Danube River Cruising

After encounters with some of the world's mightiest (the Nile, the Mississippi), I have come to think of rivers as sort of major arteries — the very aortas of the planet, delivering lifeblood to the organism. And the archetypal aorta is the Danube, where you can hear the pulse of Europe beating.

As an artery of commerce, combat and culture, the Danube fed the growth of so many of Europe's most glorious and interesting cities, a litany that included many we visited on our trip: Vienna, Bratislava, Budapest, Belgrade.

Dive into the Danube and you'll be soaked in culture. But the river, the actual water itself, is beautiful.

Though never that eponymous blue, it ripples with color and scenery. As our little ship, the Primadonna, proceeded, I could look out the sliding doors of my cabin and watch the movie, frame by frame, of our passage in a continuously changing series of stills.

Images so unusual, surprising and transitory I feared that by going to sleep, I would miss something important. Sometimes I'd open my curtains or wander into the lounge at the ship's bow onto a scene that would take my breath away or send me rushing to find my camera:

* Like the pinks of a sunrise or sunset (eat your heart out, California) shimmering past in our wake at the beginning or end of a day.

* The nighttime tableau in neon pinks and blues and greens created by a shoreline of illuminated museums in Linz, Austria, the result of its getting all dolled up for its reign as 2009's cultural capital (who knew?).

* A horizon of hulking mountains, shades of black to shades of brown and gray, huddling closer and closer to the ribbon of steel gray river until they merged somewhere, down there, in infinity.

* A night shrouded in fog worthy of Dracula, thick and unmoving and quieting the world, making the one or two lights that blinked off in the distance seem like the last posts of civilization on earth.

* The amazing machinations of the human mind when it comes to taming nature, via locks (alas, the treacherous Iron Gate region, and the engineering used to overcome its nautical dangers, came in the middle of dark and fog that made it impossible to see).

* Turning "just" another visit to Budapest, a city I'd been to three times before, into one finding me with goose bumps on my arms and tears in my eyes as we slowly approached the stately, illuminated landmarks on both shores and passed under the ice-colored Chain Bridge, dripping in strands of light.

The art

Here's what I keep thinking about: an amazing museum in Passau, Germany, that boasts the largest collection of glass in, I think, the world — with gorgeous goblets and delicate, hand-blown glass Halloween-scared arching cats and other magnificent pieces stuffed willy-nilly onto shelves in a profusion of rooms over five or so floors without much organization and even less illumination.

And I think about sitting in a tourist office in the center of the old section of Vienna, poring over brochures of art exhibits and musical events, unable to decide if I should see what's up for grabs at the next auction through the Dorotheneum, or just head out that night to see "Kontroversy," a show of pushing-the-edge photography at my favorite little gallery, the Kunst Haus Wein. Or perhaps catch some good old-fashioned dissonance at a Grieg concert at one of the local auditoriums. Well, at least I didn't have to make time for a performance of the accordion festival — that seven-day event was over two days before I got there.

Then, too, I remember one more image: a great, big, five-pillared art museum we passed on the way to the Pest side of Budapest, with huge pennants fluttering down between the pillars advertising "Monet," "Degas" and other well-known French impressionists. In Hungary.

You can tell a lot about a country by its museums. You can tell a lot about its leaders, what they care about. What they value. What they spend their money on. A society's evolution may mean it places more value on art, but it may also mean they value other cultures' art. Then again, as in the case of Passau, you've just got to keep your eyes open for the small, haphazard treasures that could be anywhere …

The surprises

We were all disappointed when we realized we were not going to get to hear an organ concert in Passau's St. Stephan's, which has the biggest pipe organ in all Europe. Some of the 17,000 or so pipes were built right into the walls of the church, to help effectuate that wall-shaking thunder effect.

But we did get to hear a 15-minute concert from an organ in the charming but small town of Kalocsa, Hungary; though none of us had ever heard of the thousand-year-old city, it has long been an important archdiocese and has an impressive cathedral. Which boasts, among other attractions, a 4,000-plus pipe organ that was much admired (and played) by Franz Liszt. The first massive notes of J.S. Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor may be so well known they're threadbare, but played here they were so beautiful and resonated so deeply in our souls that many of us left the church wiping tears from our eyes.

One of the program leaders accompanying our tour noticed us wiping at our cheeks as we boarded our bus.

"It's beautiful, right?" he nodded. "Some passengers on other cruises who got to hear both say they like this one better than the one in Passau. This one you can actually hear the music. In Passau, it's just like a big wall of sound."

Maybe they need to take a few of those pipes out of the wall.

The architecture

I love a good building. But here in Eastern Europe, it's not just that there's a killer art nouveau casino standing right at the dock in the Black Sea Romanian port of Constanta. It's that a five-minute walk away is a vast mosaic floor created by the Romans who founded the city 600 BC.

It's spending an afternoon in Vidin, Bulgaria, starting out traversing a stentorian plaza serving as an in-your-face (and feet) reminder of the not-very-distant communist era, wandering off to the bricks-and-arches skeleton of a 19th-century synagogue, and grabbing a look, shortly before embarkation time, at the town market: makeshift tents, kiosks and simple benches that have sprung up in a warren that is the current form of capitalism here in this small city. A snapshot of the amazing evolution of freedom that began when the walls came down and will end who knows where?

Every town we visited featured its own clash of old and new — clash, in most cases, because here in Eastern Europe clash remains the operative term. Invasion after invasion, revolution after coup, balkanization after reunification, the times change in this part of the world, and every time, the new regime brings with it new ideas about building. Witness Ceausescu's insane desire to remove everyone from the countryside and urbanize all of Romania into cities filled with perfectly common (i.e., nondescript, boxlike) architecture.

Here, it wasn't just a building's style, but the clash of styles. A beautiful and sometimes warring history of bricks and blown-out walls.

The animals

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated," Gandhi said. And as someone constantly looking out for how animals are treated, I can tell you it's true. In Eastern Europe, especially in countries or areas where the people are still living poorly, the animals usually can't fare much better. I saw so many homeless dogs and cats in Romania and Bulgaria that I could barely go out or look out a window, I sometimes felt so bad. Especially since they knew that docks equaled tourists, and tourists equaled handouts.

But I also saw some hopeful signs. In Romania and Serbia, for instance, many strays had tags in their ears, which meant they had been caught and at least spayed or neutered. Which at least meant they would not be contributing to homelessness in the future.

And in many areas, the dogs were anything but emaciated, and were all perfectly tame. Some would even catch a snack as you threw it to them. They've learned to live amicably with people, and the locals, as well as the tourists, give what they can (at least some of the tourists I saw).

In Bucharest I saw a dog hobbling, with a swollen leg. I tried to get it to come to me, but it hobbled off. I was, of course, in tears by then, and ran up to the nearest person I could find to help. Turns out the man worked at the parking lot where many of the dogs hung out.

We gesticulated back and forth as I tried to explain he needed to get the dog help, and he kept nodding. He explained that he sort of looked after the dogs around his area — a few were lolling in the sun near the cars, and he called them by name, and they came.

I gave him some money to help with the vet bill. I can't help but think there should be an actual job for a stray keeper in towns around Eastern Europe and beyond.

Tourists, I know, would be some of the first to contribute.

The passengers

An itinerary like this doesn't attract the 'Let's booze and meet babes' set. The trip included all sorts of well-traveled people. They weren't all from the United States, either — among the 130 or so aboard were Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, British and Japanese — though everyone could speak English.

I'm not the most garrulous of humans, but since there was no room service I had to emerge at least for meals, and there met all sorts of interesting people — a scientist who'd been studying global warming before global warming was cool; a couple of tough-drinking old salts from the Mother Country, as they'd likely think of themselves; a former nurse in the military; a seen-it-all flight attendant whose family went back generations in Hawaii. Most of them, it seemed, were as well-traveled, or more so, than I.

Many had hit the ground running upon retirement. Many were steeped in at least some aspect of the history we came upon during our trip, pushing our guides to discuss controversies or aspects of our destinations that they usually didn't cover (many of the guides were memorable, too, but I'll save that for another other story).

I came to have immense respect for all the folks on this trip, and couldn't wait to hear everyone's story. I remember on the Romanian extension at the end of our trip, I sat down at lunch beside a woman who, throughout our cruise, always had such a ready smile on her face, I kind of thought smiling was her basal metabolism and she didn't really care what she was smiling at. I noticed the woman was just closing up a little case that had a syringe in it.

Deciding to back off the heroin jokes, I asked "What's that?"

Turns out the woman had diabetes and had to take insulin shots three times a day. She gave herself shots right through her clothing. I was stunned. The smile took on a whole new dimension.

Turns out she got diabetes several years ago. I forget whether she said it was before or after her husband had a massive heart attack. He recuperated. She can still travel.

Today we take each day as a gift, she said.

That's one bit of flotsam that will forever float …