Record floods from Storm Boris, which have killed at least 21 people and flooded Vast swaths of Eastern Europe, now are impacting tour groups and river cruises on Europe’s second-largest river, the Danube River. Wildfires are spreading across Portugal. And Boris is headed for Italy.
Avalon Waterways has made changes to two cruise itineraries on the Danube and canceled two future cruises as a result of flooding. Travel advisor Gwen Kozlowski, president of Exeter International, tells TRO that her clients, scheduled to depart Budapest on Viking Jarl, instead were bussed to Vienna.
Intrepid Travel, on its website, reports that “very heavy rainfall across Central Europe since 14th September has resulted in flooding in a number of areas causing road closures and further transport disruption” in Austria, Czechia, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia, Romania and southeast Germany. Trips in Austria have been rerouted and minor changes have been made to itineraries in Czechia, Slovenia, and southeast Germany.
The UK Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), meanwhile, has issued a travel warning to UK travelers headed to Austria, Poland and the Czech Republic, and particularly to Vienna.
Italy, Croatia, Hungary and Slovakia are hunkering down for record rains starting today and continuing for the next few days; in Italy, the National Civil Protection Service has issued yellow alerts for nearly 50 regions, warning of the risk of storms, landslides and floods as two months’ worth of rainfall falls in the next three days.
The Danube continues to rise in Slovakia and Hungary, where the capital cities of Bratislava and Budapest are preparing for possible flooding. Austria has closed parts of the Danube for shipping traffic, and Croatia’s Meteorological and Hydrological Service, warning of an “extremely rare” rise, is prepared to put out flood barriers if necessary.
