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May Chen (A13)
For the past twenty some years, we have always spent our Christmas holidays in New York City, but this year we decided to go to NYC for Thanksgiving instead, which left the question as to what to do during the Christmas holidays. A brochure of “Holidays on the Danube” caught my eyes. This tour started from Prague and then embarked the cruise ship in Vienna and then onto Bratislava and Budapest. Other than Bratislava, I have been to all the other capitals, but I don’t mind going back again on a cruise, we love river cruises, so what better way to celebrate Christmas than on a cruise ship?
We landed in Prague, Capital of Czech Republic, which also known as the “City of Red Roofs”. There are three principal geographic regions in Czech Republic, which are Bohemia, Moravia and Silesia, with Bohemia comprises the western two-third of the country. Up until now, I have no idea that Bohemians are actually Czechs; I always thought that they are some nomadic people like the gypsies that live from country to country.
Prague, in my opinion, is definitely one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, especially during the holiday season. Christmas markets were everywhere with the ones in the Old Town Square and Wenceslas Square being the largest. Although I didn’t intent to buy anything, but it was interesting just to see, and of course, whenever there is a market, there are foods to sell, The hot wine was very popular in that kind of cold and gloomy weather; the ham which was roasted on open fire (the skin was crispy), the sausages, potato pancakes, roasted nuts, etc. were also very tempting. There was also this interesting food, which was like some kind of dough that shaped like a large bracelet and was roasted on a rotating skewer; it has a slight taste of sweetness, hot, crispy and very yummy.
We had four full days in Prague, a town where Mozart had a special relationship with, so we decided to take in couple musical performances. We particularly wanted to go to the Estates Theatre where Mozart himself conducted the world premiere of his don Giovanni in 1787, but unfortunately there was nothing going on in that theatre during our stay, and we couldn’t get tickets to Mozart’s Magic Flute at the State Opera either, so we settled on the ballet, The Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky at the National Theater. This Neo-Renaissance theatre was funded entirely by private donations and was created by the most important artists of that era. It opened in 1881 and is a small (by American standard) but very intimate theater, beautifully decorated just like all the other great opera houses in Europe. On top of that, it only costs ~USD$14 for a very good seat. The principle dances are the soloists of the National Theatre Ballet, so even though I don’t know much about ballet, but I do know that it was an excellent performance, we enjoyed it tremendously.
I have been to Vienna several times, but none during Christmas. Although the city itself is not new to me, but because of the holidays, the whole city somehow transformed itself into one giant Christmas market; especially in the Rathaus (city hall) area, which was full of stands for Christmas ornaments, souvenirs, refreshments etc. Just like those in Prague, that area was adorned with Christmas colors and with lots of lights. The stands were trimmed with garlands and miniature bulbs. Browsing at all those stalls and looking at the happy faces of the lovely children, I couldn’t help but beginning to feel the festive mood.
Other than the Rathaus, Stephansplatz (the Old Town) is another place where the whole area was decorated with beautiful ornaments and lights. Since we had been to most of the popular sights and we had nothing to buy, and this was to be a relaxed tour, so we wandered into one of the most famous pastry shop for coffee and cake. In the past several trips to Vienna, I have given up on their pastries, I think their pastries were overrated, but this shop restored my faith in them; Vienna does has some wonderful pastries. However, their “world famous” Sachertorte in my opinion is still not worth writing home about. (The local tour guide agreed with me).
In Europe, December 24th is the day that they celebrate; the ship therefore arranged some extra activities for us. On that particular day, we had high tea and apple strudel demonstration in the afternoon followed with a Christmas Spirit cocktail hour. In the evening, we had a special 7 course Christmas Eve festive dinner with gifts to everyone – a Swarovski crystal necklace for the ladies and a Swiss army knife for men. With the free flow of wine, we all had a wonderful time.
Christmas day was spent in Bratislava, Slovakia. Before this day, I had no idea that Slovakia was once part of Czechoslovak. The Slavic people settled in the heart of central Europe during the fifth century, but their brief history was ended in 907 with the invasion by the Hungarians. They joined the Czechs upon the defeat of Austro-Hungarian Empire during World War I. The first Czech-Slovak Republic was found in 1918 (it became Czechoslovakia in 1920), but by 1948 the Communists had seized control of the government. Not until the fall of the communism and Czechoslovakia’s “Velvet Revolution” in 1989 that the Slovaks began pressing for a greater voice in their own affairs. So when the Czech and Slovak governments could not agree on the division of federal powers, they decided to split the country peacefully and fairly, thus Czechoslovak became Czech Republic and Slovakia in 1993.
Like just about every European capital, Bratislava also has a castle situated on the hill overlooking the Danube River and the entire city. The Cathedral of St. Martin, built in the 14th and 15th centuries was the coronation church of Hungarian kings and Emperors (including Maria Theresia) from 16th to 19th century. And also like every city in Europe, it has an Old Town. Since this is the only city in the whole trip that I have never been to, I of course would like to be able to visit the Palaces, the town hall and the museums, but due to the holidays, other than the castle ground and the Cathedral, everything was closed. I was really disappointed.
Back on the ship that afternoon, we had eggnog and live music in the lounge and the cruise arranged a special girls’ choir from the city to sing Christmas songs for us. They were surprisingly good. In the evening after dinner, the crew put on a show for us. They were hilarious; it was really fun.
Our last stop was Budapest. The ship docked right across the river from the Parliament building. We had the usual half-day “drive by” sightseeing, and then we ventured out on our own. This time I managed to visit some of the places that I didn’t get to go to last time, like the former Royal Palace (now it houses two museums), the Gellert Hill and the Covered Market. I would like to go back to the Parliament, but unfortunately it started snowing heavily at that time, so we decided to head back to the ship instead.
When I was in Budapest a few years ago, I didn’t have very good impression on this city, mainly because it was very dirty, with dog droppings everywhere, it totally turned me off. But this time around, I was pleasantly surprised that they really are trying to clean up the city, especially the area where most tourists would go. (I read that the city is spending about 1 million USD for the clean up and educate the people that they need to be responsible if they are going to have dogs. And dogs they have. According to that article, Budapest has the most dogs in Europe, 400, 000 of them and its human population is only 2 million). Besides, when the whole city was covered by a blanket of snow, you couldn’t see the dirt anyway, so it looked really pretty.
During our last day on board, the Program Directors, all in their 30’s from either Romania or Hungary spoke about growing up under communism. All of them have gone through some form of hardship. One of the PD’s father was jailed for 6 months in a hard-labored camp for making a joke about the government. One actually joined the revolution in 1989 as a teenage. He wore a shirt that had “89” embroidered on it and said that he will forever remember that date. But what struck me the most was when one described the joy they had when they were allowed to buy oranges and bananas, (the fruits that were not grown in Hungary) which came only twice a year – on Dec. 6, St. Nicholas Day and on Dec. 24. She said her sister ate so much bananas one year that she got sick from overeating it. Their life stories profoundly touched me.
During this whole trip, the weather was cold, damp and gloomy and with heavy snow on a few days, so even though we were prepared, it was still cold. However, spending the Christmas holidays in that part of the world is some experience that I wouldn’t want to miss. I learned a lot and we met some wonderful people and that alone is well worth the trip.
Last March we cruised the Danube and the Rhine, which traveled from Vienna to Amsterdam, this time, we went from Vienna to Budapest, so my next cruise destination should be from Budapest to the Black Sea. When that trip is done, I would have cruised the whole Danube River, and wouldn’t that be cool?
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