Originally there were some guys living in a dorm somewhere in room 195. They started posting good quality shitposts on r*ddit on r/195. The subr*ddit started to grow, and they didn’t want to deal with moderating a lot of people so they closed the sub. Followers of the subr*ddit started r/196 as a response. Than the apicalipse happened, and at the time r/196 was at its peak it was recreated here as well by the r*ddit refugees.

So it’s a random room number plus one.

It’s not just that Donau/Dunărea/Doana/Dōnaj/Dunaj/Duna/Donava/Dunav/Дунав/Дунай/Δούναβης/Danubio/Tuna/Danubi/Tunë is the second longest river in Europe, but it’s connected to Rhine and Western European river system via the Rhine-Main-Danube canal. You can actually go in inland rivers from France to Ukraine! Here is a huge pdf map of all Europe’s navigale inland waterways: https://unece.org/DAM/trans/main/sc3/AGN_map_2018.pdf