Summer 2022: The Danube Caper cont.

On the top of the Matild Hotel is this cool rooftop bar where Gym and his lovely wife spent their second evening in Budapest. It looks down on the Elisabeth Bridge that spans the Danube River and connects Buda and Pest. A dry martini and a refreshing Aperol spritzer were just the thing to celebrate a partial victory over some nasty setbacks that had unfolded the previous evening. The luggage was still missing but our intrepid travelers had a note from Lufthansa that someone had seen it in Germany and they wanted to provide assurance that the airline had their best people on the job of reuniting baggage with owner. The major victory came with the Riverboat Cruise company. 

 Gym awoke on the morning of the 13th and knew that dealing with Uniworld Cruises was the first order of business. They had pre-paid the entire cost of a 10-day cruise down the river and were worried that they would get stiffed due to some technicality in the contract. An email had been sent to the company's office to please call Gym as soon as possible and shortly thereafter, the call came through. Gym composed himself and put on his best stern telephone voice to begin the conversation. The cruise company tried to palm off an alternative cruise of lesser value as a replacement to the lost itinerary. Gym held firm and went into his whining voice. He explained that they were already in Europe when the cruise had been called off and had incurred tremendous expense to that point in time. Uniworld softened somewhat but still wanted to keep some of the money. To put the nail in the coffin, Gym went into sobbing mode and the cruise company relented. They agreed to reimburse 100% of the prepaid amount. 

The luggage was still an issue though and Gym was resigned to go out and buy some items of clothing because it had been 48 hours. That day Gym and Mrs. Gym went into old town and checked out the Hungarian Parliament building, an impressive and very beautiful structure. On the way back, Gym picked up a 3-pack of socks at Foot Locker. Then the next morning, miracle of miracles happened and Gym and his lovely bride were reunited with their Heys luggage ovver 60 hours since they had been separated from it on the Frankfurt tarmac. Thank God! It was 35C and things were getting a little sticky, a few changes of clothing was imperative. 

With a couple of issues resolved over that first weekend, our travelers decided to extend their stay in Budapest for a couple of extra days and then move up river through Slovakia to Austria. Plans were fleshed out for transportation upriver and a nice place to "camp" in Vienna. Gym started researching things to do to replace the time they would have spent on the cruise. Blood pressure was returning to normal as the new itinerary came together and an altered adventure began to take shape.

More on Budapest in the next post, stay tuned!

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