From here, you can either read the history in an account Lyndie wrote herself, or watch the two short videos below, in which she describes what happened to her and her companion.
In the first video below, she tells about the start of the journey — a distressing passage from airplanes, to a hotel, to an emergency room in Budapest, and back to the hotel.
The next day, despite it all, at her friend’s “gentle urging,” Lyndie joined a tour of the synagogue in Budapest, one of the few to survive Nazi occupation. The following day, they rode a bus to where the boat was docked and made their way onto the boat together. The doctor had given orders for her friend not to leave the ship, because she was too fragile.
Here’s what the rest of the cruise was like:
Lyndie would insist that the trip was a good experience, because she made friends on the boat — most memorably, the staff who cleaned the room and a kindly couple who helped her during the only off-board excursion she was able to take alone. (She had run out of energy during a walking tour of Belgrade, Serbia.)
She did recall another memorable encounter, in an email to me sent in May 2024:
“Pacing along the top deck of our vessel, moored inches away from another cruise ship, I spotted a gentleman about my age, also walking. Noticing a trash barrel labeled ‘saub-something’, I realized it referenced “clean” like my Jewish grandparents’ name (Sauber) and boldly called out, “Deutschen?” He brightened and cheerfully greeted me in return.
“In my clumsy English with guessed-at pidgin German, asked where he was from. Dresden! I shared my memory of horrific newsreel footage in 1945 of the fire-bombing of his city, breaking into tears as I spoke. It turns out his parents died during the bombing (his broken English eloquent, also his tears).
“We held hands over the the two inches that separated us, and our hearts met, and shared grief–two five year-olds once more. (How could I really know??) We hoped together for world peace, as the world continued to crumble a few miles away in Ukraine, in the Holy Land, Sudan, Yemen. etc. Perhaps the most poignant encounter of my Viking journey. Hard to forget.”
Since their return from the cruise, Lyndie wrote, her friend (not surprisingly) has vowed never to travel again. But once the possibility arose, Lyndie began to dream about reliving the experience in full.
“I treasure the thought of meeting some of the people who live along the Danube…” she wrote, “and having a chance to learn about their world, up close and personal. I want to walk back into the life of Eastern Europe, to hear people’s stories and learn what they have to say about living yet again under the threat of tyranny, after centuries of invasion and conflict in their troubled part of the world.
“This was the place I chose for my last great adventure, and I still hope to experience it.”
The Next Chapter, telling how despair became determination, will be published on February 6. You can subscribe at the bottom of the page to receive email updates every time a new Chapter is posted.
Friends and total strangers have raised nearly $3000 to help Lyndie (re)live her ruined dream of a trip to Eastern Europe. We are still working to restore her savings.
Lyndie's Journey 