by Marcia Arn
Karen Hitzfeld and Mike and Marcia Arn, arrived in Budapest on September 19th. We were taken to our Avalon Illumination ship and had free time until we could get into our cabins later. The staff were very friendly, helpful and professional throughout the cruise.
Friday, the 20th, we had a bus tour of Budapest and got some history. We drove down Andrássy Avenue, past huge beautiful buildings, and ended at the semi-circle of Heroes’ Square, with a tall pillar and behind it, statues of famous Hungarian rulers and freedom fighters between colonnades. The bus let us off at the Buda castle area and we walked up to a square to see St. Matthias Church.
In the afternoon, we had either free time, or an optional excursion. We did the excursion Belle Époque Art & Architecture of Budapest and saw the former home and workshop of glass painter Miksa Róth (1865-1944), with several of his Italian marble glass pictures on the walls and more. Next stop was the Hungarian State Opera House, but didn’t get to see the main performance area because it was under renovation. The areas we did see were lovely – the floors, walls and ceilings. We were treated to some singers who performed four short opera songs in a public area. Then we went to the elegant Muvesz Kavehaz café, built in the Golden Age, where we all had coffee or soft drink and a slice of cake.
On the sky deck of our ship, we had great evening views of lit up bridges and buildings, including the beautiful Parliament Building as we started to cruise to Bratislava, Slovakia. We had been told we would go through 68 locks on the cruise and the daytime ones were always a source of interest.
In a guided walking tour of Bratislava, Slovakia, we went to the Cathedral of St. Martin’s, a nearby memorial where a Jewish Synagogue had been and very old city walls of Bratislava. On a street corner we saw the bronze sculpture of Cumil, the sewer worker, poking his head and arms up out of a manhole. Soon we reached the beautiful Slovak National Theatre, Bratislava’s opera house.
Each evening at 6:45, our Hungarian tour director, Tibor, talked about the next day’s port, and then we went to dinner. Food was delicious, with good variety.
We toured part of Vienna on the 22nd. Driving down Ring Street, nearly all the architecturally decorative and lovely buildings were 4-6 stories high. Even the very old apartment buildings that shared adjoining walls were nice. We passed statues, Art Museums of the University of Vienna, Main Theatre, the Secession Museum with a large dome made of 2,000 gold laurel leaves, the State Opera House, the neo-Gothic Votive Church with high spires and a decorative roof, and so much more. Vienna has four opera houses, 64 theaters and more than 100 museums, so they really like their arts.
We got off the bus and saw art posters outside the Albertina Museum. Our guide said Albrecht Dürer was known for his detail, painting every hair or feather. A set of many wide steps had the verticals painted and when you looked at it from the bottom, you could see the entire realistic Dürer picture of green plants in water. Slipping into an interior hallway by the sidewalk, we beheld one side of the Spanish Riding School Stables, where the Lipizzaner horses are trained! The stables with some of the white stallions surrounded a courtyard on three sides. We saw one side of the impressive Imperial Hofburg Palace, the winter home of the Habsburg royal family, now the official residence and office of the President of Austria.
St. Stephen’s Cathedral with a decorative roof, built in the 13th century, was sandwiched between modern buildings downtown. Shortly it was 10:30 and the bells loudly pealed for a few minutes.
After lunch were optional tours to either a Royal Waltz Concert or to Schönbrunn Palace. The latter was the main residence of the Habsburg family from spring to fall. While driving through Vienna to the Palace, our guide pointed out the Danube City Tower with its wavy side representing Danube waves, and the United Nations Building behind it. There were many vineyards because Vienna grows their own grapes for their wines. Vienna is made up of 22 sections. We were driving in the 2nd section, which had been the main Jewish community. In the 18th-19th centuries it was where most of the big musicians lived. Johann Strauss II was a huge celebrity in Austria. His father (Johann) invented the Vienna waltz that was much faster than the English waltz, and Strauss II wrote many Viennese waltzes. High society thought the new waltz very inappropriate since the man was to put his arm around the woman’s waist and dance quickly. The young people loved it and knew Straus II as the Waltz King. Girls would write him fan letters and ask for a lock of his curly black hair, so he bought a black poodle and sent them clippings of its hair.
In the 1,444 room Schönbrunn Palace (no inside pictures allowed), was a music hall where Mozart used to perform. A huge reception room with three large frescos on the ceiling and large chandeliers was where the family entertained. Many candles would be lit in the chandeliers and when they burned out, the event was over. Everything about each of the rooms was lavish and beautiful. Large and ornate porcelain wood burning stoves, usually in the corner, provided heat for a room. Hallways behind the stoves allowed servants to put wood into them, preventing entrance to the room and keeping the dirt out. Every member of the Imperial family had 50 servants. Empress Maria Theresia, and her husband, Franz I. Stephan had 16 children, so for those 18 people, there were 900 servants! One of their daughters was Maria Antonia (Marie Antoinette), who had an arranged marriage to Louis XVI. If one googles the Schönbrunn Palace in Vienna, you will be able to see some pictures of the splendid interior.
We left in the morning for one of three tours in Durnstein, Austria, a walking tour of Dürnstein, The World of Wachau Valley Saffron or a Hike to the castle ruins. We all walked along a path from the ship to the town, passing large vineyards with both blue and green grapes. Their soil and rock are just right for growing grapes. A group of us doing the hike took 1,100 steps of stone up to the castle ruins. The view was wonderful. This castle was where King Richard “the Lionheart” of England, on his way home from the Crusades, was captured by the Austrian Duke and imprisoned in 1192. Richard was released after England paid a ransom of a third of their wealth. We had some free time to walk the narrow cobblestone streets of quaint and lovely Dürnstein, where shops and homes had flowers hanging from window boxes and some had their Dürnstein unique shaped empty wine bottles hanging on a cord. See the Danube Dreams story for information on the Saffron tour.
We arrived in Melk that afternoon, and went to the Melk Abbey. No pictures allowed inside. We were led in the Emperors entrance and halfway down the 1,000 foot long hallway, we went into a very large dining room, with a fresco ceiling. In the center of the floor was a decorative grate, about 6’ x 8’, that warm air used to come up from and the most important guests would be seated there for dinner. Our passionate guide explained before we went in the chapel, that it was in the Baroque style and this is what the people perceived as bringing heaven down to earth. When we walked in, the amount of gold decoration was overwhelming, so they must have felt successful.
On the 24th, our ship arrived in Brandstatt, where the people going on one of two all day excursions, Salzburg or Cesky Krumlov, left by bus for their destination. The others stayed on the ship and cruised to Passau, Germany and had a 1.5 hour afternoon walking tour, described in the Danube Dreams story. We went to Salzburg, which is famous for its salt (salz). The movie, The Sound of Music, also made it famous as the Von Trapp family was real and it was filmed there. As we drove, our guide, Igor, told us about the region. Many people grew cabbage in fields and made sauerkraut and more because it is their only source of vitamin C. People who live in the Alps region, need 4 wheel drive vehicles and a snow plow. They call Schnapps medicine in the morning, alcohol in the afternoon and after eating dinner, good for the digestion.
We stopped at the town of Mondsee, and after using the FREE public toilets (yes, we usually had to pay), it was a brief walk to the pretty town center to see the yellow St. Michael’s Basilica. This church was the filming location for the marriage of the Von Trapps and where the actual couple was married. The buildings in town were very pretty, and in the park there were many horse chestnuts on the sidewalk and ground. We saw a house with several hooks that stuck out about 3 inches on the sloped roof, whose purpose was to break up snow, so that it slides off, avoiding heavy accumulation.
As we neared Salzburg, Igor told us it is the 2nd largest source of salt in the world. Last year, it produced 1,100,000 tons, mostly industrial salt used for rubber, plastic and pharmaceuticals. The rest is edible and many places sold it for souvenirs. Salt Lake City, Utah, is the largest source. Our first stop of a walking tour was the gardens at Mirabell Palace, with its flowers, fountains, and statues. The house where Mozart had lived from age 17-25 was pointed out and is now a museum. His father sold pianos and he and Mozart Jr gave piano lessons. Then we saw Mozart Jr’s 1756 birthplace and home until he was 17 at Getreidegasse 9, also a museum. They lived on the 3rd floor of the 6 floor building. Under the eaves of some of the buildings were two dates, one was the year it was built and the other, the year it was renovated. Behind Mozart’s birthplace home was the University Square. We could see the green topped spires of St. Peters Abbey Church and the Hohensalzburg Fortress on the bluff behind it. We went into an area where there were doors to a train station where people went during bomb raids in WWII, and next to it was a tunnel where the Von Trapp family had escaped to leave Austria when the father would not fight for the Germans. We walked down narrow Gstattengasse (street) and there were several decorative signs perpendicular to the buildings, indicating who they were. There was one with the golden arch M in it for McDonalds. They had gotten the sign from a place that went out of business, but it was perfect.
That day in Salzburg was St. Rupert’s Day, a big traditional festival in Salzburg’s old town square with rides, tents and booths with food and drink, large gingerbread cookies, cheeses, breads and many different items. Several people were in traditional dress, lederhosen for men and dirndl dresses for women. We had free time, then met to leave by the Salzach River at the Makartsteg bridge covered with love locks.
On the bus trip back to our ship at Passau, Igor told us that Passau was a rich town and long ago was the biggest diocese of the Holy Roman Empire. Passau was on the trade route, so people would sail out and return with exotic items from all over the world, and the Passau population got used to it.
On the 25th as we cruised, Tibor pointed out a 19th century memorial to German soldiers called Valhallah. It reminded me of the Parthenon, with five flights of stairs going up to it.
Regensburg, Germany is over 2,000 years old and little has changed. In 2006, the whole of the Old City was designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Before our walking tour, we had been given “sausage vouchers” to get free lunch at Wurstkuchl. We saw some very large stones in a wall that were from the northwest corner of a Roman fortress that used to be the size of four soccer fields. Near that were more of the same kind of stones that had been uncovered in 1885 in a tower and an archway gate, that were part of the Porta Praetoria, the gates into a Roman legion camp, the Castra Regina, dating from 179 AD. We went down the street where a restaurant was called Bishofshof, where a Bishop formerly lived. Next was St. Peters Cathedral, with two 105 meter tall spires. We went into an old salt warehouse with huge oak beams that now has a local food place and other rooms. Some hallway windows overlooked the Danube and the Old Stone Bridge built 1135-46, the oldest of its kind in Germany. The bridge was beside the Wurstkuchl that we had lunch tickets for, but due to rain, much of the outside seating was unusable and inside seating was full, so many of us didn’t wait. There was free time, so some people may have checked out the cuckoo clock store.
While cruising to Roth the 26th, we went to the sky deck to take pictures. There were large cement markers indicating the continental divide, as we were at the highest level of our cruise at 406 meters, or 1,332 feet above sea level. The ship stopped at 10 to pick up a local expert, Dr. Markus Urban, who gave an interesting talk about the locks while we continued to cruise. He told about the canal system and showed a diagram of how the locks are like steps up to the point where we were, then many more steps going down again.
We chose one of three different excursions in the afternoon, a City tour of Roth, the Nürnberg (Nuremberg) Nazi Rally Grounds or a City Tour of Nürnberg. A passenger who did the Nuremberg city tour said they saw the non-descript government building where the Nuremberg trials were held and her impression of the city was that it was dark and dreary, her least favorite of all we saw. Another gentleman enjoyed seeing the Nazi Rally Grounds. We joined the group to Roth, formerly known as the most industrialized small city in Bavaria. We first went to the Roth Iron Foundry – a historical forge museum, where from 1775-1974, five generations of Schäff men worked. The forge was kept operational and in 1985 it was converted into the museum. A man demonstrated taking hot molten iron ore, and forged it into a heavy iron nail with a bent head so that it was a hook that would hold a cable or rope.
Roth had some very nice half-timber houses. The town used to be an asylum town, where refugees and other people could go to solve their problems. Georg Fournier, a son of a Huguenot wire-puller, was granted refuge because he had fallen behind on his bills, and established an economic sector making Lyonese wire products which are still produced today. We toured the Ratibor Castle, which had been built as a hunting lodge in the early 16th century. It was beautiful inside and the very large state room had a nice parquet floor, many ceiling frescos, and paintings lining the walls. On the street, we were shown what was called an “oath column”, where a person said he owed someone something or would do something while touching it, taking the place of having a lawyer.
Sep 27, we took a bus to Bamberg, Germany. It has 13 breweries in town and many more in the vicinity. It is known as the beer capital of Germany and smoke beer (Rauchbier) is their specialty. Its smoke taste is from the malted barley dried over an open flame & beech wood. They had one of the first hospitals and the doctor made the patients wash themselves twice a day, unheard of at that time as the Europeans only washed twice a year, before Easter and Christmas. At the “small” Bishops Palace we walked through the carriage entrance that had cross cut wood pieces for the floor. They deadened the sound of the wheels and hooves, because the reception rooms were above it.
In Würzburg, we saw the opulent baroque Residenz (Prince Bishop’s Palace) and no pictures were allowed inside. A large staircase had a fresco of the four continents (known at that time) on the ceiling and was allegedly the largest fresco. In the afternoon, we went on an optional excursion to Rothenburg. It is largely the same medieval walled town it was back then. It was lovely with very decorative multi-story buildings, a town square surrounded by the town hall, a clock tower with a glockenspiel, and shops. One confectionary shop had baseball sized round pastries called snowballs.
Germany is trying to get rid of their 17 nuclear plants, and only have 8 left. We saw many houses with solar panels on their roofs and wind turbines by every town.
On the 29th was a morning walking tour of Miltenberg village on the Main River or a hike to the Miltenberg Castle. On the tour there were memorials of brass markers in the sidewalks throughout the town for local Jewish people who were killed by the Nazi’s. The markers gave a name, year of birth, date of deportation, and place of and means of their disposition (murdered). Other towns also had memorials for the Jews who had been taken and killed. Karen Hitzfeld said “the guide told us that the town was totally dependent on the River Cruise traffic to keep it going. Miltenberg is a charming town. I hope it is able to survive.”
The morning of the 30th, a little street train took us uphill to Siegfrieds Mechanical Music Cabinet. It was a 13th century house with turrets and red half-timber on part of it. We were guided through each room that had mostly large furniture like mechanical musical instruments. The ones they played for us sounded pretty good for what they were. One very impressive one was a mechanical piano that had two cylindrical compartments on top with wooden doors opened to reveal six violins in each, standing upright with neck down in a circle. A metal band went around them, moving to play against the strings for the right notes, playing a familiar waltz. We also went into a room that was in the tower part of the house, its domed ceiling painted with very old frescoes. We were shown a hand held decorative silver box, that when opened, had a tiny bird that chirped and sang in a high pitch. They were on sale for about 3,000-6,000 Euros!
In the afternoon, we cruised up the Rhine River, viewing many castles on both sides of the river, docking in Engers. That night we were treated to a wonderful private classical concert by a viola player and pianist at the beautiful Schloss Engers.
The morning of Oct 1, we had a choice of a walking tour of Cologne, Germany, or of Jewish Cologne (the oldest known Jewish community north of the Alps). Originally in Cologne, the Romans were on one side of the Rhine River and had a sewer system, roads, aqueducts for water, heated floors and more. At some point, bearded men camped on the other side of the river and had nothing. The clean shaven Romans started calling them Barbars, which meant beard. This is where we got the words barber and barbarian. Cologne is the second largest manufacturer of cologne. People used to throw their waste out the windows into the street and they only bathed once or twice a year, so there was a terrible stench. People put cologne on a cloth and held it to their nose to walk outside. We saw a modern Town Hall (Rathaus), with the old one next to it with a clock tower. Across the street from it, a building had a statue fastened near the top, of a man with his pants down and his bum sticking out. This used to be mooning the Rathaus, as a symbol of what people thought of the government. Under the clock of the old Rathaus was the face of a man sticking his tongue out at the statue, indicating what the government thought of the people’s opinions.
When digging for a road, a foundation of an early Roman road was found and preserved for people to see. Farther on, we were beside the Römisch – Germanisches Museum (Roman-German) that opened in 1974. When excavating the museum basement, a decorative Roman mosaic tile floor was unearthed. They left it as it was and it is in the basement of the museum on display. We were able to look through the museum window, down a floor to see it. Next to the museum was the huge gothic Cathedral of St. Peter that was started in 818 and the spires were not completed until 1880. When finished, it was the tallest building in the world at 515 feet, surpassed in 1884 by another. The Allies did not bomb it in WWII. It was very detailed, but unfortunately, was made of sandstone, so it is dirty and cannot be cleaned without damaging the stone. Due to weather wearing the soft stone, they spend 6 million euros every year for repairs!
On our way to Amsterdam Oct 2, we learned The Netherlands has 12 provinces, North Holland being the one that Amsterdam is in. Amsterdam is only 700 years old because they had to figure out how to live next to the sea when a lot of it is below sea level. Because they are a trading country and have other language speaking countries around them, they learn four foreign languages in high school, which are French, German, English, Spanish and sometimes Chinese too. There are 150,000 people in Amsterdam and more come in, creating a housing shortage because they can only build 5,000 per year. Housing cost went up 35% last year because of this and it is getting harder to find something affordable, even with their social housing. It is difficult to get into the city by car or bus, so most people use bicycles, and there were large double tier bicycle parking lots.
We started our 1.5 hour canal cruise in the harbor, part of the North Sea canal, on a boat with windows on the sides and top. As we left the harbor area, a double rainbow greeted us, the lower one more colorful. We cruised through canals and learned that boats and house boats along the sides of the canal pay handsomely for the right to have their boat in that space. The tall 17th century buildings had cantilevered beams at the top with hooks, called hoisting beams. These are to pulley up furniture because it will not fit up the narrow staircases. Many roofs have moss growing on them, called living roofs. The moss collects the fine dust that is in their air. We looked down one canal perpendicular to us and could see 5 bridges over it. We went passed the Ann Frank Museum, churches, apartments, art museums and government buildings, then got off and walked to a café that was expecting us for lunch. Afterwards there were different excursions to choose from, or free time: Biking (cancelled due to rain), Culinary Walk and Zaanse Schans-Symbols of Holland (wooden shoes, windmill). It was a cold day, sometimes raining, and sometimes high wind accompanying the rain.
We were happy to get back on the ship and have our last tasty warm dinner.