Our Sliver Cruise From Amsterdam
For months Daveen and I have looked forward to our two-week Viking River cruise from Amsterdam to Budapest.
We began the cruise on Saturday, August 1st, and have now spent more than a week aboard the ship.
Well, actually not all of it has been aboard the ship. We spent two nights in a very nice hotel room in Frankfurt, Germany, courtesy of Viking and the water gods, due to low water levels.
Because the water level is the lowest it’s been in decades, I’ve renamed the cruise the Sliver Cruise because we are traveling on just a sliver of river.
I kid you not. I just read a news article on European nuclear power plants closing because there isn’t enough river water to cool their nuclear cores. I have seen families walking across what is usually a very deep river. Now it is only a few feet deep in places.
Viking has many cruise ships travelling on the river, so they’ve hired busses to ferry us around the “dry” spots, to ships stationed up-river. It must be a management nightmare for them, but this is a vacation for me and I’m trying to leave my “business” persona where it belongs — back in Los Angeles.
Climate change? Who knows.
But in the future Daveen and I may go back to ocean cruises. If the Pacific Ocean dries up we’re all (pardon the bad pun) sunk.
So, the next time you take a ten-minute shower, think about the water. It may not always be there.
Talk about dry humor!
Alan