Danube River cruise is a trip worth taking

She was a fragile lady who darted around the classroom with a boundless energy and endless enthusiasm.  To Miss Bessie Connor, our 45 minutes every day was simply not enough time to teach us sixth graders about the wonderful world of music.  To most of the class, as we trudged upstairs to un-airconditioned classroom above the school cafeteria, it was way too much time.

I guess it was because I was short and always had to sit right under every teacher’s nose, but I thought Miss Connor’s class to be fun. What a great storyteller she was, and how I wished I could play the piano like she did.  While she apologized for her crooked arthritic fingers, I thought it was neat to always have those perfect position fingers my piano teacher chided me about maintaining constantly.

As small town gossip goes, the stories about Miss Connor were quite “delicious.” The huge mansion, where she lived alone, was said to have loud and strange noises coming from it at all times of the night. Since most of us in Winnsboro, Texas, had not been exposed to opera, her home delighted curiosity seekers, and, of course, the young Saturday night toilet paper rollers.

Miss Connor never told the principal about the kids’ week -end antics, so they just kept picking on her for the two years I was in her junior high school class.  I sometimes thought she must have been so lonely that she just enjoyed the attention, but, now that I am older and perhaps wiser, I think she just feared if the kids got in trouble, they would miss “the music.”

She was a one-man crusade and her goal was to teach us about the great maestros of classical music, their symphonies, their operas, and the varied instruments that helped them accomplish their musical goals. Perhaps it was my front-row vantage seat that kept me in tune with Miss Connor, but my favorite day of the week was always Wednesday–or  “soup day” in the cafeteria.

While some of my classmates were much more enthralled by the soup smells wafting through the open windows of our room from above the cafeteria, I loved Wednesdays, because this was the day the great masters came to visit. Miss Connor would dim the light, put a vinyl 78 on the record player, and let the music roar.

The “visiting day” when Johann Strauss was played was a Wednesday I never forgot. My sweet little teacher started by telling us all about the Danube River and how it was Europe’s greatest river. She flitted around the room showing us amazing pictures from the World Book Encyclopedia of the world that grew up around the Danube.

Now, you have to realize that, to a classroom of kids from a little town in East Texas, places like Vienna and those towns along the Danube seemed as impossible to reach as the moon. As we listened to Strauss’ tribute to this mighty river, how could we ever dream our world would–one day– become so small that some of us might actually get to visit the magical places she showed us that day?

I feel sure my teacher would probably roll over in her grave if she knew I grew up to be a travel agent who sells vacations on  Johann Strauss’ blue Danube!  So often I think of her whenever a client of Monroe Travel Service returns from a Danube River cruise to tell me how much they loved their journey.

How Miss Connor would have delighted to be in the land of the maestros and to walk the streets of Vienna, the city she always told us was “paved with culture.”  Seeing the deep green forests and hills, visiting one castle after another, and hearing Johann Strauss’ “Blue Danube” waltz being played endlessly–anywhere and everywhere–while strolling through lovely little villages, like Passau, Melk, Regensburg, and Linz, that line the Danube River would have made her heart sing.

A cruise on the mighty Danube River is one of the most popular trips we sell at Monroe Travel Service. Just as the river wears different colors — and, depending on the eye of the beholder, may not even be considered blue–there is literally something for everyone on this itinerary that brushes against 10 countries! How could a cruise on a river, which has been the crossroads of Europe for centuries, not be an amazing journey?

If it sounds like a journey you would like to make, you might want to call Monroe Travel Service before October 31. The “deals” are in play now. Some cruise lines, like Amawaterways, for example, are offering free airfare from DFW on select river cruise dates for 2019 on the Danube, Rhine, and Moselle for 2019. Scenic Cruise Line is doing something similar only their “deal” is either a fly free in economy from select gateways, like DFW, or  else take a $2000 per couple credit and use that money to fly from Monroe.

 See why we need to talk soon?  Both of these offers expire in a couple of weeks, so why miss out on a chance to see if Johann Strauss’s Danube River is really blue?

Dianne Newcomer is a travel agent at Monroe Travel Service, 1908 Glenmar Street, next door to the Muffin Tin.  For a free brochure on river cruising in Europe, Egypt, Africa, or Asia, please call 318 323 3465 or dianne@monroetravel.com.