![Passau and Home [via Köln] on the Imperial Cities & Danube Cruise tour](http://iciel.uk/imagesROTR/19-06-HUR1906s/Post5/19-06-05-feature.jpeg)
Tuesday, 1st October 2019 I had left Munich on the 13:24 regional train to Passau. Arriving 30 minutes late at 16:10 I found my hotel and checked in. As is usual for me, I wasted no time before I was out and about. My aim was to walk down to the banks of the Danube and have a look to see where my group’s cruise ship was moored. Having looked in the guide book I spotted that the key place to visit was St Stephen’s Cathedral. With 17,774 pipes and 233 registers, the organ at St. Stephen’s was long held to be the largest church pipe organ in the world and is today second in size only to an organ in Los Angeles which was expanded in 1994. By the cathedral is a large square (Domplatz) with the Lamberg-Palais. Up on the hill over looking Passau is Veste Oberhaus, a fortress that was founded in 1219 which was the stronghold of the Bishop of Passau. I couldn’t find the river cruise. It was at this point that I received a text to say that because the water levels in the Danube were so low is had moored south of Passau and I would need to get a taxi there in the morning. Wednesday, 2nd October 2019 Up early and a taxi up river to the cruise boat. The luggage was already outside and the coaches there waiting when I arrived. Having loaded the group onto our coach we transferred to […]
06-HUR1906s-Imperial Cities & Danube Cruise
![London to Munich [for Oktoberfest] on the Imperial Cities & Danube Cruise tour](http://iciel.uk/imagesROTR/19-06-HUR1906s/Post4/19-06-04-feature.jpeg)
Monday, 30th September 2019 I was supposed to fly out to Munich on Tuesday, 1st October and then catch a train down to Passau to collect my group of passengers, but I had another idea. During the last week of September and the first week of October there is a huge beer festival in Munich called the Oktoberfest. I have never had the opportunity to visit this renowned event – teachers aren’t allowed to drop out of school mid-term to go abroad on a jolly [although I did do precisely that when the Rugby World Cup was on in France]. I have always wanted to go and see what the Oktoberfest is like. I asked my manager if it would be possible for them to fly me out to Munich a day early and I would source my own hotel. Great Railway Journeys had no issues with that, so I booked a hotel (expensive during Oktoberfest, but free for me as I was paying with accumulated stay points) and off I went. I arrived at my hotel and dropped off my bag and immediately headed off to the festival. Oktoberfest is about 15 minutes walk from the main Munich railway station and located on a massive asphalt park. It is free to enter and is absolutely HUGE. Each brewery has its own tent with outside seating areas. Interspersed between these are eating stands and a massive fun fair. I was there at 18:00 on a Monday evening. Mondays are the […]
![Prague to Budapest [then back to London] on the Imperial Cities & Danube Cruise tour](http://iciel.uk/imagesROTR/19-06-HUR1906s/Post3/19-06-03-feature.jpeg)
Thursday, 26th September 2019 Today I am flying back to Gatwick from Budapest. The flight is at 14:15 so I have a brief opportunity to do a bit of culture before I head off to the airport. Just along from my hotel I pop my head into the New York Cafe. Unfortunately the large queue of people waiting to enter, even this early in the day, doesn’t mean I can do much more than take a photograph of the interior. Next I walk down into the old Jewish quarter of the city, first stopping at the wall memorial. The most famous tribute to the half a million Hungarian Jews who perished under the Nazis during the Holocaust is the 60 pairs of cast-iron shoes placed on the edge of the Danube’s bank in memory of Budapest Jews killed here by members of the Hungarian fascist Arrow Cross Party. They were ordered to remove their shoes before being shot and their bodies fell into the river and drifted away. The old entrance to the Jewish ghetto is marked by a large memorial. The ghetto was a 0.12 square mile walled area of Budapest created by the Nazis in 1944. It only lasted for six weeks. 70,000 Jews were crammed into 4,513 apartments (14 people per room). 10,000 lost their lives during those six weeks. From the memorial I walked down to visit the Dohány Street Synagogue. This is the largest Synagogue in Europe, built between 1854-9 in a Moorish style. Unfortunately […]
Tuesday, 24th September 2019 After travelling for two days, today is a day based in one place only – Prague. It is an early start this morning because we are first going to Prague Castle, which is notoriously busy. I have been to Prague previously, on a trip with my wife, and we never ventured into the castle complex because the queues were so long. The coach, along with our guide, collect us from the hotel at 08:15 and we head off to the castle. The drive has us skirt round the centre of Prague as coaches and other vehicles are not allowed in the central area to allow space for pedestrians. From the coach we have a 15 minute walk down to the castle where we join the queue to enter. It takes about 30 minutes to reach the front of the queue, with the queue getting longer and longer as we wait. I am glad we got here early. The castle is, according to the Guinness Book of Records, the largest ancient castle in the world and occupies nearly 70,000 square meters of area. Originally built in the ninth century it was last rebuilt at the end of the 18th century. Hitler stayed here in 1939 when he forced the Czech President to hand over the Czech nation to the Germans. During the war it was used as the headquarters of Reinhard Heydrich. An old Czech legend says that a usurper who places a crown upon his head […]
![London to Prague [via Berlin] on the Imperial Cities & Danube Cruise tour](http://iciel.uk/imagesROTR/19-06-HUR1906s/Post1/19-06-01-feature.jpeg)
Saturday, 21st September 2019 This trip is a Great Railway Journeys (GRJ) tour. It is titled ‘Imperial Cities and 5 star Danube Cruise’. GRJ have a cruise ship that will travel for seven days from Budapest along the Danube to Passau. There are several options for getting to the cruise ship, these include direct flight; two days by train (first or second class) or four days by train (first or second class) travelling via either Berlin and Prague or via Bavaria. My tour is the four day tour, second class, via Berlin and Prague to Budapest. At Budapest I will leave the group on the cruise ship and return home to the UK. I then journey back later in the week to meet the group at Passau and take them back to the UK over two days, staying in Köln on the way back. Since it is an early start from St Pancras on the Sunday morning, I travel up to London on the Saturday afternoon and stay in a hotel close to St Pancras. Sunday, 22nd September 2019 I am up early on Sunday morning and meeting and greeting the tourees from 07:00 to 08:00 at the GreatRail offices, upstairs at St Pancras. This is a busy day for GreatRail with nine tours going out from St Pancras the same morning. The Eurostar train departs London St Pancras at 08:55 and arrives in Brussels at 12:05 where we are met by man and a baggage cage and our luggage […]