played and we had to guess the name of the actors or movies. Our dinner companions from last night (who also do their weekly dinner menus) are in the front of the middle table: Daniel in the blue & black flowered shirt, with Michael to the right of him in the black polo shirt.
The crowd participating in the movie trivia game — the 2 front tables are members of our group.
Missing Title
1 – Pretty Woman
2 – Finding Nemo
3 – Rocky
4 – Green Mile
5 – Fight Club
6 – Shrek
7 – Shawshank
8 – Lion King
9 – The Matrix
10 – Titanic
Music From Movies
1 – The Breakfast Club
2 – Skyfall
3 – Mission Impossible
4 – The Naked Gun
5 – Rocky Horror Picture Show
6 – Star Wars
7 – Austin Powers
8 – Breakfast at Tiffany’s
9 – Ghostbusters
10 – The Blues Brothers
Excursion description: Architecture from across the centuries shines a light on the history of the Hungarian capital. Originally two separate cities, Buda to the west and Pest to the east offer incredibly different views on the culture of one of the liveliest cities in Eastern Europe. Today, you’ll have the opportunity to explore the city during a guided tour, including Heroes’ Square and the UNESCO World Heritage-listed Andrássy Avenue and Buda Castle District.
These brilliant devices were provided in our cabins, which you use during the walking tours to be able to hear your guides without everyone having to crowd around them.
We loved our tour guide — “You can call me Charlotte,” she said. She’s in the purple dress in the last picture in this set. A few of my favorite things of this outing:
The Hilton Budapest was built with the assistance of Zsa Zsa Gabor, who convinced the communist dictator to allow the Hilton company to build the first Hilton in the Eastern Bloc.
Our tour guide said she checked on where the most expensive bottle of champagne in Budapest can be bought, and it was in the restaurant of this Hilton – a $3,000 bottle.
Us with scary-customed man at the Buda Castle
Our tour guide called the lady who collects your payment to use these toilets “The Dragon Lady”
Late afternoon, we had a “Captain’s Reception” and then our “Port Talk,” which is when they tell you about the next port and everything going on there.
During the captain’s reception, we enjoyed champagne with an amuse bouche, and I treated myself with a change from bourbon and sodas to a treat from the Vodka Cocktail Collection. We had the most expensive, so all-inclusive drink package, so why not?
We had a most delightful dinner, sharing a table with new friends, Daniel & Michael. They’re from Seattle and they’re the first people we’ve met who create a list of dinner menus for the week like we do.
Each night for dinner, there is the full menu, along with a “chef’s recommendation” menu:
Bob and I both chose the chef’s recommendation this evening:
Mushroom & vegetable tartar
Lobster bisque
Passion fruit sorbet
Slow-roasted pork tenderloin & mushroom espuma
Glazed chocolate dome & amarena cherries
After dinner there was a “Name That Tune” game that I didn’t participate in, but Bob did. There were 3 parts to the game with the emcee playing a clip of music each time.
First round: You had to identify the song title and the artist (or band). Second round: You had to identify a song that was being played backward. Third round: You had to say if the song played sold more or fewer than 10 million records.
Bob’s team won, and they were presented a free bottle of spirits and some chocolate.
Today’s the day when our pre-cruise stay ended and we boarded the Emerald Star riverboat. We boarded just before 11
and had to wait until 12:30 for our embarkation lunch.
Our cabins were projected to be ready around 2, but were ready earlier. We have a Panoramic Balcony Suite whose highlight is a floor-to-ceiling window that slides down opening it up to the outside. Home sweet home for the next 7 days.
Our cabin (the top half of the window slides down)
Our cabin
Our cabin
After the captain’s welcome, we had dinner. Typically we get 2 menus, one is the full menu and the other one contains the “captain’s recommendation” from the full choices. I forgot to grab a copy of the full menu, but here’s the captain’s recommendation one, which both Bob and I had.
After dinner, we were treated to a Hungarian Folklore Music & Dancing show. Of course, for our group of about 40 gay men, most eyes were on the male dancers.
and we ended the evening with our riverboat staying in Budapest and cruising around the Danube, which was stunning at night.
While walking around the aforementioned Corvin Square, Bob and I got tickled when we saw this sign:
Whenever “people of our age” get together and start talking about all of their knee and hip replacements, etc. — which Bob hates — I’ll eventually announce, “Okay, the organ recital is over.”
On the way to checking out, we created this image as a visual pun.
What is it?
Click here for answer.
Shoofly! Webster’s definition is:
shoofly noun
shoo·fly ˈshü-ˌflī
1: a child’s rocker having the seat built on or usually between supports representing an animal figure
2: any of several plants held to repel flies
7 of us from Raleigh — Al, Ken, Susan, Peyton, Kayo, Bob and I — met for happy hour at a nearby pub called Belgian Brasseire,
which had an incredible (meaning pages and pages) of beer selections.
We had 3 or 4 (or 5 or 6) rounds of spirits. Bob and I drank Maker’s Mark on the rocks, and the rest of the group had beer.
We went our separate ways for dinner, and Bob and I ate at a place called Corvin Gastropub, which we thoroughly enjoyed
Corvin burger menu
Corvin bourbon menu
and we had the Corvin burger, which came with fries, and which was delicious.
Corvin burger and fries
If you’ve traveled in Europe you probably know how hard it is to get some ice in drinks without asking for it, and asking for a lot of it. So imagine our surprise when this cute little bucket of ice with giant-sized ice cubes was delivered with our high balls!
Bourbon and ice!
In my defense, I did say to our server (who was great) that, “We’re Americans so you know we like a lot of ice.” Bless her.
Corvin Coffee & Bistro
Corvin Heritage House
Corvin Square
As we ate, I noticed that the businesses around the gastropub all had Corvin in their names, and I asked our server if one person (named Corvin?) owned all of these businesses, to which she laughed and said, “No it’s the name of the square here and he was a king.”
We flew from Raleigh to Paris (on July 2) and to Budapest (on July 3). They were Delta Flights, operated by Air France, and our friends Al & Ken were on the same flights. We were slightly delayed out of Raleigh due to bad weather, and we had a 2-hour delay for our Paris to Budapest flight.
