History: In all previous travel journals I had just included a paragraph or two about pre-trip activity at the top of the Day 0 webpage. On this occasion, however, so much transpired before I even set foot in the first airport that a whole page was necessary. This approach also has the advantage of allowing readers who don't give a fig about the preliminaries the option of skipping to Day 0 (the transitional day) or Day 1 (the first day on the ship) forthwith.

My wife Sue and I had been planning a second river cruise[1] for quite some time. Sue has always hated packing and unpacking on vacations. On a cruise one only needs to unpack when arriving on the ship and pack again before disembarking at the end. I, on the other hand, travel much lighter than she does. What I really enjoy is exploring new places and learning new things. I especially find unearthing the complicated details of European history to be appealing. River cruises in Europe therefore appealed to both of us for entirely different reasons.

The Crystal Mozart, the world's largest and most elegant ship for river cruises, will probably be auctioned by the time that you read this.

We booked passage on the first riverboat bridge cruise ever sanctioned by the American Contract Bridge League as a regional event. It was scheduled to take place on the Danube River in March of 2020. All of the passengers would be bridge players. This event was meant to begin in Vienna, go upstream to Passau, Germany, turn around and go downstream all the way to Budapest. Then the ship would reverse course again and return to Vienna, where Sue and I intended to spend three additional nights.

When this cruise was offered, it sold out in less than a month. In fact, I booked the last standard (not suite) stateroom on the ship. Because of the outbreak of Covid-19, however, the cruise never happened,[2] as is explained in great detail here.

We received a partial refund from this (very expensive) booking. It seemed likely at the time that the disease would surely run its course in a year or so. Therefore, we became very interested in a cruise offered by Viking, undisputed king of the European river cruises, that ran from Amsterdam to Budapest. It also could be booked from Budapest to Amsterdam. The two versions appeared to be equivalent.

These persistent little guys eventually brought down Crystal Cruises.

I was attracted to this cruise mostly by the fact that it included stops in Vienna and Melk, which were two of the main reasons that I had been most interested in the bridge cruise. It also had a side trip to Salzburg that was similar to one offered on the bridge cruise. Both Sue and I definitely wanted to visit Salzburg.

Sue, on the other hand wanted to make contact with her (sort of) niece, Pita, who had settled in Amsterdam. We included in our booking a pre-trip “extension” of two days in Amsterdam.[3]

I contacted Tom Corcoran[4], our close friend of nearly fifty years, to see if he would be interested in joining us on this voyage. He was enthusiastic at the prospect. He has traveled a lot, but he had not visited any of the dozen or so sites that were on the itinerary.

The pharmaceutical industry provided safe and effective vaccines by the end of 2020.

So, I booked tickets for Sue and me for a voyage in October of 2021. When that had been accomplished I notified Tom so that he could immediately call the same ticketing agent at Viking. He did so and booked his passage. We then exchanged documents to make sure that we were on the same ship and the same flights.

And then we waited—for more than a year. Unfortunately, it was not possible to put life on hold in the interim. In 2021 two major developments affected our plans. The first one concerned Sue's health. On January 8 she suffered a heart attack (more details here). She had surgery and was in the hospital for almost a week. When she returned home she was very weak and had to learn to deal with many ancillary problems. If we had scheduled the cruise for the spring or even the summer of 2021, we probably would have needed to cancel.

In June of 2021 the Delta variant of Covid-19 had become the dominant strain worldwide. Its symptoms were worse than the original strain, and it was more successful at overcoming the immunity provided by vaccinations or recovery. On August 2, 2021, we received an important email from Viking that had several attachments and links. Here is the text:

Dear Viking Guest,

I hope this finds you healthy and well. At Viking, our family of loyal guests, dedicated employees and valued partners is at the center of every decision we make. This dedication to our Viking family and our mission-to create meaningful experiences that are destination focused, allowing you to explore the world in comfort-has never wavered.

In March, after more than a year of paused operations, we announced the restart of our operations and a series of Welcome Back voyages taking place this spring and summer. And this month, our Viking Longships have once again begun sailing the rivers of Europe.

As we consider the health and safety of our guests and returning crew, we have begun to gradually bring our river ships back in service. Consequently, this requires some modifications to our fleet deployment. In order to welcome you on board as soon as possible, we have adjusted your ship and departure date. Rest assured, you are still booked on the same itinerary and will sail on an identical Viking vessel.

Please review the attached document to see the details of your new voyage.

We hope you will find this change acceptable, and as a token of our appreciation for your understanding and patience, we are providing you with a shipboard credit of $250 per guest-which can be applied toward optional shore excursions or a Silver Spirits Beverage Package.

Shore excursions: As the timing of your new sailing will differ from your original one, you will need to rebook your shore excursions, as well as any air deviations or Air Plus through MyVikingJourney.com.

If your revised booking is acceptable, there is no further action to confirm its acceptance. Our Viking Air Team will update your air reservations and issue tickets 21 days prior to voyage.

However, if you prefer an alternative date, please contact Viking or your Travel Advisor by August 12, 2021.

As you prepare for your journey, we ask that you review the Viking Health & Safety Program for the enhanced protocols that have been implemented in response to COVID-19, including a vaccine requirement for all guests. Developed in coordination with an international team of medical advisors, the Viking Health & Safety Program is one of the most comprehensive COVID-19 prevention and mitigation programs in the travel industry. With our new protocol enhancements in place, we believe there will be no safer way to travel the world than on a Viking voyage.

Additionally, entry requirements for European countries are changing regularly. Although several countries do not require a negative COVID-19 test result for entry, Viking is now strongly recommending that all our guests get a COVID-19 PCR test 72 hours prior to departure, even if it is not required by the country for entry. This reduces your likelihood of being delayed, denied entry due to changing regulations, or positive (asymptomatic) test results on arrival. Testing sites are available here. Should you have a positive test result, you will not be able to travel as scheduled; please contact your Travel Advisor or Viking, so we can reschedule you.

Thank you for your loyalty and support; we look forward to welcoming you on board.

Sincerely yours,

Richard Marnell
Executive Vice President, Marketing

The two itineraries were indeed quite similar. The new one began on October 23 rather than October 12 and ended in early November. It was on a different ship, and our stay at the Hague was at the end of the cruise rather than the beginning. There were also a few other small differences.

At first, the revised schedule seemed very attractive, especially the offer of a $250 credit. Tom had no problems with the new dates. However, a check of the bridge schedule for New England revealed that it would cause Sue and me to miss the Harvest Regional in Mansfield, MA, which would probably be the first face-to-face tournament in over nineteen months.[5]

So, I worked with a guy from Viking named Remy Ladner. He informed me that we could maintain the original dates on a ship that sailed from Budapest to Amsterdam. This seemed ideal to me. I booked it, and Tom also worked with Remy to adjust his booking. Remy did not specify that we had forfeited the credit. I guess that I should have asked.

However, during the next month the situation with the pandemic seemed to worsen. Sue was feeling better by then, but she was very concerned about a possible quarantine or lockdown. The cruise passed through four countries, and our flights landed in two more. If something happened, we could get stuck for an extended period in a foreign land. On September 6 I sent Tom the following email in order to get his opinion.

As far as I can tell, Norway, Sweden, and Italy are the only three countries that have implemented the EU quarantine. I plan to call Viking tomorrow to find out what they know, especially about Hungary, which appears to have an even stricter policy. I also want to know what they would do if, for example, Germany implemented the quarantine while we were docked in Vienna. Finally, I want some assurance that the planned excursions will actually take place.

Sue is more worried about this than I am.

If we don't like Viking's answers, we would like to postpone the cruise until May. Is that OK with you?

I had already checked the schedule for bridge tournaments. There were tournaments scheduled in April and all of the summer months, but nothing nearby was slated for May. Tom replied quickly and succinctly:

I prefer postponing the cruise. Even if we got assurances from Viking, any country can change their rules at any time.

I have my 50th college reunion May 27-30, 2022, so I would like to work around those dates.

Tom also mentioned that the CDC had advised "vulnerable travelers" to avoid cruising regardless of vaccination status. They specifically noted that the advisory applied to river cruises.

Sue arranged with Viking to move our starting date to May 6, 2022. When the details had been ironed out, she wrote the following to Tom:

I feel better about this trip in May rather than Oct this year. I think my body will be better healed and I may be off some of this medication that makes it so dangerous. Mike & I read your note here:

the only way we can guarantee we will be on the same flights is to buy something called Airplus, which costs $50 person.

...and we think it is worth the guarantee of $50 each person to be on the same flights. So, we are going for it, but we aren't in Business Class. My legs do not swell up anymore now, so we fly cheapo! So YES on the Airplus.

You're only as old as you feel.

One bothersome detail that I had to deal with was renewing my passport. Although it would be valid for the entire journey, the requirement was that the expiration date could not be less than six months after the starting date.

I had to return my old passport and submit a form that included a new photo. I read all of the requirements for the photo, and I used my camera to take a photo that seemed to meet all the stipulations. I sent it in to the Statement, but it was rejected. So, I went to Walgreens and reluctantly coughed up $15 plus tax. The store's photographic equipment must have been on the fritz. It produced the photos to the government's specification, but they made me look old.

It took more than six weeks, but this time the State Department accepted the application. They sent me the new passport and my previous one. I received it shortly before they raised the price of a renewal.

Research: On all of my previous European trips my first stop had been at Barnes & Noble to find out more about the locations that I was visiting. This technique had proven quite successful for me. However, this cruise was a little different.

The itinerary included a very large number of short stays at diverse locations. The only places in which we stayed more than one night were Budapest and Vienna. I had already been to Budapest in 2007, and I had already purchased two travel books about Vienna. One of them also covered both Salzburg and Melk.

Furthermore, on a cruise ship it is never clear exactly where the ships will dock, and I could find no reliable information about how much free time would be available. So, it was more difficult to plan ahead.

I did go to B&N to investigate the travel guides for Germany and to see if there were German phrasebooks. I didn't find anything that really appealed to me.

After we finished ordering the cruise, Viking provided us with a "My Viking Journey" page with a plethora of information about nearly every aspect of our trip. I channeled my inner Leslie Knope to repurpose an old white binder with a section for each day of the voyage. I started by printing the website's description of each excursion. I supplemented this with information that I located on the Internet. The latter helped me to decide to forgo the concert on the first evening in Vienna and the eight-hour side trip to Munich from Regensburg.

I discovered that Viking had made videos about some of the excursions. I watched a few of these, including the one on Göttweig Abbey and the Modern Aristocracy tour.

I signed both Sue and me up for the Salzburg excursions on day 5 of the cruise. I also signed myself up for the one to Göttweig Abbey on the following day. It had been specifically recommended by the Viking agent with whom I originally dealt, Jake Printsian. I doubted that Sue would be interested in spending an entire day at monasteries. I also bought one ticket for the Top of Cologne tour. This was a difficult decision because it conflicted with Cologne's Beer Culture and Dinner, which I was certain would appeal to Tom. In the end I decided that I could not pass up the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to explore the lofty reaches of the famous cathedral.

I knew that we had a free afternoon in Budapest. I was not interested in any of the afternoon excursions. I was, however, enthused about a tour of the Parliament building on the Pest side. Tickets were available for the guided tours from Viator, which was associated with TripAdvisor. Tom said that he would like to go, too. I had to pick between the starting times of 2:00 and 4:00.

I then used the Internet to find out where the Viking Longships docked. The answer, which I found in several places, was beneath the Chain Bridge on the Pest side, which placed them less than a half mile south of the Parliament complex. Since the tour lasted about 45 minutes, and one of the optional excursions was not scheduled to return until 6:00, I deduced that this was easily doable and purchased two tickets online.

I tried to print the tickets at home from the website, but I was unable to figure out how to do it. I searched on the Viator website for a telephone number to call, but I could not find one. Finally, I just googled Viator and in the little corporate box that Google provides was a phone number. I called it and talked to a woman for a long time as she tried to talk me through the process. Finally, she asked me to hold for a minute. When she returned she told me that the provider would send me an email explaining how to get the tickets on the day before the event. Evidently I could download them to my phone.

There were two things that I was eager to do in Vienna. Both Sue and I hoped to see Mozart's great opera, Le Nozze di Figaro, at the Wiener Staatsoper on the trip in 2020. However, the only night that we could see it was opening night, and it was sold out months ahead of time.

However, when I checked the schedule for May 9, 2022, I was pleasantly surprised to see that not only was the same opera being performed, but tickets were also still available. I definitely wanted to go. The only question was whether we could make it back to the ship before it left Vienna. When I contacted Viking online, I dealt with a woman named Skyla Baca. She did some research and then wrote back to me the following:

I know that you were asking about the departure time on May 9th, 2022 leaving from Vienna. I was able to find that the ship will depart at 11:55pm that evening.

I hope this information finds you well and you can plan your opera plans you were considering! If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate reaching out to any of our Viking representatives! We are here to help!

Since the opera reportedly ended at 10:30, I subsequently purchased two seats online near the center of the last row of the orchestra (main section). I was able to print the tickets at home without any difficulty.

I also wanted to spend some time at the Imperial Treasury Museum in the Hofburg Palace om Vienna. Its two main attractions were the heavily jeweled crown of the Holy Roman Emperor and the relic of the Holy Lance, which was allegedly used by the Roman soldier Longinus to pierce the side of Jesus at the crucifixion. This lance was supposedly among the many religious artifacts that Constantine's mother, St. Helena, brought back from her trip to Palestine.

I knew that I would be the only person who had any interest in either of these items, and so I only bought one ticket, which I was able to download to my phone.

I also did some research about the weather in the area in the month of May. The consensus was that it was cold and wet. The high temperatures were generally in the fifties and sixties. It rained on approximately half of the days, but the total rainfall only averaged about two inches, which was less than in Connecticut. So, I expected quite a few days of uncomfortable drizzle.

The question for me was whether to bring long-sleeve shirts or short. I decided to execute the ritual changing of the shirts—in which I exchange the shirts in the office closet with those in the bedroom closet—before we left. I decided to bring only short-sleeve shirts, but I also brought two sweaters and two sweatshirts to deal with the predicted coolness.

Our arrival coincided with the number of active cases dipping below two million. However, that still meant that one out of every forty people in the country were probably infectious. We mingled with a lot more than forty people on the tour.

I also had been monitoring the progress of the pandemic in the four countries of the voyage. In March and April the rate of infection in all four countries had been high. At the peak Germany reported over 300,000 new cases per day. However, the rates fell rapidly in the second half of April. Nevertheless, it was undeniable that when we set foot in the region, a large number of people would be infectious. The most worrying thing was that the governments had all lifted all restrictions. They apparently had just given up.

On the other hand, in the United States, the statistics were going in the opposite direction. The rates of infection were getting significantly higher in the U.S. In my home town of Enfield 40 out of 75 staff members at Henry Barnard School had contracted the illness in the week before we were scheduled to leave. Still, the overall rates of infection did not approach those of the European countries.

In any case I had no intention of getting this disease. At least a dozen N95 masks were in my suitcase, and I intended to use them and to practice distancing whenever possible.

My to-do lists: For the first time I actually set up a spread sheet to list everything that I needed to get accomplished before we left on the trip, as well as a list of items that I needed to bring. Here are the things (besides clothes, passport, paperwork for the tour, and credit cards) that I needed to bring:

• My hated Pixel 2 cellphone[6] and its AC charger and the dongle for USB.
• My Canon Camera and its battery charger and the USB cable that fit it.
• European electricity adapters. Probably not necessary on the ship, but might be necessary at the hotel in Amsterdam.
• USB splitter that allowed my laptop's one USB port to handle four devices.
• Bose headphones, which helped make noisy airports more tolerable.
• Lots of AAA batteries.
• Microsoft Surface Go laptop and power supply.
• Eye mask and earplugs for sleeping.
• Bag of N95 Covid masks.
• Sony digital recorder that I had purchased for $50. It replaced the spiral notebooks that I had brought on all trips this century. My handwriting is now so poor that not even I can read it.
• Euros from previous trips. I found €37 and some change. Euros were the standard currency in all the countries that we would be visiting except Hungary.
• Neck pillow.
• Poncho. It never rains on my vacations[7], but it makes no sense to tempt fate.
• Library book: Bad Monkey by Carl Hiaasen.
• Two guidebooks for Vienna/Salzburg.
• Shaving kit.

Here is the list of things that I had to get done:

• Arrange transportation to Logan Airport in Boston on Thursday, May 5, and on our return on May 22. Tom came through on this one. He drove down from his apartment in Vermont to his house in Wethersfield, CT. He said that he would drive to his sister Carol's house in Quincy and leave his car there. Carol's husband Mo would drive us to the airport. Since our plane left at 9:30 in the evening, we could eat supper with Mo and Carol. A similar arrangement had worked well on some of our earlier trips.
• Obtain another electrical converter for our devices. Evidently virtually every charger or power supply now has the ability to convert European power to 110.
• Arrange for a way to get cash on the boat. This also seemed to be unnecessary since we stopped in a town every day.
• Arrange for Sue's second piece of luggage to be picked up at our house and shipped to the boat in Budapest. Viking's website linked to another website on which one could supposedly do this. The price that the website showed was $95, which was less than SwissAir charged for a second bag. I tried to do it online without success. I called early in the morning the week before we left. I got to talk with an intern or at best a rookie—she had never heard of Budapest. She tried to talk me through it for at least a half hour before she gave up and asked me to call back when the agents were there. I did. The price was actually more than $500. No sale.

Bob helps Sue with Sudoku.


• Arrange Covid tests for both of us. Sue and I got ours at the Urgent Care in Enfield on Monday. Tom ended up getting his at the same place on Tuesday morning. We all received negative results on Wednesday evening.
• Arrange for our (really Sue's) cat Bob[8]. Sue took him to the vet on the Monday before we left. The cat that she brought back looked nothing like the one that she brought. The vet attributed the growths on his back to "bad grooming" and somehow shaved them off. Sue said that she would get someone to look in on him once in a while during our trip. I bought lots of Cat Chow for him.
• Arrange for the lawn (roughly 100'x100') to be mowed. I mowed it on Tuesday afternoon. I tried to find a service that would do it two weeks later while we were gone, but I was unsuccessful. I did, however receive a slew of phone calls, messages, and emails offering to do lots of other things.
• Download instructions for my recorder to my laptop. The instruction booklet was over 300 pages long. It made a lot more sense to download the pdf file to my laptop.
• Call American Express, Bank of America, Chase, and Citi to tell them that we would be out of the country. American Express made note of it and set it up so that two of my AmEx cards have PINs. The banks said that it was not necessary to tell them.
• The bank for which we have a debit card wanted to know every country that we would be in to make sure that we could use the ATMs there.
• Copy the mp3 files for all of my operas to the laptop. I intended to listen to a few while I worked on the journal on the return trip.
• Stop the mail. The Courant will probably throw a newspaper full of flyers on our driveway on Thursdays, but it is not easy to stop this.
• Pay our most recent oil bill and tell Somers Oil not to make any deliveries while we are gone.
• Turn off the furnace.
• Unplug the dehumidifier in the basement.
• Bring in the trash barrels on Thursday morning.
• Forward all of my correspondence with Viking to Yoga@Wavada.org so that I could access them on the trip.
• Turn off my desktop computer so that I could view my email on my laptop on the trip.

Last minute developments: A week or two before our departure date, Sue asked me if I had returned her passport after I had used it to key in her passport information for Viking more than a year earlier. I assured her that I had. Nevertheless I dumped out the contents of my sock drawer[9], which is where I kept my current and old passports. I also cleared everything off of my desk to make sure that it was not hiding under some papers. Sue also asked me about a grey leather wallet that "we had received from Viking." I located that quickly, showed it to her, and explained that this was actually from the trip on Crystal that was canceled in 2020. We had needed her passport well after that.

Sue continued her search, but she also took to the phone to try to obtain a replacement for the unfound (as opposed to "lost"—Sue never loses anything) passport. I stayed out of her way, but I fretted over the prospect of postponing the trip again. I did hear her murmur something about how it was impossible to get a replacement passport in a short time. I did not mention that it had taken me nearly two months just to renew my passport.

I had previously communicated to Tom how much I wanted to take the trip. As I argued in one email, "If we postpone the trip again, all we know for certain is that we will all be older—or dead."

I was looking forward to traveling with Tom, but it was not to be. Here is what he wrote me on the morning of May 5, our day of departure!

I called Sue and she mentioned that she can't find her passport. In addition when I got to CT I found out that Patti's brother Ray's health has deteriorated pretty seriously. He is living in my house now. He was pretty much in denial about it and wanted to put off going to the doctor, but I was finally able to convince him to go. He has an appointment today. All in all I am totally stressed out.

The gist of this is that I am seriously considering cancelling my trip, and I do not want to wait until the absolute last minute to see if Sue finds her passport. I think you should seriously consider going by yourself this time, and we can schedule a different trip together when things calm down.

A telephone call endorsed Tom's proposal. So, the plan that emerged was for Tom to drive me to Logan after he and If had supper with Mo and Carol. He would then proceed to Vermont to get his kids to help him deal with Ray. Meanwhile, Sue would negotiate with Viking about changing from two people double occupancy to one person with additional charge for single occupancy. I would adjust my preparations accordingly.

The biggest things for me were to cancel the second ticket for Parliament in Budapest and to rescind the holding of the mail. The first was easy, but I could not figure out how to do the second. Instead, I changed it so that it was held until Monday, and the mailman would deliver the held mail on Tuesday.

I did not turn off my computer, the furnace, or the dehumidifier.

I don't know if we were on plan B or C or Z, but the end result was that I flew by myself to Budapest with the prospect of a lonely two weeks on European rivers and canals.

[1]  Our first river cruise was in 2011. It went from St. Petersburg to Moscow. Details of this adventure have been posted here.

[2]  In fact, the cruise line, Crystal, went out of business in February of 2022. Evidently the Mozart and all of the line's other ships were scheduled to be auctioned in the summer of 2022.

[3]  Believe it or not, although we booked more than a year in advance, we had to settle for two nights in the Hague because the hotel in Amsterdam did not have any rooms.

[4]  Tom and his wife Patti had joined Sue and me on the Village Italy Tour (described here) as well as our tours of Eastern Europe (documented here), France (here) and Russia (here).

[5]  In fact, however, the tournament was scuttled.

[6]  This phone, while resting in my pocket while I was walking my 2.5-mile exercise circuit, twice had ordered pizzas using the Slice app. I will swear to this on my copy of To Bid or Not to Bid. It had also started playing a random unrequested YouTube video on several occasions.

[7]  If you don't believe this, skim through the many travel journals that are posted on Wavada.org.

[8]  Both Sue and I were convinced that Bob was a goner in spring of 2021. I wrote about it here.

[9]  I did, however, come across an insert for an old wallet that contained my Social Security card, my Eagle Scout card, and several other cards that I did not even remember that I had.