Taking a cruise down the Danube isn’t just taking a relaxing jaunt down one of the world’s great rivers, it’s a lesson in Western Civilization 101. Every twist and turn of this fabled river has a story waiting to tell. After all, much of the soul of European history lies along the Danube. First, it was the Celts who settled along the Danube in literally prehistoric times. After that came the Greeks, Romans, Vandals, Goths, Magyars, Crusaders, Huns, Franks and the Turks, to name a few. Their intentions ranged all the way from expanding empires, pillaging cities, ravaging citizenry, and of course, slaughtering infidels. Depending on whom you were talking to, the infidels were the Greeks, Romans, Vandals, Goths, Magyars, Crusaders, Huns, Franks and the Turks, to name a few.

Then in this century it was the Germans that blitzkrieged their way down the Danube all the way to the Black Sea only to hightail it back just ahead of the Russian army going upstream. But the Soviet influence lasted only a whiff by historic standards and last was seen beating a hasty retreat back down the river after the fall of Communism. Nowadays, the ships that ply the tranquil (alas, brown) waters of the Danube are not Ottoman caiques or Roman galleys, but sleek riverboats filled with Americans enjoying the scenery and seeing firsthand the feudal castles, Baroque cathedrals and other remnants of Western civilization (and Western uncivilization).

Recently, my wife and I took a Danube cruise from Budapest, Hungary, to Nuremburg, Germany. My goal, however, was not to conquer new worlds or save infidels, but a more modest objective. I was in search of the world’s first hot dog stand. That’s right, the wiener wurst (sausage hot dog) first was rustled up in a kitchen in Bavaria, and someone told me that the original 800-year-old wiener wurst joint still was frying them somewhere along the Danube. I asked my wife if she was going to assist me in my search for the Lost Atlantis of hot dog stands.

“I’ve been reading about the history of the Austrian-Hungary Empire, The Holy Roman Empire, Maria Theresa and the House of Hapsburg, you know,” my wife replied in a way generally reserved for talking to small children.

On the evening our riverboat departed from Budapest, my wife and I sat on the upper deck sipping a cappuccino and watching rusty Romanian scows piled with coal making their way upriver to ports in central Europe. On the far side of the river, we could see Buda Castle atop Castle Hill and the ancient city of Buda with its fortified walls and battlements, a city athrob with history. On our side of the Danube is the sister city of Pest, a city alive with youthful vigor. We had spent the day roaming the streets of Budapest savoring everything from Hungarian goulash to the street music of Hungarian gypsies. On the Pest side, we strolled the promenade and had apple strudel at one of the dozens of famous coffeehouses.

Six a.m. the next day found my wife and I once again sipping a cappuccino on the upper deck. We were now in Slovakia, having left Hungary during the night. The scenery was exquisite. The sun peeked through the haze and the river was as smooth as Bavarian glass. Overhead, we heard the honking of ducks as a formation winged its way downstream. Stucco villas painted in mustard and ocher colors with red-tiled roofs dotted the banks of the river. A man and woman were taking a morning stroll on a bike path that runs along the edge of the river. I waved and shouted hello and they waved and shouted something back in Slovak.

Our riverboat glided along at 6 mph, a clip so slow any jogger worth his Nikes easily could keep up. I wished I had brought along my own shoes so I could have jogged stretches of the river alongside the boat. A wake of a half-dozen V-waves trailed behind the vessel. They barely formed a ripple on the smooth water but at the edge of the river they rose up and crashed onto the riverbank where a dog entertained itself by chasing and biting at them. It suddenly tired and stopped only to be engulfed by a huge wave. It shook itself off and continued chasing the waves.

The Danube is born in a tap in Germany’s Black Forest and flows eastward through the Bavarian Forest to Austria and Vienna where it then crosses into Slovakia at Bratislava. It then is blocked by the Carpathian Mountains and turns southward through the middle of Hungary, splitting the sister cities of Buda and Pest where it continues south into Croatia and Serbia as if heading south for the Adriatic Sea. It never makes it due to the Coastal Alps and turns east once more, carving its way through the fabled Iron Gate, a narrow gorge in the Transylvanian Alps, forming the boundary between Romania to the north and Serbia and then Bulgaria to the south. It finally snakes its way through the Romanian delta and through the marches of Moldavia and Ukraine where it finally empties into the Black Sea.

The next day, we found ourselves in Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia, where our guide, a young woman named Luba, gave us 2,000 years of Slovak history in two hours. All important facts are a blur, but I do remember her showing us a house where it is rumored that Napoleon once “spent a night” and it is further rumored there are a lot of little Napoleons running around Bratislava to this day. It also was easy to see that 50 years of Communist rule had left this place looking somewhat drab. Luba told us, however, there is a new spirit among the people of Slovakia and you could signs of the new capitalism everywhere. (The first thing we saw after getting off the Heinrich Heine was a Coca-Cola sign and the familiar Golden Arches – no, I’m not talking about arches of a 17th century Romanesque cathedral.)

Over the next week, we would see Austria’s beautiful Wachau valley with castles atop distant promontories; Durnstein, the quaint little Austrian village with the blue-and-white “Wedgewood” church; Melk, dominated by the fabled Baroque abbey; and Linz, with its narrow cobblestone streets and burgher houses. Add to this palette Vienna, arguably the most famous “Old World” city in the world, the city of Mozart, Beethoven and the Sacher Torte. It just went on and on. (We were darn lucky we didn’t have a test on everything we saw.) And then after all that would come Germany and Passau with St. Stephen’s Cathedral and the world’s largest organ, and then Straubing, the Bavarian Forest, Regensburg, Kelheim, and at last Nuremberg.

“Those Habsburgs really knew how to live,” I said to my wife the next day upon being overwhelmed by the “million room” Belvedere Palace in Vienna. She informed me that the palace wasn’t built for the Habsburgs at all but was just a little trinket they gave Prince Eugene for beating off Grand Vizier Kara Mustapha and the invading Turks in 1683, the greatest feat possible for a field commander of the Habsburgs.

“Every castle along the Danube has a legend associated with it,” our guide, Anita, said the next day in the idyllic Austrian town of Durnstein, just a stone’s throw upstream from Vienna. “Richard the Lion-Hearted was held prisoner here in Durnstein Castle from 1192 to 1194.” Anita went on to say that King Richard of England was returning home from the Third Crusade and was spotted by one Leopold V of Babenburg, who disliked Richard for snubbing him a few years earlier in the Holy Land. (He also thought King Richard, being a king and all, might be worth a king’s ransom.) According to legend, when Richard didn’t return home, his loyal servant, Blondel, began wandering about Europe playing familiar English tunes on his harp. One day when Blondel was passing Durnstein playing his harp, he heard a voice in yon castle singing back the words of the songs, whereupon Blondel returned to England and raised the ransom and freed the King. In fact it was this ransom that paid for the construction of the beautiful “Wedgewood” church in Durnstein.

Passengers on the boat ranged from farmers to city dwellers. One man from California told me he took the cruise not to see the Danube but to see the Main-Danube canal. He said he dug ditches for a living and wanted to see one of the great ditches of the world. He confessed he had a grade school teacher who said if he didn’t study he would end up digging ditches for a living. He told me the teacher’s prophesy came true and he had spent his entire life digging ditches and owned one of the largest ditch-digging and dredging companies in the United States.

In 1992 the new Main-Danube canal was completed, which connected the Main (Rhine tributary) and Danube rivers, thus creating an east-west waterway through the heart of Europe. Ships now can pass through the center of Europe from Rotterdam on the North Sea up the Rhine and Main rivers, through the 106-mile Main-Danube canal, and down the Danube to the Black Sea, traveling 2,175 miles and passing through 14 countries in the process. (A fascinating journey would be to cross Europe by riverboat getting off on occasion to hike or bike.)

“The locks on this river are an engineering marvel,” the ditch digger told me one day as our riverboat entered one of 20 locks we would pass through on our river cruise. Each lock raised the ship about 50 feet and by the time we reached the Main-Danube canal the Heine had reached its maximum height of 1,257 feet above sea level. From then on down the Rhine, the ship would go back down, lock by lock, until reaching sea level.

Our riverboat consisted of two cabin decks and a top or sun deck where the passengers spent much of their time reading, having tea, or simply relaxing and watching the scenery. In the afternoon, a pianist played Viennese waltz music (what else?) in the lounge while passengers took tea and pastries. The food wasn’t anything fancy but it was good. Our cabin was small, with every cubic square of space used to advantage, but we also found it adequate. A nice feature of the room was the large picture window that allowed us to occasionally enjoy the scenery from (I hate to admit it) our beds.

“The civilized people live on this side of the Danube, the barbarians on the other side,” our guide, Rita, laughed a few days later in the medieval city of Regensburg as she pointed across the famous 12th century Regensburg Bridge, on which we stood, to the opposite side of the river. She was referring, of course, to the fact that the Danube (and the Rhine) rivers formed the northern border of the Roman Empire. People to the south of those rivers were civilized citizens of the Roman Empire and those to the north were the barbaric Goths. The fact that the Danube was the boundary of the Roman Empire is the reason for the many ancient fortified cities that line the south side of the river, such as Melk, Linz and Vienna in Austria, and Regensburg and Straubing in Germany.

“I could go for one of those,” the ditch digger from California said, referring to the spicy smell of sausages that emanated from a tiny sausage shop nearby.

Rita overheard his comments and said, “Smells good, ja? That sausage kitchen was build for the workers who built this bridge in 1151. It was the first wiener wurst kitchen in Germany and probably in the world.”

“The cradle of McDonalds,” I said to myself. So much for Regensburg Cathedral and the life-sized fresco of Craco the Great; I bailed out of Rita’s tour and spent the rest of the day at Wurstkuche. I had a plate of six greasy sausages on a bed of sauerkraut washed down with a mug of Bavarian beer. Sehr gut. I asked the manager-waiter if he owned the place and he said if he did he wouldn’t be there now, which I assumed to mean that business was good at the world’s first hot dog stand. Over a billion served, I assumed.

A few hours later, I slunk back to the boat, knowing full well that my wife had spent the morning taking in the cultural artifacts of one of Germany’s historic treasure troves. The place is replete with castles and ruins, cathedrals, Benedictine abbeys, and even one of the best-preserved torture chambers of medieval Europe.

Well, that’s about it. The next and last day we spent going through the new Main-Danube canal to Nuremberg where the ditch digger from California told me more about canals than you’ll ever want to know. But I had learned a lot on this trip. I learned that the Habsburgs knew how to live, that all cultures rise and fall, and you can get some great sausage and sauerkraut at Wurstkuche in Regensberg for $5.

Jerry Farlow is a mathematics professor at the University of Maine in Orono.

If you go…

Several companies offer between two-day and two-week cruises on European rivers from April through October. Most companies offer two classes of accommodations, regular cabins and suites. Suites generally cost about 50 percent more. For more information, visit:

. Peter Deilmann Cruises, 800-348-8287, http://www.deilmann-cruises.com/

. Uniworld, 800-360-9550, http://www.uniworld.com

. Viking River Cruises, 877-668-4546, http://www.vikingrivercruises.com/

Note: For Danube-related reading matter, I recommend “The Danube” by Claudio Magris (Collins Harvill, 1986). This is not a guidebook, but it takes the reader through the cultures that line the river. It is an excellent book.