Lindisfarne

Lindisfarne Holy Island is accessible by causeway only at low tide, so we had to make a prompt start to ensure that we weren’t trapped on the island. It’s a bit of a drive from Jarrow – we’d passed it on our way down from Edinburgh, but we made it there around ten-ish. We did the visitor information centre and Priory museum before heading into the ruins of the priory proper, so we knew exactly what we were looking at and who all the main people were. It's an English Heritage site, too, so yay! Savings! Some of them overlap with the historical personages we’ve met elsewhere on our travels around England. The original priory was where St Aidan first founded a monastery in 634, and used as the base for converting the north of England to Christianity, firstly by himself, then by St. Cuthbert who followed in his footsteps. They also wrote (or rather, copied) the Lindisfarne Gospels, written on calf vellum and illuminated, possibly by a team of monks. The main guy seems to have a chap called Eadfrith. The monastery lasted until the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII, and the ruins now there date from that time. 

After checking out the menus at two pubs, we settled on a sandwich at a mobile kitchen. We took a brief tour of the gift shops and tasted some meads, but nothing really took our interest sufficiently to part with any cash. We then headed south to see Bamburgh Castle. This had been the stronghold of the early kings of Northumbria. Later, during the War of the Roses, it became the first castle to be defeated using that new-fangled weapon, gunpowder, in the form of cannonfire.

As we approached the castle from the carpark, we were settled on by clouds of insects. Fortunately they don’t seem to be the biting kind, but they are annoying. Inside, we toured around the castle, including some of the state rooms that are open to the public, and we were able to take pictures indoors this time. The castle has been owned by the Armstrong family since the end of the 19th century, who have extensively restored it, and use it to live in for part of the year. The castle has also been used many times as a film set, including for the Netflix series The Last Kingdom.

Roomsful of trinkets

It's very castle-y

We had a cup of tea and a cake at the café, then made our way back to Jarrow, again taking a route through the Tyne tunnel. We have one more full day in the North East, then we head along Hadrian’s Wall (roughly) to explore from the other side of the country.

You Can Run…

…But you can’t hide. Not strictly, true, you can run, but you can’t hide your legs (one million internets to anyone who gets this reference*).

Avid readers of this blog (I continue to believe in these mythical creatures) will have noticed that I haven’t posted for a couple of days. This is mostly because we haven’t done much. And the reason we haven’t done much is that The Covids (official spelling if you’re over 50) may have finally caught up with us. We’re not dead, we’re resting (easier reference for you there). Actually we don’t know for sure, or if it’s or just a cold, but the circumstantial evidence is, if not overwhelming (neither of us have lost senses of smell or taste), at least in favour of it.

 We arrived at Edinburgh Airport on Wednesday, and were given a much more sensible car by Alamo Rent-A-Car – a Hyundai Tucson. We drove south, feeling increasingly worse for wear. Nevertheless, we stopped off according to plan at Alnwick Castle, seat of the Lords, then Earls, then Dukes of Northumberland, aka the Percys. As dukes, they’re a bit of a johnny-come-lately, only having had the first dukedom in 1766. The castle is very castle-y, and was used as a set for some parts of the Potter franchise. This is unfortunate, as they do seem to base an awful lot of their content, and half of the shop, around this. We’d got there quite late in the day, having stopped at a random pub en route for lunch, and were advised to visit the state rooms first, as last entry to those is at 4:00pm. Unfortunately we’re not allowed to take pictures of the interior (and there’s a sharp-eyed guide in each room to enforce this), but it was all very beautiful, and is still used in the winter as the family’s residence. There was also archery practice in the castle, but again last bow-off (technical term) was at 4:00pm, so we missed that. After touring the outside wall, we checked out the Duke’s carriage, and then completed the final leg of our journey to Jarrow, inevitably via Waitrose.

Alnwick Castle

The carriage

The following day we didn’t feel much like going out anywhere. A quick trip to Morrisons to get some much-needed drugs was about it.

On Friday, after a day’s rest, we felt slightly more human, so decided to head to Arbeia, South Shields Roman Fort. This site is the remains of the Roman fort built at the mouth of the River Tyne (the local topography has changed a little since then, but it’s still on the Tyne). The fort supplied the garrisons on Hadrian’s Wall, but was not part of the wall itself – that ends on the other side of the river. As seems to be the case with many of the Roman sites we’ve visited, it was firstly burned to the ground, plundered for stone, and then buried and forgotten. In the 19^th century it was rediscovered when the land was being developed for housing, and part of it was left as a public amenity. In the 1970s the housing which had been built on the rest of the site was demolished, and the whole place opened up and further excavations made. At the same time, some bits were reconstructed – the West Gate, Commander’s House and barracks. The name derives from the fact that it was garrisoned by a squadron of boatmen from Mesopotamia, and means “fort of the Arab troops”. After being used as a granary in its original formation, it was later used by emperor Septimius Severus as the base for his invasion of Scotland. 

Reconstructed West Gate

The Commander's Bedroom

The reconstruction has been painted to look like how it would have been in Roman times

The site is still surrounded by housing on all sides, which is a bit bizarre. I wondered where Sattie was taking us when we were driving there, as we were going along urban terraced streets, then suddenly, there's Roman ruins in the middle of the street.

On the way home, Sattie tried to get us lost by sending us the wrong way down a street on a non-existent roundabout, but we eventually found an alternate route and Sattie found where we were. But she was in the huff for the rest of the journey.

* Here's the answer: 

 

Prague

The drive to Prague takes around four hours, so we set off around 8:00am, and arrived almost bang on noon, with a pit stop on the way. We’re staying at the Hilton, but this one seems to have its act together and, so far, all has gone according to plan.

It’s just as hot here in Prague, but fortunately the Hilton is air-conditioned throughout (unlike Le Meridien). We had an hour or so before our first tour began at 2:00pm, so we decided to have a quick lunch in the hotel. Blimey! Won’t be doing that again! Not that it wasn’t nice, but the price tag was extortionate, even for a hotel.

The first tour was of Jewish Prague. Like many cities and countries, Prague had persecuted Jews to a greater or lesser extent over the centuries, as party of the Habsburg/Austro-Hungarian empire. The nazi plan had been to create a museum of extinct races in Prague as part of the Final Solution, so they decided not to raze all the synagogues here, which is why there are still some very old synagogues, and the Jewish Cemetery, to visit. That plan backfired, didn’t it? Most of the synagogues we visited are now museums, as the Jewish population of Prague has plummeted somewhat. Only one, the Old New, was still in use as a place of worship. Nevertheless, men were instructed to cover their heads as they entered. In the Pinkas synagogue the walls are inscribed with the names of the ~80,000 victims of the Holocaust from Czechoslovakia, as it then was.

Whilst wandering around we were also able to observe some of the buildings which are in the Jewish Quarter, which are decorated to indicate their provenance.

General picturesqueness

Note the decoration on the building

Outside of the synagogue

Synagogue silverware

Pinkas synagogue

Spanish synagogue

The Jewish Cemetery is a small plot in the city. As there was no additional land allocated as a cemetery, particularly when the Jews were being persecuted, it had to be re-used over and over. It’s eleven people deep in some places.

In the evening, we nipped out for a quick bite at The Gate restaurant, as recommended to us by our guide Igor. Then at 7:45pm we were ready for another tour, Prague By Night. This involved piling aboard a bus (with some passengers from a different cruise ship – they’d been on the Paris to Prague route), and driving up to a high point overlooking the city. This was Strahov monastery, so we looked out from there, and then went back to the monastery for a beer, as monks seem to do nothing other than have time for brewing, apparently. The original monk in charge was called St. Norbert, so the beer is named after him. The next stop was at the Fred & Ginger building, a modern building with a café & bar at the top. It gets its name from looking a bit like a ballroom dancer. The views from the seventh floor were again quite good, but it was very crowded, and night hadn’t fallen fully even by the time we left. I was a bit disappointed in this tour, as I was expecting to do more walking around and seeing buildings lit up. Ah well, we returned to our lovely air-conditioning. 

Prague castle

Prague by night-ish

In the morning, we joined Igor and local guide Irena, to tour the main sites of Prague. We started off at the castle, now the President’s Residence. It’s a substantial building complex, the largest in the world, and as presidential palaces go, it’s larger than the White House. Inside the complex is St Vitus Cathedral, which was founded in 930AD by Wenceslaus I. The current gothic cathedral was started in 1344, but work stopped in the 15^th century and it wasn’t until the 19^th century that work restarted, finally finishing in 1929. It took nearly 600 years!

Well how Gothic do you want it?

We reboarded our bus and headed for the central city, stopping in the Old Town side of the river. As we were now reduced to only seven (two had dropped out to go and look at something else en route), our guide decided to take us to an unscheduled stop at the church of the baby Jesus, which is a weird cult thing that people come to see, particularly tourists from catholic countries in Latin America, for example. He looks like this:

Not weird at all

We crossed the Charles Bridge, which is decorated with statues old and new, and continued on to the Old Town Square. This contains the famous astronomical clock on the side of the Old Town Hall. From there we admired the rest of the square, including the Church of Our Lady before Týn, which is now obstructed from view by Týn school, that someone unbelievably thought would be a good idea. 

The astronomical clock

There are loads of churches, nearly all with spires, in Prague, which give the city one of its nicknames, City Of 100 Spires (there's probably more, but City Of 473 Spires doesn't have the same ring). Despite this, Czechs are proud to boast of their atheism - our guides have variously given figures of 75 - 85% of the population declaring they have no religion in a recent census. This goes back to before even the Communist era, but to the 30 Years' War (which they lost, having started it with the Prague Defenestration), and being forcibly converted to Catholicism. This seems to have given them a distaste for the whole religion thing. Nearly all the churches are no longer used or converted to museums these days. They are however maintained by the state as part of the city's history.

This about ended the tour. Igor suggested we join him at a restaurant belonging to one of his friends, just along from the Old Town Square and on the way back to the hotel. There we tried some becherovka, a Czech vodka flavoured with a secret blend of herbs and spices (cinnamon was prominent), and then stayed for lunch and a glass of Pilsner Urquell, one of Czechia’s national beers. Afterwards we wandered round some of the old squares, including Wenceslas Square, then headed back to the hotel, along the way noting places as possible venues for tonight’s dinner.

Tomorrow we set out at sparrow fart to see if Sleazyjet can convey us back to the UK.  

 

Don’t Mention The War

Nuremberg has a very strong association with World War 2. Before the war, Nuremberg was one of the strongholds of nazi power, and it was where Hitler held nazi party rallies. After the war, it was the chosen location for the trials of senior nazi officials – the Nuremberg Trials.

Hitler planned to make Nuremberg the centre as it had previously been where the Holy Roman Empire had crowned its emperors, and he was trying to buy in to the whole history and destiny thing. It’s also conveniently located near the centre of Germany, especially once Austria had been annexed. To that end, he started building a number of structures there, and we toured what remains of the rally grounds: Zeppelin field, Luitpoldarena, Grosse Strasse, and Kongresshalle. The latter, and a number of other buildings and projects, were started but never finished. And the Luitpoldarena, scene of the famous speeches filmed and photographed by Leni Reifenstahl, is now falling apart, as it was built from cheap limestone. Some of it, especially the collonades, was demolished as it was becoming unsafe, but the city council has now decided to maintain what’s left, at significant cost, to preserve it for history.   

How it looks now

View from the speaker's platform

The Kongresshalle is an empty shell, started but, like everything else, abandoned in 1941 when the cost was no longer compatible with the cost of fighting the war. It’s estimated that around €80bn was poured into the building, mostly as concrete for the foundations, which were on marshy ground. It’s currently not used for anything much, although part of it has been converted to a museum called the Documentzentrum, and some of it is used as storage by the Nuremberg Philharmonic Orchestra. There are plans to build a temporary opera house inside the horseshoe, for use while the current opera house is refurbished and modernised. Not everyone is happy about this use, including our guide Ziggy, as the citizenry weren’t asked about it first. 

For many years after the end of the war the attitude of the local population was to pretend that all this stuff didn’t exist. However, as they began to reconcile and open up about what had happened during the war, some parts are now used for deliberately un-warlike purposes today – rock concerts, cycle and car races etc. It’s all a bit “Fuck off, Hitler!” in its attitude.

The final leg of our tour took us to the courts, where there is an exhibition about the Nuremberg Trials. Ziggy explained about the process, and why it took place in Nuremberg (the Russians wanted Berlin, but France, Britain and the USA weren’t having that). We finished up with a visit to courtroom 600, where it all took place. Until recently this remained a working courtroom, but it’s now in the process of being turned into part of the exhibition.

We finished at a more civilised lunch hour than yesterday, so took ourselves off to the Old Town again in search of eat. We’d passed a place last night which looked good, but was closed for a private function, so looked again, and it was open (many cafés and restaurants, as well as nearly all the shops, shut on Sunday). There were fewer people walking around the street than yesterday, mostly tourists I guess, as all sensible locals would be at home having Sunday lunch.

After lunch, we went to visit the Bible Museum. This does exactly what it says on the tin. We set the audio guides to English, and listened to the history of the bible – German edition – which involved Gutenberg, Martin Luther, and other such people. After a bit more meandering the streets, including a visit to the marriage merry-go-round fountain, we headed back to the hotel for a rest. 

An old bible, with annotations

 

Nuremberg

We boarded our bus early for the drive to Nuremberg. We’re off the ship now and staying two nights each in Nuremberg and Prague, before flying back to the UK. We made good progress until we reached the city and then got stuck in traffic jams. We toured the city by bus, with our guide Jan giving us lots of details – mainly about Nazi rallies, Nazi trials, and other Nazi stuff. We then dropped off outside the old city walls while the bus drove on to deliver our luggage to the hotel, and we embarked on a walking tour of the city. The rain which had been near-constant for the last hour or so had dried up, and it was turning out nice again – not too hot.

Jan took us up to the old walls and explained the history of Nuremburg. Despite being heavily defended it was never actually subject to attacks. He told us how the city was divided up, with the nobility and rich people living in one section north of the river, and the tradesmen and other types in the southern part of the city. This is still reflected today with most of the shopping area being in the southern part.

View from the castle

Castle tower

This old house...escaped the bombing (90% didn't)

We visited two famous residences – that of Albrecht Durer, renaissance painter, and also that of a publisher. What’s so great about publishing? Well, this one published the works of Copernicus, which got him into so much trouble with the idiots church officials. Also on the tour was the church of St. Sebaldus, which was built as so many people came to see his grave. Not a pilgrimage, our guide told us, because they were Lutherans and they don’t do pilgrimages (they were pilgrimages). Early tourists, if you like.

We finished up in the market square, where some kind of event was going on – local bands playing on a temporary stage, lots of stalls selling food and food-related items. So far as I could gather it was all vegetarian/vegan, so maybe that’s what it was all about. We finished up by the Schoener brunnen (beautiful fountain), which has some lucky rings on it. You’re supposed to rotate these rings in the wrought-iron guard that surrounds the fountain, for luck. One is obvious and made of brass, but the “true” one is hidden round the back and is the same colour as the fencing. I did both, so double the luck! 

At this point we were released, and after Jan had mentioned the name of one eatery, we set off towards it like hares. This is a feature of these tours that could be improved, I feel – they insist on doing the walking tour straight away, which means lunch is very late. No matter, we found our way to Bratwurst Roslein without difficulty and immediately ordered the “sausage journey” – all different types of sausage, with sauerkraut and mashed potatoes. Washed down with a beer, of course. 

Sausages!

We met up again at the fountain just before three to be driven back to our hotel, Le Meridien (formerly Grand Hotel Nuremberg). Our luggage had indeed made its way safely to our rooms, so after a little rest we set out to explore the old city again. The hotel is at the  south west corner of the city, so we made our way up through the shopping area, past the Lorenz-kirche, and eventually meandered our way up to the city wall at the north east corner. We then wended our way back, crossing the river Pegnitz several times on picturesque bridges, before retracing our steps and returning to the hauptbanhof which is next to the hotel. 

As we’re no longer on a ship, lunch and dinner have to be organised by ourselves. No problem, I thought, we’ll just eat in the hotel restaurant. Schoolboy error. The restaurant is shut, because they can’t get the staff, apparently. So that’s one worse than Gatwick Hilton, who at least managed to open their shitty restaurant. We were offered a short menu in the bar, but that was full of a bunch of rowdy drunkards (guess which nationality? 😉), so we abandoned that and went out for a walk in the city. After looking in at a couple of places, and a false start or two (some restaurants don’t actually advertise what’s on offer – we went in to one, looked nice, got a menu…it’s an Indian. Didn’t want a curry so we left). Eventually we found a pub that had its menu on the outside wall, and it contained that magic word…Salad! We settled in there, had Italian salads of epic proportions (neither of us could finish them) then returned to the hotel to watch French television.

 

Thoughts On Cruising

We’ve been cruising up the Danube on the Viking Gullveig – a purpose-built river cruise ship. Viking is the largest operator on the Danube – whilst we have seen plenty of other ships, there are often two or three Viking ships at each place we’ve stopped at. Danube cruising is clearly big business! Looking at the Danube itself, however, is not that edifiying. Fortunately, there’s not much actual river cruising to watch. On the first stretch we did in daylight, the river was boring as hell, with not much to see. The Wachau valley was a bit more interesting, with picturesque towns to cruise past. Most of the travel is done at night.

Viking Gullveig

The ship contains 95 “staterooms”, which kinda devalues the word. They come in five different sizes over three decks, with the better rooms on the upper decks. Some of these have a balcony, although when you use it is a bit of a mystery, as, in addition, there is plenty of public space: the lounge, like the rest of the enclosed ship, is airconditioned, and the top deck is open to the sunshine – at least it was to us, but sometimes it rains. Also on the top deck is a walking course for those that like to keep their steps up without leaving the ship, a couple of mini-golf holes of no difficulty whatsoever, and something that may or may not be deck quoits. I haven’t seen anyone taking advantage of these activities – but then again, I haven’t been looking. We’ve mostly been to the top deck only to watch the ship going through a lock, or on the one occasion when we did scenic cruising. There’s a little, but not much, shaded area under an awning but otherwise you’re exposed to the heat and sun (37°C for the first couple of days).

The standard stateroom is quite snug. The bathroom is even snugger. It’s cosy; it’s slim-fit. The shower is very narrow, maybe it’s bigger in the larger staterooms on the upper decks. Unguents are provided in the bathroom, and it’s cleaned daily along with the rest of the cabin. There’s plenty of storage in the cabin for clothes, and a fridge (for what? We keep water in ours). there are also plenty of power points, both European and American, but only one USB, for your devices – so remember to bring an adapter. There’s also a large-screen television, but bugger all to watch on it.

There’s wifi on board, but it’s not very fast so you’re not going to be able to stream movies etc on it. It just about services social media and email.

There are 95 staterooms, for a maximum capacity of 190 passengers. Each room has an en-suite, so there are 95 toilets on board. Because of this, there are no additional toilets in the public areas – you have to go back to your cabin. No children are allowed, and the majority of passengers are “of a certain age”. We’re not the youngest, but we’re probably in the bottom decile.

The majority of guests are American, with a few UKers thrown in for good measure, and, I think, one French couple. We were the only kiwis. Everything is conducted in English. Americans will tell you where they’re from: “North-west Arkansas” – yeah, I can’t find the whole of Arkansas on a map, let alone the North-west part of it. And they Never. Stop. Talking.

One of the great things about cruising is that you can switch off and let someone else take over the decision-making. You can’t switch off entirely, however, as there are optional tours to be taken as well as those included in the price of the tour – typically a walking tour of the city you’ve just arrived in is included.

We’ve taken a number of additional tours, including an all-day tour to Bratislava. Whichever excursion you decide on, you’ll generally need to be up early to take it. Buses usually leave early in the morning – 8:00am onwards (the one exception to this is when we cruised overnight to our next berth and didn’t arrive until 9:30am – but the buses were ready and waiting for immediate embarkation).

Walking tours of cities involves pounding the pavement. Walking shoes which are comfortable on concrete are necessary. Mine also have ankle support, it depends on what you’re comfortable in.

The excursions we’ve been on have all included an amount of free time to wander about the city, usually at the end of the walking tour. The guides give a time and place to rendezvous. Some people don’t understand this – on one occasion we left with two people short as they were holding us up too long. Don’t be that couple, get to the rendezvous. If it’s unclear (on one occasion it was) – check with the guide what time to be back or how long you have. Especially important if your boat is about to leave when you get back!

In the heat of July you’re advised to stay hydrated. Fresh water bottles are handed out as you leave the boat at the beginning of each tour, and a distressingly large number of people are taking these. We refill ours and stick them in the fridge for the following day. Unfortunately there’s no-one to observe this virtue signalling.

The food is to a good standard and there is plenty of choice.

Tea, coffee and water are always available on a self-service basis from machines outside the lounge. There aren’t any kettles or similar in the rooms, as you might see in land-based hotels – probably because of the high voltage required to operate, and safety considerations.

There’s a wide selection of all types of breakfast – cooked, continental, cereals, fruits. The chef is on hand to cook eggs your way – omelette, scrambled, fried. There were rumours of eggs benedict one morning but I didn’t see hide nor hair of them. They’ll offer you orange juice, but if you want something else (tomato in my case), just ask for it.

Lunch has a couple of choices and you can eat three courses if you wish. There is a danger of over-eating aboard! On all-day excursions lunch is included. We chose not to come back to the boat after our morning tour of Vienna and found somewhere ourselves to eat in the city.

There’s an “available every day” menu at lunch and dinner if none of the daily-changing menu grabs you – burgers, Caesar salad, steak, chicken etc. I saw someone eating a burger and it looked kinda basic. So far I haven’t needed to stray from the daily menu.

The evening menu has a local speciality menu (one choice of starter, main and dessert), two more options on the changing menu, or you can order from the “available every day” menu. Drinks (wine and beer) are included at lunch and dinner. Other drinks, spirits and cocktails (pre- and after dinner) have to be paid for, although the staff appear to be a bit dilatory in taking room numbers, particularly if it’s just wine and beer. In fact, we haven’t paid for any cocktails either.

Some people have bought an “all you can drink” package for €150. This is only really worth it if you’re drinking spirits and cocktails all night and plan to get completely arseholed every night. Each to their own.

In the lounge there’s a pianist (ours is called Titi) who plays lounge music in the afternoon and evening. Drinks in the lounge generally start around 5:00pm. There’s usually a briefing on the next day’s activities just before dinner at 6:45pm – earlier if there’s more details to get through, such as when we had our disembarkation briefing. After dinner there’s more piano-playing, and on two nights, quiz-type games to be played, hosted by the Programme Director, Krzysztof.

Is it any good? It’s expensive, no doubt, which accounts for the profile of the clientele. One of the excursions was on the pricey side – as one of the UK passengers commented, you could fly to Vienna yourself for the cost of that concert. On the other hand, we can’t do that from New Zealand. Also, for many passengers, the cost of tipping has been factored into the price. Overall, we’ve got what we paid for – the service and cleanliness are excellent, the staff are friendly, and we’ve learnt a lot more from the tour guides than we would have if we’d just been travelling to these places. We have also added on four days – in Nuremberg and Prague, with additional tours there as well. It’s great to have done it, but we’d like to come back and spend more time in some of the cities that we’ve visited in order to explore them more fully. Just waiting for those Lotto numbers to come up first!

Engelhartszell

We’ve had to backtrack along the river to Engelhartszell, but this doesn’t mean that we miss the tour of our original destination, Regensburg. However, an hour has been added on to the coach journey each way, and having spent five hours on a coach yesterday, we didn’t feel like repeating that today. We opted for the tour of Engelhartszell instead.

Engelhartszell is a small village (pop. 500-1,000 depending on whether you count holiday homes, village vs. district etc.) or so our guide, Daniel, informed us. It does have an inordinately large church for such a small community. The church is run by the local Trappiste monks (the only Trappistes to be found in Austria), who have a monastery, homes for elderly, physically, and mentally disabled people, and also rent land to local companies. In the manner of Trappistes everywhere, they make beer, varying in strength up to 10.5% alcohol. They also make a variety of schnapps (to a secret recipe) called Magenbitter, which translates as “stomach bitter”, and is supposedly good for upset stomachs. At 38% alcohol, this is debatable.

It's so big!

If it ain't baroque...

Daniel led us on a tour of the garden, which has a microcosm of the Danube running through it. He pointed out various features – hydroelectric plant, locks, the Iron Gate, and finally emptying in the Black Sea. This is educational material for kids, and there are placards (not in English) explaining this along the way. At the end he took us into the aquarium, which features local fish, including a six-foot-long beluga sturgeon called Harry. 

Harry

After the garden, we sat in the welcoming coolth of the church. Like so many churches, it had fallen into desuetude in earlier centuries under the edict of Joseph II, who declared that monasteries must be useful – schools, hospitals, and involvement in local community were OK – or they’d be closed. Around ⅓ of all the monasteries and nunneries were closed, including this one. It was re-opened when a bunch of Trappistes were looking for somewhere to monk, and they bought it and set about restoring it. One of the ceiling frescoes was beyond salvage, so after World War II they commissioned a local artist to do it in a more modern style – the only stipulation being that it should be in the same pastel colours as the other frescoes, and that it be dedicated to Mary. “Done, and done” he said. It looks like this: 

That's Mary in the middle

Another feature of the church is the presence of four (count 'em!) catacomb saints. These are skeletons recovered from the Christian catacomb of Rome, of people who had died for their beliefs in the time before Rome converted to Christianity. Having been so persecuted automatically qualifies them for martyrdom and sainthood. The skeletons are on display in glass coffins.

I see dead people

That's about all there is to see in Engelhartszell. Daniel thanked us with a gift of a miniature of Magenbitter, invited us to explore the gift shop, and then we walked back to the ship with him.

That about concludes our tours from the good ship Gullveig. We are continuing on to Nuremburg and Prague, where more tours will be undertaken.

 

Salzburg

The weather has finally broken here in Mitteleuropa, and today the maximum reached a mere 27°C. Last night our programme director, Krzysztof, gave us some bad news…the water level of the Danube has fallen to very low levels, and this is going to prevent us from docking at our final port of call, Regensburg; in fact, we were lucky to get a berth at Passau. Alternative plans have been put in place, though. Once again we cruised all night, eventually docking around 8:30am, in time for our departure at 9:15. We have arrived in the small village of Engelhartszell. 

The usual procedure applied, and we were again enjoined to bring our passports as, having just arrived in Germany, we would be leaving it to go back to Austria. The bus journey took us over two hours, on a picturesque route with quaint little villages everywhere. We arrived and immediately set off on the walking tour. Our guide, Julia, told us all about the history of Salzburg (salt city), and how salt made the city rich. She told us there were four things we should experience whilst in the city: salt, beer, Mozart balls, and pumpkin oil. Well, I had some beer at lunchtime. We managed to take in pretty much all the sights of the Old Town on our tour, including the cathedral, views of the castle (we didn’t go up) and the nunnery made famous by The Sound Of Music. 

Residenzbrunnen fountain - made in the Italian style, by Italians

Shopping street

The castle

The nunnery

Mozart, of course, is a major draw to the city and we went past the house where he was born and lived, which is now a museum. The main square is called Mozartplatz. What it was called before he arrived we weren’t told. It’s on the main shopping street, which in olden times conveyed the contents of the shop with symbols, as people couldn’t read – an umbrella for the umbrella shop, scissors and people in clothes for a tailor’s, etc. The modern shops which are now on the street pay Unesco a large amount of money to put their logo inside these old signs (the old city is a World Heritage site), and the shops must still reflect what the sign says – the tailor’s sign is now a Zara, for example (the umbrella shop is still the original umbrella shop, still selling handmade umbrellas). The exception to this rule is McDonald’s, which paid an even larger amount of money to put an M in the sign for a brewery, as fast food shops didn’t really exist back then. 

Mozart house - back. The ground floor is a Spar, for historical reasons, apparently

Mozart house - front

We were pretty well knackered by lunchtime, which was around half past one. Although the temperature had dropped 10°C from the previous day, it was very humid. We trooped upstairs to a grand ballroom for our rubber chicken, and were entertained by a quartet dressed in traditional costume, who sang the main songs from The Sound Of Music whilst we dined.

After lunch we had just over an hour of free time, so we took a quick gander inside the church of St Peter before making our way back to the Mozart House, where we spent the rest of the afternoon, seeing the violin he played as a child, and also a spinet (a type of early piano) they had owned. The house tells the story of the family and employers of the Mozarts (dad was famous for writing the definitive “how to play a violin” book) and how they spent their lives. Apparently Wolfie himself spent around ⅓ of his life in coaches, going from place to place. 

Inside St Peter's

Statue of Mozart in Mozartplatz

His violin

We arrived back in Mozartplatz with ten minutes to spare – enough time to get a t-shirt from a souvenir shop. There were no I ♥ MOZART t-shirts available, which I thought was a trick missed – it even rhymes!

The trip back was uneventful, following the same route. We returned just in time to hear the briefing, which included important information on how and when to get breakfast and disembark on Saturday. The ship needs to be cleared by 8:00am so we won’t be shilly-shallying, nor indeed lollygagging, over breakfast. Departure times and luggage tags are colour-coded depending on which airport or onward destination you’re going to – ours is one of the latest, at 7:45am (some have to leave at 1:00am!), for our journey to Nuremburg.

In the evening, the chef had prepared a traditional Austrian dinner. Yeah, it wasn’t brilliant. The Austrians are known for music, alps, and picturesqueness, not for their cuisine. Very meat-heavy, and the only vegetable in evidence was cabbage. They managed a decent pudding, though. 

Esterhazy cake and sachertorte