Two Burgs in One Day

 On Tuesday we started the day in Würzburg, having a wine tasting at 10:30 in the morning! That was because those of us going to Rothenburg ob der Tauber would have an hour's drive ahead of us to get there and we would need free time after our walking tour of the town.

We went to the Bürgerspital Winery, one of the largest producers in Germany, although you'd never know it since they don't seem able to export any of it. The winery is owned by the Citizen's Hospital Foundation that was established in 1316 when Johannes van Steeren and his wife gave their property in Würzburg to the city to establish the hospital. Over the years it purchased and was given huge plots of land which have all been planted with grape vines, as well as expanding the number of senior citizen's homes and rehab centres it runs in the area.

The entrance to the Wine Cellar is through part
of the Seniors' Residence, so we were
required to wear our masks

Inside the cellars are some really
beautiful tasting areas...

...as well as some very decorative giant wine barrels

The winery has a huge amount of land in various areas near Würzburg, and produces Riesling, Silvaner and Pinot Noir wines. Apparently the maximum amount of wine allowed for each resident of the Spital's homes is still something like 8 bottles (according to some documents from the 1500s or so!!!). Our very informative and hugely funny guide told us two very important things: 1) the average life expectancy of people in the area was about 94 - maybe thanks to the wine; and 2) there's a very long waiting list to get a room.

Silvaner wine from Bürgerspital is always bottled in this short round bottle that looks like a Mateus Rosé bottle from Portugal (once again according to the guide, the Portuguese stole it from them!) because there was so much inferior plonk sold as Bürgerspital product that the winery had this special bottle made to ensure drinkers were getting the real thing....of course, we don't know what they did with the empties, do we?

One of two wines we tasted before
our bus had to leave for Rothenburg.

The Bishop's Residence in Würzburg - can't
resist that scaffolding!

We had about an hour to recover from the wine before we arrived at Rothenburg ob der Tauber, one of the few remaining medieval cities in Germany. It has quite a history, with a Roman settlement established before the 1st Century AD. It was held by various counts until being granted privileges as a Free Imperial City in 1274, and became one of the economic and religious centres of Franconia in northern Bavaria.

The city wall of Rothenburg. You can walk
quite a distance around the town along the covered
walkway. We didn't have time to do that.

The Marktplatz in front of the Town Hall. It
was quite warm out, and almost every restaurant
patio was full.

An event apparently occurred during the Thirty Years' War that is now replayed every hour from the clock tower in the Town Hall. In 1631, a Catholic count wanted to take over Rothenburg to house his thousands of troops. Rothenburg was a Protestant Lutheran city and refused, so they hunkered down against a siege. Unfortunately, according to our guide, they accidentally blew up their ammunition supply and the Catholics stormed in. The story known as the Meistertrunk or Master Drink says that the townsfolk offered the count a flagon of 3 1/4 litres of wine to try to spare the killing of the town's leaders. Rather than try to drink it himself, he proclaimed that if anyone could drink it all in one go, he would spare the town. According to legend, the mayor managed to do this, and the town was spared.

Now the count sits at one open window shaking his head while the mayor sits in the other window drinking the flagon dry once every hour.

The main cathedral of St. John in the centre of the town has a huge number of stained glass windows, especially behind the main altar. It is the parish church of our guide, and she said that there's nothing more uplifting that to see all of the colours shining in the sunlight at a morning service.

The Cathedral of St. Jacobus, or St. John

The main altar. Carvings done by who knows?
but the painters and gilders were all famous
at the time

A small hotel tucked down a lane near the
city walls.

One of the castle gates still from
the original days when Rothenburg
was under the rule of counts and princes

A look towards the city and the wall across
the valley from the castle gardens

One of the original town gates dating back
to before the town's expansion in the 1300s

And another one

We hadn't had too many chances to find somewhere to sit and have a beer and a glass of wine, but we were able to do just that in Rothenburg. It helped that we didn't need any new Christmas ornaments - the well-known Kathe Wohlfahrt Christmas stores have their main location here in Rothenburg - so we left the shopping to everyone else and had some bratwurst along with our drinks.

After the walking tour was over, Larry
was looking for a beer

And since we were feeling peckish, we
shared a plate of Nurnberg wurst and sauerkraut

It was a lovely afternoon, and after an uneventful ride back to Würzburg we sailed out for our 'sea day' on Wednesday toward the Rhine River and Rüdesheim.

Medieval Bamberg

Our stop in Bamberg was a little longer than some of the others, which actually allowed us to stop and try a local Rauchbier, or smoked beer. More on that later.

Bamberg dates back to the 9th century, and, according to our local guide, has tongue in cheek been called the Rome outside of Italy because it, like Rome, is built on 7 hills. And each one of them actually does have a church on top of it. This building used to be the citizens' hospital, where people went with the expectation of being cured rather than waiting to die. It now houses the city archives.

The area of Klein Venedig, or Little Venice, in Bamberg. The local fishermen, who took plentiful stock of many kinds of fish from the river, used to live in these houses. It's quite a picturesque area, and the current owners keep lovely colourful gardens on the water's edge.

Someone painted some scenes of historic Bamberg on a local building.

Bamberg dates back to 900, and has the largest intact city wall in Europe. The whole town is a UNESCO World Heritage site. This pretty half-timbered building is the home of the oldest brewery in Bamberg, and the one famous for the Rauchbier.

The Altes Rathaus, or old town hall, was built on an island in the river because the Bishop who was in charge at the time didn't grant the citizens of the town any land on which to build one. The art on the outside walls is still very impressive, and on the other side from this photo, even has a 3D cherub's leg sticking out and the cherub's hand pointing to the signature of the artist. The original billboard!

St. Michael's Abbey, which sits atop the highest of Bamberg's hills. The church and monastery were founded in 1015 when the King of Bavaria, Heinrich II, gave the first Bishop the land to build them. The remains of Heinrich II and his wife Kunigunde are supposedly buried here. The small house structure was the original Bishop's residence. A later Bishop wasn't too happy with the small quarters, so he built another home across the square...

This is the Rose Garden in the New Residence which was built around 1700 and was the residence of the prince-bishops until 1864. The gardens are quite beautiful. and they overlook the rooftops of the town.

Now to the beer stop at the end of the tour. It was a very hot day, and since our Tauck tour directors had said we couldn't be in Bamberg without trying the beer, Larry decided to have one. How did he describe it? Like drinking water that had been filtered through the remains of last night's burned out campfire, bottled and poured into a nice glass. Needless to say, one try was enough, and he had to get a Warsteiner beer on board to wash out the taste.

And finally, we saw some really nice mosaic artwork along the wall by the town archive building. On the way back, we took this photo of the Bamberg Horseman, based on a stone sculpture inside of the Cathedral. Historians have many different theories about his identity, ranging from Jesus (as in the Book of Revelations), to one of the kings or emperors, to one of the three wise men. We'll never know...

We set off before dinner towards Wurzburg, and we had another beautiful evening on the way.

Our pastry chef, Igor, is absolutely amazing. This dessert was a deconstructed Black Forest Cake, almost all cream, cherry and chocolate and very little chocolate cake.

The last photo of the day. The canal has no particular flow pattern, so it reflects like glass.

Nürnberg and the 'Pencil Castle'

This morning's pre-arrival lecture was about the Main-Danube Canal, it's history, use and engineering. 

The engineering aspect was really interesting to hear about, as it incorporates a unique water-saving method that was adopted when the new larger Panama Canal was built recently.

A canal linking some tributaries of the Main and Danube was actually proposed by Charlemagne in 793. It seems it was at least partially constructed, by archaeological evidence. The larger canal was built in the mid-1800s by King Ludwig I, linking Bamberg and Kelheim. It was completed, but with the advent of the railway and the volatility of the water levels in the dry season, it soon became uneconomical to run. The canal was abandoned after WWII and damage done was not repaired.

It wasn't until the 1960s that construction began again to finish the route, with the final section, going through the ecologically sensitive Altmühl Valley, not completed until 1992. A lot of the financing for the project came from hydro-electric power generation revenue at the locks, and a good chunk of money was put into environmental protection projects.

There's very little commercial traffic other than passenger riverboats on the canal, but we have found it to be a very serene and relaxed journey so far.

This is the water-saving system of storage chambers.
No pumps are used, just gravity and physics. Each chamber is opened
individually, the water between the lock and the chamber finds its
natural level, and then the next is opened. 60% of the
water can be reused.

The lock gates open vertically. Very, very
low - and wet - bridge.

Zeppelin Field in Nürnberg, where the Nazi
rallies were held.

Courtroom 600 in the Nürnberg Courthouse, where 
The Nazi War Crimes Trials were held.

After the historic part of the tour, we were taken to the Faber-Castell Castle. This is the original home of the Faber family, the second generation of which, in the1850s, developed the world's best pencil. Mr. Faber made them each by hand at that time, and his wife went to the market in Nürnberg to sell them. It was his son who mechanized the process and began selling internationally. When they ran out of sons to carry on the business, daughter Otillia married into the Castell family, and they have been Faber-Castell since that time. The single factory is still within walking distance of the castle, and the current generation still runs the company.

The castle itself was taken over by the Nazis at the beginning of the war In 1939 when the family was away for the summer. After that, the American Army used it as a headquarters building, and then finally it became a press corps residence during the war trials. The family hasn't lived there since, and it is the current Duke who is leading the restoration. Some of the inside rooms are beautifully decorated with Carrera Marble and Art Deco style ceilings and wood inlays in the wall panelling.

After the tour, we were offered a wine tasting from the family's own vineyard. The wines I tried were very nice....And each of us got a 'Perfect Pencil', with eraser, extender (so you can use the pencil until there's nothing left to hold) and even a sharpener integrated together. I happened to see one in a shop window in another town, and they were selling for 11 Euros! Too bad we visited on a Sunday; the shop was closed.

I think I was the only person to recognize this as 
a pencil sharpener. Somebody in the family has
a great sense of humor.

The courtyard between the old and new sections of
the castle.

It was so hot out, that almost everyone wanted to go back to the ship instead of having free time in the old city. We ended up on the bus that dropped the city-goers off before returning to the ship, so I managed to get a couple of pictures of the old city walls as we drove by.

Lunch had included Bienenstich cake, one of Monica's favourites. The restaurant maitre d', Predrag, stole a couple of pieces from the buffet and put them in our stateroom fridge for us as a coffee time treat. We're having a great time with him.

 

It's supposed to be cooler tomorrow in Bamberg. This is another medieval town that we're looking forward to seeing.