By T.W. Burger
Sometimes, the best adventures come about when you’re busy doing something else.
For example, some years ago, we got a deal to take a “Christmas Cruise” down the Danube, one of Europe’s major rivers
Plan was, we would fly to Nurnberg in Germany, tour that ancient city, then get on this nice big boat named the MS Amalegro and spend about a week tooling down the river to Budapest, and then fly back to the U.S.
The Amalegro, was pretty big for a boat running on a river, I thought. It was 360 feet long by 38 feet wide.
The theme of the cruise was for the boat to stop at various famous old towns and cities on the Danube so the passengers could sample the annual Christkindlmarkets going on in the town square. Among all the religious items, candies, soft pretzels, cakes and such, each town had its own ooompah band and its own recipe of glühwein, a mulled wine whose prime ingredient seemed to be sugar.
So, each market was on the old town square and each square had a cathedral. Most of them were at least a thousand years old, I think. At least one had been built on the ruins of the previous church that had been there for the previous thousand years.
I remember when I toured Scotty’s Castle in Death Valley. The docent boasted that it was an historical site because of its great age and social importance. At that time, it had been standing for nearly 40 years. I guess it’s a matter of perspective.
My favorite site in Regensburg was a little food stand tucked away at one end of a bridge into the old city.
You can go inside and order famous Regensburg sausages and rolls. The little shop opened in 1435, making it very likely the world’s oldest fast-food joint.
I don’t remember if they served fries,
Before the ship’s departure for Passau, Sue made a run up to this charming little green bratwurst kitchen and bought a sausage roll, complete with kraut and the special sweet mustard unique to the town. She reported the sandwich delicious. Apparently, doing something for 576 years makes you good at it.
The unexpected part of the trip came in two parts:
A high percentage of the ship’s crew and passengers came down with the norovirus, which was making its way through much of the world like viral Vikings. I don’t recommend it.
On top of that, Sue fainted at dinner the night after Regensburg. The Amalegro pulled into a tiny wharf in the inky night at the tiny town of Hainburg, in Austria. An ambulance crew came aboard and wired here up with medical gizmos. They did not like what they saw, so they called another amblance crew in, the head of which was an actual doctor.
The crews muttered together in German. Then they informed us that Sue had to go to the hospital, they were afraid she had some cardiac problem.
So, the boat went on without us. It got more complicated when we told the ER doc that we thought we had both been exposed to the norovirus.
Long story short, we both spent the night in isolation. They wanted me to get a room in town. At two in the morning. In a town where nobody’s lights were on and where I did not speak the language. Yeah, right. I slept in the bed next to Sue’s, though the hospital was not happy about it. We entertained ourselves trying to communicate with the staff.
Good news: Her heart was fine, and whatever sign of norovirus there might have been was gone. We got on the phone and talked to the company that owned Amalegro. Once we had cleared an intensive scrutiny by the Hainburg medics, we were free to leave.
The boat people said they would send a car. It would be there around noon.
Naturally, it started to rain. Not just a shower. What the old folks call a frog-strangler.
But the car showed up, as promised.
The car, actually a Mercedes transit van, was sent from Budapest to take us back to the ship in Budapest.
I wish I had taken a photo of Peter, the driver. He said he owned the limo company.
He looked like somebody out of Central Casting for “Eastern European Tough Guy,” a good bit taller than six feet, short dark hair, leather jacket, and pleasant, talkative, but with a soupçon of danger about him.
I liked him. He drove in the heavy rain at 120 kilometers-per-hour (about 75 mph) talking to us non-stop except when he was on his cell weaving in and out of traffic and occasionally jamming on the brakes. It was like a ride at an amusement park, only with the threat of death fluttering around us like a moth around a neon sign.
Peter doted on his daughter. During the long, wet drive from Hainburg to Budapest, he asked me for some advice. His daughter, whom he loved deeply, was looking at her first vehicle.
“She wants, what you call in America, big truck with box in back?”
“A pickup truck?” I offered, helpfully.
“Yes, that’s it,” he said, excited. “She wants four-wheel drive. What do you think?”
Remember, this was in Europe, where gasoline and diesel are even more expensive than they are here.
“Is it possible that you could rent or borrow one for a few weeks? You know, let her drive it and” (here comes the kicker) even buy gas for it?”
His eyes lit up with delight, and he laughed out loud.
“I see what you’re getting at! You think that will work?”
“If she’s half as smart as her daddy, it should work like a charm,” says I.
He laughed even harder at that.
He noted that he keeps an American baseball bat, a Louisville Slugger, hung on the wall behind his desk in his office. I asked why.
“Well, every boy she wants to date, has to do interview with me,” he explained, matter-of-factly. “On the bat, I have burned into the side, in Hungarian, the words: ‘You know…’
“Hmmmmm…” I said.
“If she comes back from date all happy and smiling, we’re good,” he said. “I explain this to the prospects, to be fair.”
“Of course,” I said, impressed. “Being fair is important.”
“If she comes back frowning and crying, I point at the bat, and say, YOU KNOW,” he said, a fairly frightening smile on his face.”
I smiled, too, largely out of gratitude that I was out of the dating pool and would not likely have ever wanted to date a particular Hungarian girl.
T. W. Burger was raised in town and graduated from Athens High School in 1967, then worked as a driver of everything from fork trucks to garbage trucks and concrete mixers, has been an apprentice mortician and ambulance attendant.
Burger is now a semi-retired journalist who resides on the banks of Marsh Creek, just outside of Gettysburg, Pa.
Comentários