June 4 Linz

A leisurely start to the day with our Uber to the train station booked for 10.30 am. We enjoyed another very nice breakfast and had a chat to Granny. I checked the Uber app at 10.10 to find that the driver was 2 minutes away so we arrived at the station early. Our research from the previous day paid off and we boarded our double-decker train easily.
The train is so smooth and quiet. Why can't we do this in NZ. Quite soon we could see signs of serious flooding in the countryside. They had obviously had a lot more rain than we had in Munich. About 90 percent of the long distance trains were either canceled or delayed because of the flooding.
We got off the train in Vilshofen and found a nice lady from Avalon to meet us. She said the bus wouldn't be here until closer to 5 pm so we went for a walk into town and had a bite of lunch. English is definitely not very common once you leave the big cities. We had a look at the Danube which is a raging torrent. Two other couples turned up who had received the same email as ud from Avalon saying to meet at the boat dock in Vilshofen. They weren't impressed with the communication from Avalon. However shit happens sometimes. Floods seem to be a bit of a theme for us this trip. Eventually the bus turned up at 5.15 having picked 8 other passengers up from Munich airport and we were on our way. We were the last to arrive at the boat so threw our cases in the room and changed our shirts before heading up to dinner. In talking to a Canadian couple next to us we came to realise that we had missed a briefing and that a major change to the itinerary was being made. After we spoke to the cruise director who advised that we would be spending 3 nights on the boat with free bus excursions each day and the transferring to a hotel in Vienna for a night before going by bus to Budapest for the last 3 nights on another Avalon boat that is stuck there. Hugely disappointing but there are no boats of any description allowed on the river at the moment and the flood waters are heading towards Budapest. Five people have died and countless are missing so our problems are nothing in comparison. Avalon are going to refund 50 percent of the cruise cost so they have been more than reasonable.Baca selengkapnya