Ain't Europe Grand (Tour) with Chryss and George (Day 10)

I'm starting with this photo as you are both no doubt astounded and a bit stone petrified by now that I've not continued the blog posts on our trip. In the meantime, welcome to Regensburg. (We are still in Germany. On the Viking Tir. Just in case you forgot.)

Water under the Bridge

There's more and more water under the bridge, so instead of just spending the morning in Regensburg, the crew decides we will spend the whole day, hoping things lower and we will fit under the bridges ahead on the Main-Danube Canal. So while the view out our cabin from our bed towards shore looks like this

the river looks likes this

Not actually a problem for us, as we're on a ship so we won't flood, but a problem if we want to keep going. To their credit, Viking does very little to scare you about anything. They know how to deal, as we shall see in a bit. But for Regensburg it's a bit scary as it's got a bunch of river action that's clear from this cool brass relief map.

We do the usual included shore walking tour but also opt for the variation with some extra info about the Jewish communities in the area over time, and we do mean time. The first synagogue in town was built in the 13th century and made it until 1519 after the death of Maximilian, who protected the Jews. Once he was gone, they were expelled from town and a Christian chapel was built on the site. Today, there's this memorial built on the floorplan of the synagogue.

While Jews were allowed back into Regensburg, and had an architecturally notable synagogue built again in 1912, that one was destroyed during Kristallnacht. And what followed during the Holocaust led us to see the first of the Stumbling Stones memorials, artist Gunter Demnig's simple but affecting mini-memorials to many lost during that horrible time. (Talk about timing--learn more about these stolpersteine in a LA Times editorial today.)

To think we can once again begin to demonize "the other" so it means nothing if our government kills them, and it's not even a 100 years ago.

Oh well, sorry to be a bummer on a vacation blog. Here are randy, wacky, Dali-inspired bodega signs, to show humans like life too.

And like to drink, even if some people ruin it for the others. I also think it's notable this sign is written in English, sort of as if they don't mean their message for fellow Germans.

Or just like their signs to be fancy for no other reason than pretty (and to get your attention, sure).

Regensburg was lucky to have avoided much WWII damage, so it remains one of Europe's best places to see medieval structures we haven't rebuilt every other century. Most famously there's Steinerne Brucke, a 1,000 foot long bridge over the Danube that got finished in 1146. You still walk on it, and even the swollen river doesn't hurt it.

The bridge might hurt this guy sitting on it on a painful point, though. I never quite got the full story of this statue, and this version of him has only been around since 1854, so he's a veritable youngin'.

If medieval isn't old enough for you, the area was originally founded by the Romans, and sure enough there are ruins from them, too, from about 179 AD.

So I guess people have been building walls for a long time. If you want at least a reference to something older than that, there's this terrific mural of David and Goliath.

This mural is particularly fun as you get a first glimpse of it heading up a block between buildings. And I love how Goliath casually leans his left arm on the one window. And that frog on the far right is a nice touch. Otherwise Regensburg seems to just pose for photos--I call this one Very German Buildings.

Yeah, sometimes they have a name, like the old town hall, which simply sings of political comment in German--the Altes Rathaus. Where else would the rats meet?

And then there's Baumburger Turm, one of the 20 remaining of what used to 60 palatial towers built to show off folks wealth in the 14th-15th centuries. Evidently the best way to appear wealthy was to pretend you lived in northern Italy. Still, a gorgeous survivor, you have to admit.

Meanwhile, some more charming streets and signs and clocks. They like their clocks, the Germans.

Of course there's a cathedral, too, Dom St Peter, some of which first started getting built in 1250. Years that sound more like AM radio stations freak me out a little bit. (And the millennials just said, "What's AM radio?") We don't go inside, but it imposes from the out, particularly where there is a Judensau (Jews' sow) statue in the form of a sow and three Jews hanging onto its teats; it faces in the direction of the former Jewish quarter. And people wonder how anti-Semitism gets codified. Sort of came ugly full circle there, didn't I.

A Moving Lunch

According to our original schedule, we should have been setting sail at noon for our next destination. Instead, we backed up and moved around a couple of peninsulas over, or at least that's how it looks on the very focused map I still have. Basically it means we're now on the far side of the land that's on the other side of Steinerne Brucke, so we have a good reason to cross it. And see the view, too.

And while we sail, we eat, because this is a cruise and there are rules. Did I mention there's a pasta station every day at lunch? In honor of the Roman gate, I have some of that freshly dished up rigatoni alla romana. And some other things, like a smoked salmon roll and a "Russian Salad," which is potato, pickles, peas, carrots, egg and a mayo dressing, with a radicchio leaf and a beet blob for some color, and fresh dill because, well, if you need to know why to use fresh dill, I can't help you.

That left room for the pear tart Bourdaloue. A bit French for this part of the world, but all delicious.

The Food between the Food

We did go back into town after lunch, wandering through some of the shopping areas, including a store I wanted to move to Santa Barbara called The Whisky Brothers (I'll give you three guesses what they sell and the first single malt doesn't count). We were good and didn't really buy anything.

But all that moving around got us a bit thirsty, and I'd been wanting to try some more of the local beer experience. Right on what was now our side of the bridge was Spitalgarten, almost awash with the rising river, but even more scenic than that. You have to walk a bit to get to it, so it almost seemed closed, but we pushed in to find a homey room filled with non-tourists. Gold!

Messing with their 800 years of tradition, I went for one of their newest brews, the Bio Roggen--both organic and rye malt, so a win win in my beer book. Alas, it's only in bottle, but still quite good for an easy-going drink.

Of course, drinking without a snack is a mistake, and we don't make those. Instead we ordered Catherin's, a board filled with goodness and pretzels and bread on the side (plus, see Chryss's dunkel).

That introduced us to the joys of obatzda. Think of a German take on pimento cheese with some beer thrown in, of course. And aren't you proud of me to get this far before making a spit joke? (It didn't take me anywhere that long in Regensburg.)

The Last Food (This Evening)

Dinner time! (Time has passed, promise.) One of the best things about a Viking Cruise is you don't get dinner seat assignments, so you can find your favorite folks along the way and then just hang. This might take some trial and error, like the mistake of sitting down with anyone who says, "I'm not from the U.S., I'm from Texas!" It got worse from there, but the good news is you can dramatically leave a table of bigots after dessert  and not ruin the entire evening.

But then we did have the great luck/honor to meet Carol and Steven, and did our best to have them dine with us most of the nights. They were doing the drink package I talked myself out of, where you pay a bunch up front and then just drink, even off the wine list. Which I hadn't looked at by this point, because why torture myself, or talk myself into buying something. But when Steven ordered his wine for the evening, I had to look. So how fitting was it to find this as the opener.

As toasts go, there are much worse. As friends to make on a cruise, Carol and Steven were none better. And we will hear more from them along the way....

Meanwhile, this evening's meal itself kicked off, for me, with a Bavarian forest salad (we are in Bavaria, if you didn't know), with plenty of mushrooms doing their delicious funky thing but not taking a very good photo. Still, a good, light way to kick off a meal (following a pre-meal of sausages and pretzels).

As usual I stuck with the regional specialties, and the main was a seared river perch getting to do a rustic take on surf-n-turf as the plate also featured creamy turnips (a great variation on just mashed potato, with its bit of taste tingle) and some glazed beets.

Chryss got to have the roasted vegetables and corn risotto special, which admittedly doesn't look too risotto-y, but it does look like something you want to dive into--the roasted corn and tomato and basil delivering on summer flavors surprisingly early, as it was a cold day out there in Regensburg.

And, indeed, dessert definitely had to warm us up--it's heisse liebe, which translates as "hot love." Simple and perfect, some vanilla ice cream gets coated in crunchy nougat, dimpled with a raspberry and served on a plate with warmed raspberry sauce. Donna Summer did go to Germany and work with Giorgio Moroder for her hits, no? (OK, that's "Hot Stuff," but close enough for me.)

Go back and read Day 9 of Ain't Europe Grand (Tour) with Chryss and George

Go ahead and read Day 11 of Ain't Europe Grand (Tour) with Chryss and George

Ain't Europe Grand (Tour) with Chryss and George (Day 8)

We've Been Rooked

So day 8 turns out to be a lot of shipboard time, some of which is referred to as "scenic sailing," but mostly on this cruise that's a redundant phrase. The bonus is Program Director Stein is kind enough to narrate what we're seeing, so we get some history, or given the weather, mist story. But that sort of makes castles seem even more dreamy.

And while Stein was informative in a fun way, I didn't take notes, so now I look at my photos and pretty much can only ID them as "another cute village" or "umpteenth castle" or "one more 'I'd go to church if it looked that lovely' church."

Most likely the spot above is Dürnstein, where you can go to feel the Dürn! Actually, it's best known for its ruin of a castle where a post-Crusades Richard the Lionheart was imprisoned (he made some enemies amongst his fellow Christians who turned out not satisfied just killing heathens but had to do some in-the-name-of-the-lord infighting, too), and his fellow Englishmen found him by singing outside every castle until they heard someone sing back the refrain.then they said, "Damn, of course he's atop a hill."

I think the town above is Spitz, if you'll swallow whatever I tell you.

Do note some of these were taken from inside the ship, given the inclement weather, and rain and Nikons don't mix. The weird part is after so much looking at the scenic same, you start to hallucinate--tell me, do you glimpse a giant nose in this photo too?

That's actually Die Wachauer Nase, and you could fit in one of its nostrils if you cared to know what it's like to be a nose hair. Who says Austrians don't have a scents of humor. Get it? I love that one website about it claims the following: "The nose likes to be looked at and photographed, and it likes for people to lean on it and to have a picnic in its shade. It is happy where it is, breathing the Danube, apricots and wine. It is a true landmark of the Wachau."

For this is the Wachau Valley, and while we don't get to stop and drink any of the famous wine, we get to stare at lots of vineyards and imagine how good the Gruner is. Note that religion tries to get between you and your drinking.

Perhaps that Gruner would go well with rabbit, which might explain this church.

Look really closely at St. Michael's and you might be able to see there are statues of rabbits running across the middle roof line.The myth goes that real rabbits got stranded up there after a huge snowstorm and Mother Nature thought she was helping by turning them into rabbits. I guess that's in one of the Metamorphoses apocrypha or something.

Some villages still had their maypoles raised, and they were much taller and more ornate than I had previously imagined.

And some of the scenery was amazingly rugged and rocky. There might be a particular reason I took this photo--something mythic happened here perhaps?--but I can't figure it out. Still, nifty rocks!

And sometimes the cute villages were coy, and a bit off the river's edge, like centuries of invaders, tourists, troubadours, Crusaders, and nose sculptors would just be too much for their poor citizens to bear.

And then the Industrial Revolution said, let's build some train bridges. Note how relatively low the clearance with this bridge is. Part of that was the extra wet spring (foreshadowing!), so the river is high. The cool thing is the Tir's bridge is hydraulic, so the captain can lower it and not lose the top of the ship. It also means the promenade deck is often closed for safety, but given the weather it was hard to want to be up there anyway. We never got to play any shuffleboard. If that's a plus or a minus is for you to decide, dear reader.

Melk It for All Its Worth

Our two-and-a-half-hours on land today is in Melk to see its famous Abbey, a Benedictine stronghold since the early 1000s. The current Abbey was constructed in the early 1700s, but has been restored much since to become a Baroque spectacle. It towers above its namesake town.

The religious know how to pick building sites for effect. We bus up from the boat to the Abbey, which is also still an active school for many young students who are flooding the entrance grounds. Going through one narrow spot one boy acts saucy and leaves his umbrella up as a way to make tourists scatter, but Roger has none of it and manages to grab the umbrella from the surprised bratty child. A thrilled murmur runs through the children as Roger keeps walking the other way, finally tossing the umbrella to the ground away from any eyes it might poke out. Take that, Austrian children! Aren't you just supposed to perform a goofy goodnight dance number for us?

Spot narrow entrance above. Turns out you can't take any photos, even without flash, in the Abbey proper, which starts with some pretty interesting historical displays--be-jemmed holy foofery (isn't that the official term for priestly costumes?), some cool art from then and now--but ends up in two spectacular rooms. The first is the Marble Hall, all arted up with a ceiling fresco and everything you learned Baroque was from Barry Lyndon. The second is the Library, which is still a lending source for religious scholars. Indeed, some of the renovation of the Abbey was paid for by selling a Gutenberg Bible. They still have over 20,000 books including 750 incunabula, which is not only printed works before 1500 but also one of the coolest words ever. I wish I had had a son and could have name him Incunabula. If you want to see interior shots, check out the Melk Abbey website.

You do get to go outside some and so here's the front of the abbey church up close, not hinting at all of the grandeur inside (go check out that website!).

And then the views down to Melk village and across the Danube could make one have a religious experience on their own.

We were able to opt to walk back to the ship--about a 20 minute jaunt downhill--alas not enough time to check out any of the cute town that I was sure had amazing Wachau Valley wines I needed to buy and consume on the rest of the cruise. Next time. Watchout Wachau!

Quizmaster Stein and Lunch and Dinner Time

It was a busy day for Stein, given we were on the ship so much he had to figure out ways to keep us all pre-occupied. There was the morning's narrated sailing, then he helped organize all the tours so we end up in our correct groups with our local guides (he has this ability to be everywhere at once, as if there's a secret Stein twin helping out). In the afternoon he hosted a Powerpoint talk on canals and locks, which really had its ups and downs (pa-dum-bum), and after dinner he hosted a trivia night where the big prize is, as he artfully put it, "A free cruise.......brochure." We play and do ok but don't win, and have clearly drunk too much as we miss the trick question, "Now think carefully, how many pairs of each animal did Moses take with him on the Ark?" Think of it as the first cruise.

Then there was food, of course, but I'll just focus on dinner that kicked off with a cream of white asparagus soup. We don't eat enough white asparagus in the US. This delight was one of our favorite things to have all trip, actually, even if it doesn't look like much in a photograph.

The other first choice was a crispy vegetable salad, as salad should crunch. Note the un-advertised apples in there, too. We don't put enough fruit in our salads in the US. We do use plenty of feta, though.

For our mains I go with the regional specialty, Krustenbraten, which more than lives up to its name. Heck, that's crustier than I'm going to be as a 70 year old.

Truly something that gave your teeth a bit of a workout, but it contrasted very well with the softer pork underneath. Think of it as crackling with a capital crack. It's awash in a beer sauce, so what more could one want? OK, maybe the contrasting, acidic creamy savoy cabbage. A hearty delight.

Chryss had the broiled herb marinated jumbo shrimp in balsamic reduction, with pesto risotto and baby vegetables (waa-waa).

Spot the full grown asparagus cruising the baby vegetables like it was Roy Moore at an Alabama mall. That's not fair to the dish, which was delish, but I couldn't resist the joke. We couldn't resist each having a dessert and trading fours, for good desserts are like jazz.

Believe it or not but that's a balsamic pear cake, with not only chocolate sauce but some chocolate layers, and a wheat crumble for texture. Complex, fruity goodness, with the smart move to zing it with some acid.

The regional specialty was Linzer torte, crumbly, buttery, currant-y. Yummy. And a la mode because it's a cruise and none of the calories count when you're floating, that's just physics. Although it's possible that it was being drunk on two desserts that made us miss Moses on the Ark.

Go back and read Day 7 of Ain't Europe Grand (Tour) with Chryss and George

Go ahead and read Day 9 of Ain't Europe Grand (Tour) with Chryss and George