Day 4: Prague/Passau in Prague and the Danube Travel Log

This was a transit day. We were to take the bus from Prague to Passau in the afternoon to board the ship, so we had a free morning. We had breakfast and checked out by 9:30, and spent 2 hours walking along the Vltava. We made it all the way to Rudolfinum and got the requisite unimpressed picture. It was early enough in the morning so it wasn’t too hot to walk yet. We got back in time for a light lunch at the hotel (again), and then had the 3-hour drive to Passau. We were supposed to go to Regensburg but the ship couldn’t get there because of low water levels. I remember on our honeymoon, that this stretch between Regensburg and Passau was so shallow that our captain had to drain the pool to sail through with 20cm to spare under the bottom of the boat. With water level even lower now, and we are taking a bigger boat, there is no chance the ship could sail through.

At least the ship could still sail on other stretches of the Danube - we later found out the ships on the Rhine were all stuck.

I expected it to be a boring drive, but the countryside was beautiful. During lunch at Lobkowicz palace we were seated with some people who had already done a Munich/Salzburg excursion who spoke highly of their very funny guide by the name of Rhinegold Gerhardt. And it turned out Rhinegold was our chaperone on the bus ride. He also narrated(?) our trip down to Passau. He was indeed funny, but also informative (he was a forestry major so knew about the different trees in the countryside in addition to landmarks). The highlight for me was going across the head of the Vltava, where it was just a stream.

As we got closer to the German border I could see more and more German signs, and I realized that I could actually understand some of them now. At the rest stop (which was on Czech side, but was close enough to the border that the signs were bilingual in Czech and German) I managed to figure out how to use the coin-operated espresso machine.

We got to Passau but the ship was docked at a sad little dock some 10 minutes drive away from town. There were so many ships there. That’s when I realized all the Viking ships that couldn’t sail through were deposited there. And I had forgotten how big the ships were - it takes a whole minute just to walk from the front to the back of the boat.

When we checked in, I got two surprises. First, my in-law had called ahead to tell Viking it was my birthday, so Viking had a mousse cake and champagne waiting for me at the cabin. Second, and this was a surprise to La Professeure too, was that we had booked the second least expensive cabin on the ship (the cheapest was already sold out), our cabin had “problems” in it, so we got upgraded to the second most expensive cabin, which is a suite. We had so much more space to misplace things. The shock took a few days to wear off. I think the “problem” is viking noticing we’ve travelled three times in the cheapest cabin, and they couldn’t sell out the suites on this one, so they give us the suite in hopes they will book it again. It works on La Professeure, but not on me - more cabin space just means more places to misplace your things.

We went to requisite ship welcome talk (we were late - the cabin attendant and the publication both gave the wrong time) and met up with some people on the Prague extension. There are a few we’re pretty familiar with by now… two retired teacher couples who both (independently) moved to Delaware from New York, and a couple from Colorado that met on a Buddhist retreat. But everyone we met had been on fewer river cruises than us - we were realizing we were the seasoned cruisers now.

We had dinner, and at night Viking had some opera singers in the evening to perform. I think they tailored their performance to people who are not connoisseurs… (I was surprised nobody could name Eine Kleine Nachtmusik) so they picked the most accessible pieces, and hammed up their performances, which got into the way of singing (it’s hard to sing properly if you’re making out La ci Darem la Mano). When they do sing seriously, though, they sounded good.

Unfortunately the coffee I drank at the performance was stronger than I thought, so I’m now up at 4am. We have to wake up in 2 1/2 hours for the excursion to Regensburg. Scheissse.

Last updated August 25, 2022