Skip to content
Join our Newsletter

Across Europe by boat

The Rhine/Main/Danube Waterway is the realization of a 1200-year-old dream
60291_l

Six days out of Amsterdam the Viking Spirit nosed into the Hilpolstein lock and began her final 81-foot lift to the European Continental Divide between the Rhine and Danube drainages. Beyond the gates of the Hilpolstein lock it's all downstream to the Danube and on through Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Serbia and Bulgaria to the Romanian port of Constanta on the Black Sea.

The Rhine and Danube rivers have been major transportation routes since ancient times and the dream of connecting them to form a continuous water route across Europe goes back more than a thousand years. Charlemagne, the visionary Frankish leader, made a futile attempt in 793. In 1846 Ludwig I of Bavaria cobbled together a makeshift set of wooden locks that could lift small boats from the Main, a tributary of the Rhine, into the Danube drainage but it was unreliable and abandoned in 1950. The present Main-Danube canal with its 16 modern locks, five pumping stations and massive hydroelectric generators did not open until September 1992. Ships were literally lined up at both ends when the first gates opened and today the inland waterway between Rotterdam on the North Sea and Constanta on the Black Sea is a major trade artery between Northern Europe and the Balkan States.

We boarded the Viking Spirit in Amsterdam and moved into one of her comfortable staterooms for our 1,800 km cruise to Budapest. 140 metres long and only 11.4 m wide, the Spirit is long and skinny - built to negotiate the 68 narrow locks ahead of us. She is powered by three diesel motors, two in the stern and one in the bow, and each prop can be rotated 360 degrees, providing precise control in the locks where clearances are often no more than a few inches.

By today's standards the Spirit is a small cruise ship with accommodation for 140 passengers, a large dining room in the stern and a comfortable lounge and bar in the bow. Except for the wheelhouse, a large chessboard and a few folding lawn chairs, the upper deck is a flat expanse of rubberized carpet - a great place for a few laps of power walking or an early morning jog. And when passing under one of the many low bridges the lawn chairs are folded down, the captain moves to an outside control panel, and the entire wheelhouse is lowered out of sight until its roof is flush with the deck.

The first lap of our journey, the 72 km Amsterdam-Rhine Canal, starts a few metres below sea level. Its four locks lift the Spirit out of Amsterdam's artificially lowered canal system and into the Rhine, where we are joined by a flotilla of other long skinny boats and tugs pushing long skinny barges on their way to or from Rotterdam, the world's largest port.

Bulk carriers, fuel tankers, container ships and an assortment of non-descript workboats share the Lower Rhine with other cruise ships loaded with tourists. There seems to be no limit on the length of ships, but the river's narrow locks and low bridges restrict their height and width. Many of the workboats have curtained living quarters in the stern, a car parked on the roof, and sometimes a children's play area beside the car. "Those are family owned boats," Michael, the ship's program director, tells me. "Usually both the husband and wife have their captain's tickets and spell one another off at the helm. Their boat is both their home and their business and if they have kids they also live on board."

Through the Netherlands and western Germany the Rhine looks more like a canal than a river. Much of the dredged and straightened channel has been bricked in and behind the neat row of poplar trees planted on either side, the country is low and utterly flat. Farther inland the riverbanks rise into low rolling hills covered with oak forest and neat rows of grape vines, the source of Germany's fabled Rhine Wine. Small villages, each with its own church and steeple, nestle beside the river while medieval castles in various states of disrepair dominate the high ground.

A few kilometres past the City of Koblenz, where the river cuts through the Rhineland massif, the channel narrows into a twisted gorge bounded by high rocky promontories. Before they were removed, a cluster of rocks just below the turbulent surface claimed the lives of many an early Rhine mariner or, if you're of a more romantic persuasion, it's where the Lorelei lured them to their deaths. According to legend the seductive song of this sexy temptress was so irresistible that lovesick sailors plunged into the river never to be seen again. The Rhine Gorge has since been tamed and all that remains of the Lorelei is a statue perched on a rock at the base of the cliff.

At the city of Mainz, four days up river from Amsterdam, we left the Rhine and headed up The Main River, past Frankfurt and Wurzburg to the city of Bamberg and the beginning of the Main-Danube Canal. 166 km long, this masterpiece of modern engineering is the final link in Europe's trans-continental inland waterway. The first 11 of its 16 locks lifts us 174 metres up to the continental divide near the city of Nuremberg and the final five lowers us 68 metres down to Regensburg on the Danube River.

Like the Rhine the Danube has been greatly modified over the centuries, not only to provide shipping channels but more recently, to generate power. The 550 km stretch from Regensburg to Bratislava, capital of the Slovak Republic, is a series of reservoirs and hydroelectric dams bypassed by giant locks. But on the final 200 km of our journey to Budapest the Danube has the look of a natural river winding past picturesque villages and farmland framed against forested hills.

For 15 days on the river the Viking Spirit was our home-away-from-home providing not only transportation, but lodging, meals and a place to relax at the end of each day.

Jerry, the ships talented musician, provided live background music in the forward lounge where drinks and snacks were served in the afternoon. Evening lectures ranged from cheese and wine tasting to the history of the European Union - a fascinating account of how a gaggle of small squabbling states managed to get their act together and co-operate. The fact that we were able to pass seamlessly through five different countries without changing currency or signing a single form is a credit to the EU.

We tied up in 17 different cities, some large like Vienna others little more than villages like Passau. At each stop we hit the highlights with a local guide and had time left over to explore on our own. We attended a Mozart concert in Vienna, had a beer in a Bavarian Brauhaus, crawled through the ruins of medieval castles, and marveled at the architectural excesses of gold encrusted cathedrals. There was never enough time for more than a quick look at any one place, but there was also no hassle. That's the beauty of river cruising - you just unpack once and your hotel moves with you.

 

 



Comments