It's cool, cloudy and breezy, but we're hoping that the possibility of rain is unrealized. In this light the "blue" Danube is definitely brown.
Just as we arrived in Vukovar the rain begain. However it was light enough that we soldiered on.
Vukovar was one of the most damaged places in the war of 1991; it was the first line of defence against the Serbs. 1200 of the towns people held out for 3 months against the professional Serb Army but secumed at last. [ As a reward for this the the Serbs drove most of the families out of the town, killing many along the way and burying many, including the whole hospital patients and staff in mass graves. Unbelievable! ]. Most buildings, including the large and beautiful church, were destroyed, or badly damaged. Some are still in a state of collapse; others show much damage from shrapnel but many have been rebuilt and repaired [ giving the town a very surreal look ]. The reconstruction of the church is still ongoing on the inside.
From Vukovar we drove to Osijek. Though it did come under attack too, the UN peacekeepers arrived in time to save it from such great destruction. We toured the fortress which dates back to Roman times but the visible part is more recent [17/18 century].
We visited a lovely church and a pub [ Yes!! ] on the way back to the bus. On the trip back we saw fields with warnings of land mines! They are left from the 1991 war and records were not kept of where they were placed;[ about 15% of the land is uncleared ]. That means that the farmers can only use those fields that have been cleared.
On our return to the ship we went to the lounge for our normal briefing of the next day's activities. To our surprise Marek was joined by the Captain and another officer, all in full uniform [ my thinking: this can't be a good sign! ]. Well it turns out that the strain of driving the ship on the single engine caused it to fail as well so we are down to no engine at all. We cannot leave Vukovar on schedule. Engineers are on rushing in from Spain tomorrow to assess the problem and we'll get another report at 6:15 tomorrow.
We all felt like we would rather be "stranded" in Budapest or Vienna but we will see how this goes.
Later in the evening Marek gave a marketing presentation on other Viking Cruises that can be enjoyed. Afterwards we gave him a jolly hard time on the challenges of his presentation, given the current circumstances.
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