Danube River

Virgin Vacations is cutting the price of two Danube River cruises by $1,000 per person for fall sailings. The October and November itineraries travel from Germany to Hungary while following the European river for a sampling of cities and towns.  The deal: Discounts apply to the 11-day Nov. 14 tour and cruise from Budapest , Hungary to Nuremberg, Germany. Participants spend two nights in Budapest before boarding the Sound of Music for seven nights. The ship has just 64 cabins, and the price includes meals, drinks and shore excursions.

Virgin Vacations is cutting the price of two Danube River cruises by $1,000 per person for fall sailings. The October and November itineraries travel from Germany to Hungary while following the European river for a sampling of cities and towns.  The deal: Discounts apply to the 11-day Nov. 14 tour and cruise from Budapest , Hungary to Nuremberg, Germany. Participants spend two nights in Budapest before boarding the Sound of Music for seven nights. The ship has just 64 cabins, and the price includes meals, drinks and shore excursions.

AmaWaterways' cruise and land tour highlights Jewish heritage in five countries along the Danube River. Synagogues in Budapest and Prague, Oscar Schindler's home in Germany, the setting for “The Sound of Music” in Austria and the site of the Nuremberg war-crimes trials are some of the highlights of the 13-night trip. It begins with two days touring Budapest before embarking on the small-ship river cruise for seven days. Participants will meet Rabbi Chatam Sofer and tour Bratislava in Slovakia, visit the Jewish Museum and Sigmund Freud's House in Vienna, and stop in Regensburg at Schindler's house and Nuremberg in Germany before ending with three nights in Prague.

When it comes to travel, especially involving something as pricey as a cruise, it's wise to take precautions. You never know when you may have to cancel your trip. Bill and Sally Mathews paid $1,140 for travel insurance as part of about $12,600 they plunked down in March for a July cruise along the Danube River with Grand Circle Cruise Line. "We've never had to use travel insurance," Bill Mathews, 85, of Redondo Beach told me. "It just always seems like a good idea to have it. We travel a lot. " This time, it turned out, the insurance was a good investment - or it would have been had the insurer, Trip Mate, made good on its policy right away.

About 20,000 people demonstrated in front of Hungary's parliament Saturday, saying a Slovak-Hungarian agreement for a Danube River dam spells environmental disaster. Hungarian negotiators dropped their opposition to the cross-border project after a meeting with their Slovak counterparts Friday, essentially promising to build a dam on the Hungarian side as the two countries had planned in 1977.

The sleepy Danube River vista that unfolds before the customs office of this gateway to Yugoslav waters may restore some of the international community's faith in the power of economic sanctions. Where only a few days ago oil tankers and freighters laden with strategic minerals barged their way past U.N. monitors enforcing a trade embargo against what is left of Yugoslavia, today there is nary a rowboat plying the murky Danube beyond this checkpoint.

When it comes to travel, especially involving something as pricey as a cruise, it's wise to take precautions. You never know when you may have to cancel your trip. Bill and Sally Mathews paid $1,140 for travel insurance as part of about $12,600 they plunked down in March for a July cruise along the Danube River with Grand Circle Cruise Line. "We've never had to use travel insurance," Bill Mathews, 85, of Redondo Beach told me. "It just always seems like a good idea to have it. We travel a lot. " This time, it turned out, the insurance was a good investment - or it would have been had the insurer, Trip Mate, made good on its policy right away.

About 1,800 gallons of heating oil leaked into the Danube River from a West German industrial plant on Tuesday, and serious pollution could result, officials said. The oil leaked from a tank at a plant near Allmendingen, about 30 miles southeast of Stuttgart, police said.

The interim government said that 207 Romanians were killed in September when a passenger ship sank after colliding with a Bulgarian tugboat on the Danube River. Deputy Foreign Minister Romulus Neagu said the accident is under investigation, the Rompres news agency reported. The Romanian vessel sank "in conditions of poor visibility," the state news agency, tightly controlled by the authoritarian Ceausescu government, reported at the time.

U.S. servicemen joined West German firefighters in shoring up dikes with sandbags to protect the city of Wiesbaden from the floodwaters of the swollen Rhine River. Thousands of volunteers have pitched in over the past three days to protect people's lives and property. Six people are reported to have died in flood-related accidents.

AmaWaterways' cruise and land tour highlights Jewish heritage in five countries along the Danube River. Synagogues in Budapest and Prague, Oscar Schindler's home in Germany, the setting for “The Sound of Music” in Austria and the site of the Nuremberg war-crimes trials are some of the highlights of the 13-night trip. It begins with two days touring Budapest before embarking on the small-ship river cruise for seven days. Participants will meet Rabbi Chatam Sofer and tour Bratislava in Slovakia, visit the Jewish Museum and Sigmund Freud's House in Vienna, and stop in Regensburg at Schindler's house and Nuremberg in Germany before ending with three nights in Prague.

AT the end of its 1,771-mile journey across Europe, the mighty Danube River seems to give up trying to reach the Black Sea. It turns north, away from the coast, crosses the lonely steppe country, then frays into myriad channels, marshes, swamps and lakes edged by waterlogged willow trees. Colonies of birds fly in from Asia, Africa and Siberia. In the stalled, murky water, giant carp and catfish lurk, sought by fishermen who live in villages that can be reached only by boat.

Thousands of Romanians fled their homes and thousands more faced the same fate when the swollen Danube breached waterlogged dikes and threatened to break through more defenses. Fed by rain and melting snow, waterways have swamped vast tracts of land in Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia and Hungary this month, driving thousands from their homes.

Romania breached a major dike to divert floodwater threatening villages in the Danube delta, and Hungary evacuated thousands of people as swollen rivers continued to spread havoc across Eastern Europe. Almost 8,000 people have fled their homes in the Balkans. Farther north, authorities in Hungary evacuated 4,500 more from three towns near the confluence of the Tisza and Koros rivers.

The Danube reached record levels in Romania, Serbia and Bulgaria, flooding fertile farmland as authorities in southeastern Europe considered ordering evacuations. More than 3,000 police, military and civilian workers monitored dams in Romania, with dozens of communities ready to evacuate after weeks of spring runoff combined with heavy rain. Rivers were expected to rise higher, and hundreds of people fled the western Romanian village of Gataia, flooded by the Barzava River, officials said.

I am a Hungarian who has lived here since 1951. Thank you for Robert Strauss' excellent article on Hungary ["Budapest, in Living Color," July 13]. The picture of the Chain Bridge, Parliament and the Danube River is the best I have ever seen. Buda has many wonderful big, hilly parks, one of which was across from where we lived and was my very favorite playground. I recommend to all travelers that they try some of the many scrumptious fancy pastry shops, which were one of my fondest childhood memories.

Cruise operators on the Danube and Elbe rivers canceled and rerouted trips last week as record floods displaced thousands and killed scores of Germans and Eastern Europeans. The outlook for this week remained uncertain as of the Travel section's press time Tuesday. The flooding affected hundreds of passengers, many of whom were loaded onto buses or transferred to other vessels.

The Bessarabian Germans mourned the loss of their homeland and possessions. The Jews danced and rejoiced; they lost everything but their lives had been saved. Still, the uncanny parallelism is a matter of record. These Jews and Germans were both transported to safety and documented on film by the same river captain, who ferried them into historical memory.