The Grand Danube: A River Cruise from Germany to Romania

Tim Blanning is professor emeritus of modern European history at the University of Cambridge in England. A fellow of the British Academy since 1990, Tim has published extensively on the political and cultural history of Europe in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Among his publications are The Culture of Power and the Power of Culture (2002), The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648-1815 (2007), The Triumph of Music (2008) and The Romantic Revolution (2010), Frederick the Great King of Prussia  (2015), and George I (2017). In writing his most recent book, Augustus the Strong (2024), Tim expanded his area of expertise to include the Baltic countries and Eastern Europe. His books have been translated into Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Hungarian, German, Polish, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Croatian and Arabic.

John S. Micgiel is a historian who specializes in the modern history of East Central Europe. Having received his PhD from Columbia University, he spent nearly three decades teaching at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs where he was, among other administrative assignments, long-time director of the Institute on East Central Europe.  For many years, he has been recurring visiting professor at Warsaw University’s East European Centre. John has authored or edited more than a dozen books on the region and is a frequent visitor to its academic institutions. His most recent monograph is on U.S.-Polish intelligence cooperation during World War II and is entitled Project Eagle: The Top Secret OSS Operation That Sent Polish Spies Behind Enemy Lines.

Peter Bogucki is an archaeologist who studies the prehistoric societies of Europe with a particular interest in the spread of farming and its consequences. In addition to many visits to sites and museums throughout Europe, Bogucki has conducted excavations at Neolithic sites in Poland and participated in research that identified the earliest evidence for cheese production. He has written several books, including The Origins of Human Society and Forest Farmers and Stockherders: Early Agriculture and its Consequences in North-Central Europe, and published many articles and chapters in both scholarly and popular books and journals. His most recent book, Lost Civilizations: The Barbarians, was recognized with the 2018 Society for American Archaeology book prize in the Popular category and the 2021 Felicia A. Holton Award from the Archaeological Institute of America.

Peter is a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. He earned his PhD from Harvard and served as associate dean for undergraduate affairs of the School of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton University until he retired in 2025.

Hugh Neighbour brings many years of experience as a United States diplomat and an officer in the U.S. Navy, mostly working overseas. He specialized in political and economic affairs, and was posted in Latin America, Asia/Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, and North America. Hugh was awarded the Secretary of State’s Career Achievement Award as well as a number of Department of State awards for distinguished service. 

Since retiring from the U.S. State Department, Hugh has worked as a consultant in Washington and internationally, served as an official observer for several elections overseas, and lectured aboard high-end cruise ships. Several times a year, Hugh directs a course in advanced foreign area studies to select groups in the Washington region. Hugh will offer a fresh, up-to-date perspective on the history, culture, and current affairs of the fascinating peoples and places you will visit.

Nadieszda Kizenko is a professor of history at the State University of New York at Albany. She received her BA from Harvard University and her PhD from Columbia University and has held fellowships in Budapest, London, and Munich. Her research, lecturing, and writing interests include the Russian empire; Eastern Europe; and religious culture, including ritual, architecture, hagiography, and iconography. 

Nadieszda’s first book, A Prodigal Saint: Father John of Kronstadt and the Russian People, won the Heldt Prize for Best First Book in Slavic Studies and was translated into Russian. Other books include Orthodoxy in Two Manifestations? The Conflict in Ukraine as Expression of a Fault Line in World Orthodoxy and Good for the Souls and A History of Confession in the Russian Empire. She has published extensively and has lectured at venues including the Hillwood Museum in Washington, D.C.; the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; the New York Public Library; the Museum of Russian Icons; the Center for Historical Truth and Reconciliation; and a variety of educational institutions.  

Her research has been supported by grants including the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Social Science Research Council, the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research, and the American Councils Research Scholar Program.

Benjamin Sutherland writes for The Economist, reporting on military and defense issues as well as energy, business, science, and political culture. He edited Modern Warfare, Intelligence and Deterrence, an Economist book on how advances in weaponry and spycraft are reshaping global security, and wrote a chapter on the future of warfare for the book Megatech: Technology in 2050. He also contributes to Economist podcasts.

Benjamin periodically teaches undergraduate, graduate and MBA courses in geopolitics and international business as an adjunct. In recent years, he has taught at HEC-Paris; the Paris School of Business; the Zagreb School of Economics and Management; and, in Italy, H-Farm College and Scuola Holden. Earlier in his career, he wrote for Newsweek and was a senior editor at COLORS magazine. He also served as a staff screenwriter with Cinemarket Productions in Paris, and co-directed the Sundance Channel documentary Portrait of a Bookstore as an Old Man.

As an expert for Smithsonian Journeys, Benjamin has focused on Europe, the Persian Gulf, and the broader Middle East. His lectures cast light on a broad range of geopolitical topics, from Central Europe’s reemergence as a geopolitical pivot in the struggle between authoritarian states and free societies to Russia’s grand strategy and its geographic roots, to clashes in civilizational visions for world order. His lectures are richly illustrated with insights from his reporting for The Economist in more than a dozen countries. An avid traveler, Sutherland speaks French and Italian fluently and is proficient in Spanish.

Florin Curta is professor of medieval history and archaeology at the University of Florida in Gainesville, where he taught from 1999 to 2025. He is a specialist in the history and archaeology of the Middle Ages, with a particular interest in East Central and Eastern Europe between ca. 500 and ca. 1250. He offers courses on England and France in the Middle Ages, the Holy Roman Empire, Byzantium, the Vikings, medieval Iberia, Italy, and Russia, as well as East Central and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages. He also taught medieval archaeology, both in class and in the field, using sites in various countries in Europe, from Spain to Sweden, and from Ireland to Romania. Florin Curta has published extensively on the early Slavs, the political and cultural history of East Central and Eastern Europe and, more recently, the economic and social developments of the region during the early Middle Ages. Croatia and Dalmatia figure prominently in his research agenda, whether in terms of the presence of the early Slavs in the area or of such aspects as trade and Christianization in the early Middle Ages. Florin Curta has lectured at several universities in Europe, Latin America, and in the United States. He was interviewed for History Channel documentaries on the Roman Empire and for a documentary on the Slavs done by From Sarajevo to Red Africa Travel.

Writer and lecturer Adam Tanner spent many years as a foreign correspondent for Reuters news agency, including as Balkans bureau chief; San Francisco bureau chief; and correspondent in Germany, Moscow, and Washington D.C. He has long studied colonialism, economic engagement, and globalization, with a particular interest in the enduring impact of Europe on Asia, Latin America, and Africa. He has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, Bloomberg TV, NPR, and the BBC, and written for publications such as Scientific America, Forbes, Fortune, Time, and Frommer’s guidebooks.  

Adam was a fellow and associate at Harvard University from 2011-26, initially at the Nieman Foundation, then the Institution of Quantitative Social Science, and most recently, the Shorenstein Center Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government.  He has written two books on privacy and commerce: Our Bodies, Our Data and What Stays in Vegas.

Mary O'Neill is an art historian and art appraiser based in Washington, D.C. She lectures on various aspects of art history in locations around the world, such as Art Basel in Miami, the Chautauqua Institute in New York, and dozens of international cities for Smithsonian Journeys. Mary has published articles in several national publications, including a cover story for Smithsonian magazine, “Virtue and Beauty: The Renaissance Image of the Ideal Woman.”

Tim Richardson is a leading historian of gardens, art, architecture, and food and the author of more than 25 acclaimed books, including Great Gardens of America, The English Landscape Garden, and Sweets: A History of Candy. After studying English literature at Oxford, Tim began his career at Country Life magazine, where he became the gardens editor and theater critic for 23 years. He went on to write for a wide range of publications, as a long-time columnist for the Daily Telegraph, landscape editor for Wallpaper,* and contributor to Literary Review and the Financial Times. He is currently art critic at The Idler magazine.   

Tim is known for his witty and sometimes irreverent style; a collection of his garden journalism was entitled You Should Have Been Here Last Week, because, he says, that is what garden owners always seem to say. This mischievous spirit led him to found the Chelsea Fringe Festival in 2012—as an adjunct to the famous Chelsea Flower Show but with an emphasis on community gardening and artistic happenings. It has been the platform for more than 2,500 events in some 22 countries. Tim volunteers as an advisor to the National Trust in the United Kingdom and works as a consultant on historic gardens and houses.  

As a visiting professor at Vienna University for several years, Tim taught landscape art—and enjoyed the cafes and cakes! He now teaches a master’s course in landscape history at London University; and wrote an online course on the topic that is taught at Oxford University's continuing education department. Tim lives in London and Devon with his wife, Claire, and enjoys competing in the sport of fencing. 

Vivien Green Fryd is professor emerita in the History of Art and Architecture Department at Vanderbilt University and the author of numerous books. Along with Art and Empire: The Politics of Ethnicity in the U.S. Capitol, 1815-1860, she published Art and the Crisis of Marriage: Georgia O’Keeffe and Edward Hopper  and Against Our Will: Sexual Trauma in American Art Since 1970. In 2012, she was the Terra Visiting Professor at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies at Berlin’s Freie Universität. There, she began research for another book about her uncle who left Germany because of the Holocaust and became a photojournalist: Henry Ries’ Photographs of Iconic Berlin Monuments and Sites 1946-2000. Vivien has taught courses on western art history from the Renaissance to the present, impressionism, 19th- and 20th-century European art, and American art from the colonial period to the present.

After a long career as professor of musical history at Southern Methodist University (SMU) in Dallas, Dr. Carol Reynolds continues to design fine arts curricula and advocate for art education, weaving history, humor, and energy into everything she does. Her research interests include German Romanticism and the musical court of Frederick the Great, and she has lived and taught in Germany many times since 1981.  She founded and directed SMU’s  Study-in-Germany program and is fluent in German and Russian.

Carol’s unprecedented textbook Discovering Music: 300 Years of Interaction in Western Music, Arts, History, and Culture (2009) has reached students across the world, and in 2011 she released a cross-discipline course called Exploring America’s Musical Heritage. Her other publications include Early Sacred Music and a classic family songbook called Hurrah and Hallelujah. 

A popular speaker and a passionate traveler, Carol gives lectures at educational conferences and arts institutions across the U.S., and is a popular expert on Smithsonian Journeys to Central and Eastern Europe.  She and her husband Hank now live in North Carolina and maintain a home in Weimar—the home of J.S. Bach, Liszt, Goethe, and Schiller.

Sharon Hudgins is an award-winning author, a former university professor, and a professional journalist and speaker. A seasoned traveler with a sense of adventure, she has lived in 10 countries on three continents, traveled through 60 countries across the globe, and logged more than 45,000 miles on the Trans-Siberian Railroad. After completing a bachelor's degree in government at the University of Texas, she earned graduate degrees at the University of Michigan (political science and strategic studies) and the University of Texas (radio, television, and film). She has taught at several major universities, including 18 years for the University of Maryland's education programs in Germany, Spain, Greece, Japan, Korea, and Russia.

Sharon is the author of five nonfiction books and editor of several others, including Food on the Move: Dining on the Legendary Railway Journeys of the World and a cookbook about the regional cuisines of Spain. As a journalist and independent scholar, she has published more than 1,000 articles on history, travel, culture, and food, in magazines, newspapers, academic journals, and books, including several entries in Oxford encyclopedias. Since 2006 she has also been a lecturer on more than 50 tours to eastern and western Europe, Alaska, Japan, and Russia, including expedition cruises to the North Pacific. She enjoys lecturing on subjects as diverse as European history, cuisines, and holidays; native people of the circumpolar north; and the life and lore of reindeer.

Chris Ketcherside is a professor at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, where he has had the opportunity to turn his lifelong passion for military history into his profession.  Among his publications, he has co-authored a book on the U.S. Rangers in World War II. He attained his PhD at Saint Louis University, focusing on U.S. military history and civil relations.  

Chris previously served in the Marine Corps, where he became a practiced expert in amphibious operations and conducted several battlefield staff rides.