Grand European Tour

Budapest to Amsterdam | 15 days

Admire Rhine Valley vistas from a 900-year-old castle. Sample the food and wine of Austria’s Wachau Valley. Learn the Viennese waltz and linger in Budapest’s Café Gerbeaud. Indulge all your senses on this 15-day journey spanning the best of Europe. Our most iconic itinerary traces the Rhine, Main and Danube Rivers between the windmill-dotted waterways of Holland and the stunning landscapes of Hungary, with engaging encounters at every bend.

Danube Waltz

Budapest to Passau | 8 days

Soak up soothing steam at a Budapest thermal bath. Learn to waltz at a Viennese dance school. Savor Austro-Hungarian cuisine in Vienna and Budapest. Admire the Wachau Valley’s beauty. Explore lesser-known Central European cities like Bratislava and Passau. Witness daily life in an abbey on an exclusive visit to Göttweig. This 8-day itinerary reveals the best of these places, while cruising leisurely through spectacular scenery.

Romantic Danube

Budapest to Regensburg | 8 days

Visit Budapest’s Castle District and cross the famous Chain Bridge. Explore Göttweig Abbey, one of Austria’s most revered monastic centers, and make dumplings with Wachau Valley apricots. Visit historic Salzburg. Spend two days in Vienna, and celebrate the city’s musical heritage at a concert featuring works by Mozart and Strauss. With medieval towns, grand cities and stunning scenery, this 8-day journey on the “Blue Danube” is one you are sure to love.

Passage to Eastern Europe

Bucharest to Budapest | 11 days

See Bucharest’s 3,000-room Palace of Parliament. Make banitsa bread with a home cook in Vidin. Explore Belgrade’s Ottoman and European treasures, including 6th-century Kalemegdan Fortress. View the Danube’s towering Iron Gate. Visit a Croatian family’s Osijek home. Witness Hungary’s daredevil Puszta horsemen. Behold Budapest’s grandeur. Once hidden behind the Iron Curtain, the eastern Danube still has secrets to reveal on this enriching cruisetour.

European Sojourn

Amsterdam to Bucharest | 23 days

Cruise Amsterdam’s canals. See castles on the Rhine. Behold the grandeur of Vienna. Celebrate folk traditions in Hungary, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania. These travel icons—and more—await you on a 23-day journey combining our Grand European Tour and Passage to Eastern Europe cruises. Discover eight countries in Western, Central and Eastern Europe while cruising the Rhine, Main and Danube. Enjoy a lifetime’s worth of experiences on a single voyage.

Christmas on the Danube

Budapest to Regensburg | 8 days

Discover grand cities, medieval towns and quaint villages along the “Blue Danube,” highlighting three countries: Hungary, Austria and Germany. Stroll among the stalls at Budapest’s Christmas market and immerse yourself in the cheerful atmosphere of Vienna as you shop for handmade decorations. Visit the fairy-tale village of Regensburg, one of Europe’s best-preserved cities, and delight in the city’s joyful festivities.

Danube Christmas Delights

Budapest to Passau | 8 days

Pass through Europe’s most enchanting countries, stopping to explore cultural capitals and fairy-tale villages. Savor Austro-Hungarian cuisine, admire the Wachau Valley’s beauty and explore Central European cities. Take part in European holiday traditions and experience the region’s renowned Christmas markets. Breathe in the scents of traditional fare and admire the handiwork of local artisans—perfect for bringing home to your family and friends.

Budapest: A History of Grandeur and Catastrophe

By Joe Jajdu

Budapest today is a palimpsest of its history and partially crystallized present. Its earlier history is best seen on the Castle Hill of Buda, the seat of Hungarian royal power since the beginning in the 13th Century. This peaked in the glory years of King Matthias' reign in the second half of the 15th Century, when Buda was one of the largest and wealthiest cities of Europe. The Ottoman conquest that followed a generation later was a catastrophe whose effect would last two centuries. However when the new Castle Hill of Buda arose, it became a version of Baroque central Europe, controlled by Imperial Vienna. Pest, on the opposite banks of the Danube, is a symbol of the grandeur of the late 19th Century metropolis. Elaborate, historicist buildings and monuments first inhabited by the members of the rising bourgeoisie that had achieved prosperity in the booming Budapest around the year 1900. This era still largely defines the visual appearance of the central city. Nearly half a century later Fascism, and then forty years of Communism, again produced economic dislocation and social tumult in the lives of the people. This is best shown through descriptions of the fate of individual families in Budapest. Since 1990 the metropolis and its people have gone through a frenzied transition for which there was no template: authoritarian socialist economy to volatile capitalism and democracy. The story of the key players and groups in this transition make this tumultuous process particularly vivid. Today Budapest is a city whose role in Europe is still being crystallized. However, inventive entrepreneurs and creative artists are making the city a more and more vibrant home for its citizens and a favoured destination for a rapidly increasing flow of visitors.

Budapest 1900: A Historical Portrait of a City and Its Culture

By John Lukacs

"Lukacs's book is a lyrical, sometimes dazzling, never merely nostalgic evocation of a glorious period in the city's history. . . . {His} true sympathy lies . . . not with the famous expatriates, but with the writers and intellectuals who lived and died at home: the poets Endre Ady and Mihaly Babits; the novelists Ferenc Herczeg, Sandor Hunyady, Frigyes Karinthy, Dezso Kosztolanyi, Gyula Krudy, Kalman Mikszath, and Zsigmond Moricz; the political essayist DezsoSzabo; the playwright Erno Szep; the literary historian Antal Szerb; and others. . . . {John Lukacs} sets out to explain Hungarian literature to English-speaking readers. Though I have no idea whether or not he will succeed, few interpreters of Hungarian literature have made a more touching and eloquent attempt." -- The New York Review of Books

Danube: A Sentimental Journey from the Source to the Black Sea

In this acclaimed international bestseller, Claudio Magris tracks the Danube River, setting his finger on the pulse of Central Europe, the crucible of a culture that draws on influences of East and West, Christianity and Islam. In each town he raises the ghosts that inhabit the houses and monuments, from Ovid and Marcus Aurelius to Kafka and Canetti, in a fascinating blend of anecdote and history

The Danube: A Cultural History

The Danube is the longest river in western and central Europe. Rising amidst the beautiful wooded hills of Germany's Black Forest, it touches or winds its way through ten countries and four capital cities before emptying into the Black Sea through a vast delta whose silt-filled channels spread
across eastern Romania.

They Were Counted

By Miklós Bánffy, Patrick Thursfield, Kathy Bánffy-Jelen and Patrick Leigh Fermor

Painting an unrivalled portrait of the vanished world of pre-1914 Hungary, this story is told through the eyes of two young Transylvanian cousins, Count Balint Abady and Count Laszlo Gyeroffy. Shooting parties in great country houses, turbulent scenes in parliament, and the luxury of life in Budapest provide the backdrop for this gripping, prescient novel, forming a chilling indictment of upper-class frivolity and political folly, in which good manners cloak indifference and brutality. Abady becomes aware of the plight of a group of Romanian mountain peasants and champions their cause, while Gyeroffy dissipates his resources at the gaming tables, mirroring the decline of the Austro-Hungarian Empire itself. The first book in a trilogy published before World War II, it was rediscovered after the fall of Communism in Hungary and this edition contains a new foreword.

Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafés of Vienna, Budapest and Prague

By Rick Rodgers

Transporting readers to three of the most romantic cities in the world, this beautiful book brings to life their old-world charms and architectural gems, and presents 150 impeccable recipes for recreating their legendary cakes and pastries in the home kitchen.

Vienna, Budapest, and Prague have a special hold on our imaginations, conjuring up a sense of timeless elegance, of historical and cultural riches–and of tables laden with the most extraordinary desserts imaginable. Rick Rodgers explores all these treasures in Kaffeehaus, a cook’s tour enhanced with stunning full-color photographs.

Rodgers visits such culinary landmarks as Café Slavia in Prague and Café Sperl in Vienna, sampling apple strudel, the Emperor’s pancakes, hot chocolate, and other classics and gathering the recipes (and secrets) of master bakers. With an attention to detail developed through years of teaching, he explains how to make the perfect accompaniments to a cup of coffee, as well as spectacular endings to elegant meals.

Filled with food facts and lore (from when coffee first came to Vienna to the great Sachertorte controversy), Kaffeehaus is a treat for armchair travelers and cooks alike.

Jakob the Liar

Peter Kassovitz

Set in a wartime Polish ghetto, this film stars Robin Williams as a shopkeeper who spreads hope among the imprisoned community by fabricating tales about approaching Allied advances, claiming he has heard such stories on his secret radio. Filmed in Hungary and Poland.

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Tomas Alfredson

During the cold war in the early 1970s when an operation in Budapest, Hungary goes terribly wrong, the head of British Intelligence, Control, resigns. It is believed that one of four senior figures in the service is a Russian agent, a mole. Espionage veteran George Smiley is forced from semi-retirement to uncover the Soviet agent within MI6. Filmed in multiple locations including Budapest.

Mephisto

István Szabó

A German stage actor finds unusual success in the popularity of his performance in a Faustian play as the Nazis take power in pre-WWII Germany, and finds that his best performance is keeping up appearances for his Nazi patrons. Filmed in multiple locations including Budapest.

Heavenly Shift

Márk Bodzsár

Set in Budapest, this film offers insights into the everyday lives of a remarkable ambulance crew. Originally titled Isteni müszak.

Wallenberg: A Hero’s Story

Lamont Johnson

Based on a true story, this film tells the story of Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish banker and diplomat who saved more than 100,000 Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust while living in Budapest.

Bolse Vita

Ibolya Fekete

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, three young Russians arrive in Budapest seeking their fortunes in this revealing portrait of life after Communism.