River Cruise

This was written for for a club newsletter after our cruise along the Rhine, Main, and Danube Rivers, from Amsterdam to Vienna.

As you may know, these days in Europe they no longer use francs, deutschmarks, pesetas, escudos, or lire in those places where previously these currencies were legal tender.  The Euro is today the common currency over much of western Europe, and its use will no doubt spread as more countries on that continent join the union.

There are some things about the Euro that are worth noting, especially if you are planning to visit Europe.  The Euro started out a few years ago almost on a par with the US Dollar, or even a little below.  Today the Euro is a lot stronger than the dollar. (The Euro’s current relationship to the greenback is roughly the same as the greenback’s relationship to the Canadian loonie, so Canadians traveling in Europe have a worse time of it than Americans.)  On our recent trip through Germany, the conversion rate was about $1.35 to 1 Euro (my keyboard, unfortunately, does not have a symbol for the Euro).   A traveler from the U.S. would be wise not to fall into the trap of assuming that a Euro is worth about the same thing as a dollar. Checking out prices in European shop windows, a traveler must do some rapid mental arithmetic to come up with the final cost that will show up on his or her credit card.

The U.S.Dollar bill is still widely accepted for tips and such in Europe.  There is something about the greenback, some mystique, one might say, that makes people’s eyes light up overseas.  Never mind that it is worth less than the Euro today, our greenback is still a greenback, against which all other currencies are compared.  

There is no one Euro bill. The one Euro denomination is a copper-alloy coin, not paper.  They also have a two-Euro coin, and fifty-cent, twenty-cent, ten-cent, five-cent, and one-cent coins.  All that produces a lot of weight in one’s pockets. The lowest denomination paper money is the 5-Euro note.

In German-speaking countries, the Euro is pronounced ‘Oiro’, which sounds exactly like the Portuguese word for ‘gold’.  The German ‘eu’ sound is ‘oi’.  In France Euro becomes the Uhr-O, because of the French ‘eu’ sound.  

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Public toilets in Europe are generally clean.  But to get in you often have to pay.  Neither a tip nor a bribe, it is quite simply the Price of Admission.  A woman sits outside the door barring your entry until the right amount – which typically ranges from 20 cents to 1 Euro depending on the classiness of the facility – is dropped into the waiting dish or placed in the correct slot.  In some toilets, they even have coin-operated turnstiles.  No coins, no go.  (U.S. coins are not legal tender, but I imagine a sawbuck might persuade the woman to let you in.)

In out-of-the-way places, especially those in Germanic communities where the facilities for those of the male gender are marked Herren, toilets may not be as clean as you are likely to come across in the bigger towns.  Some may be labeled simply pissoirs, which needs no translation from the French.  Often such places do not require payment, which may be why they are not maintained in as hygienic and odor-free a state as those that do.  I recall a sign in the WC in a Bräuerei (beerhall) that read: “Bitte im sitzen pinkeln.”  No need to refer to my German phrasebook to understand that beer-saturated Herren were being politely asked to sit as a precautionary measure.

While we are on the subject of WCs, a couple of related matters are also worth noting.  Firstly, German toilet tissue is different than the American variety.  It is a dull grey, about the color of a Wehrmacht sergeant’s uniform, with a rough, pebbly texture, and it comes in small, firm, and unyielding rolls.  It is not the squeezable quilted stuff that you have seen in our television commercials, the kind that housewives are depicted as ecstatically fondling to sample its softness. German toilet tissue is no-nonsense: practical and functional.  It is, to coin a phrase, rigidlyTeutonic.  

Secondly, you will seldom find paper towel dispensers in German WCs. Instead there will be a metal box with a continuous cloth towel hanging below it, bearing the marks of much handling.  Though it is engineered to operate by pulling down on the cloth to reveal a fresh, clean section, the mechanism is usually so stiff that it does not budge, and the same cloth section gets used over and over.  Hygienically questionable, to say the least.  Safer to use the hot air blower instead.

Cigarette smoking is very popular in Europe.  There are few restrictions on smoking, even in the better restaurants, although some may set aside certain tables for non-smokers.  It is therefore not uncommon for wienerschnitzel to acquire a nicotine flavor, or weissebier to have a smokey aftertaste.  Airports are a joke.  They have an area for smokers, but cigarette smoke floats over the partition and permeates the air because there is no way to exhaust it.  You can be in a supposed non-smoking area yet be forced to inhale second-hand smoke wafting through.

Cigarette dispensing machines are located on many street corners all over Germany.  Anyone with the right coinage can buy cigarettes.  Kids as well.  No wonder so many people smoke.

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European public transport is efficent.  Their streetcars – called in Vienna the Strassenbahn as opposed to the subway, or Unterbahn – are smooth, fast, and some of them very modern, built in such a way that entrance (eingang) and exit (ausgang) are at curb level so that elderly riders do not have to negotiate a single step. A nice feature for some of us.

To pay the fare once aboard, an adult on the Strassenbahn puts a 2-Euro coin in the ticket-dispensing machine (no senior discount; but children pay only 1 Euro) in back of the vehicle’s operator.  Out pops a ticket.  But that’s not the end of it. The passenger has then to take the ticket to get it time-stamped at another machine in the middle of the car.  Since most first-time visitors may not know to do this, courteous Viennese fellow-passengers will show them the way so they don’t get in trouble should an inspektor materialize.

In northern Germany, the customary morning greeting is “Guten morgen”.  In southern Germany and Austria, they say “Grüss Gott.”  Seems people from different parts of the country can sometimes have difficulty understanding one another.

Viennese pastries are exquisite.  Viennese coffee is too.  But in today’s Vienna, McDonald’s now occupies the ground floor of the very house in which Johann Strauss Jr composed the “ Beautiful Blue Danube” Waltz. By the way, the Danube we saw is not blue, though it is beautiful still.

At a typical Viennese Konzert in a baroque former palace, we are treated to a touristic variant of what Walter Cronkite on PBS hosts each New Year in Vienna. But instead of the Staatsoper or the Philharmoniker, the orchestra that we hear is made up of young music students and performers and the conductor, though competent, is not top-rung.  Commercial though it undoubtedly is, the concert succeeds in capping a delightful Viennese evening, and the famous final Radetsky March by Strauss Senior, in which the audience is encouraged to join by clapping in unison on the downbeat, can still stir up memories of the glittering society of the Hapsburg era.