View Single Post
Old 03-15-2016, 09:57 AM   #13
vp1
Veteran Member
 
City: Boston, MA
Join Date: Sep 2015
Posts: 28
Quote:
Originally Posted by koliver View Post
I recently did a river cruise, Budapest to Amsterdam, Viking Longship. My wheelhouse tour opportunity came in the canals of the netherlands, where the traffic is thick, the fairway narrow, and lots of information passing on the VHF. Not a word of English. I don't speak Dutch, but can often recognize it spoken. I had highschool German, but couldn't rely on my translation abilities, especially on a VHF broadcast. The captain of the ship was Russian and had zero to nil competence in English, as he gave me a blank stare when I asked a question in simple English and his Second Mate answered for him.
While I recognize that English may be the language of commerce in Europe, you definitely need the local language to know what is happening on the waterways.
I actually did a similar cruise, also on the Danube, but going the other way from Budapest, to Constanta, Romania. I also did a different segment of the Danube at a different time, from Vienna to Nuremberg (I work for one of the major river cruise companies - not Viking) but unfortunately it was before I was interested in boating so I didn't ask the nautical crew at the time whether it would be impossible to recreationally boat in the rivers/canals without local language proficiency. Interestingly enough, on that Budapest to to Constanta cruise, our captain was also Russian and also didn't speak any English. I'm a native Russian speaker so I was able to talk to him, but if he needed English, a member of his crew translated. Coincidentally, I was on a Russian river cruise three years ago (from Moscow to St. Petersburg), and of course none of the crew there spoke anything but Russian.
vp1 is offline