My Mistake (Passau to Vilshofen to Nuremberg)

The water levels have not recovered, despite reports of rain in the French Alps. It may well help subsequent cruises, dear reader, but it is too late to save us. Today we should have sailed for Regensburg. Instead we are stopping short and anchored at Vilshofen. That is as far as the ship can travel. From there we are being bused to Nuremberg – it’s such a trial (see what I did there?).

Docked at Vilshofen

Salzburg was wonderful and it is on the list to explore more at our leisure, on a day that is not a public holiday. Vilshofen also exudes small town charm and holds on to its history to set it apart from other areas. This was a forced stop, although APT organised excursions to replace those we were supposed to do in Regensburg. Interestingly there are no souvenir shops in Vilshofen. Not a single one. There is a brewery and world champion pizza dough maker, but no souvenir shop.

Dockside statues

There were three hastily organised activities. The first was the obligatory walking tour of the town which culminated in a tour of the historic brewery site and a free beer. There was also the possibility of a hike. You can imagine Jayne’s excitement. Finally, there was another bike ride. Nope, not me, never again. I miss riding, but I won’t be getting on one of those contraptions again. As I think I remarked after the Danube ride, there are a lot of good bikes around, but none of them are being utilised by APT on this cruise.

Sharp contrast to the crowded streets of Salzburg

                                                                 

Vilshofen is on the Danube and there is a walkway along the river bank that has a series of metal doors in it that act as a flood mitigation measure - the doors close if the water level rises to a threatening degree. Otherwise they are open and provide passage from the town through to the port area. The town used to flood regularly but the wall has proven to be a successful measure in preventing this. Like many of the Danube towns, Vilshofen is built onto the side of hill where habitation and commerce are tiered upwards over three levels.

No flood mitigation required right now - even the fountain is dry.

Our guide, Peter, was in fact born and bred in Amsterdam, but has clearly been adopted by the hometown of his wife. Everywhere we wandered, he knew people or happily recommended one shop over another. He also disregarded the traffic, telling us that cars would stop for him. As luck would have it, we ran into the former mayor who was responsible for the successful flood mitigation project and he was most happy to chat. 

The old town wall

We thought this was a fortunate coincidence until we discovered, upon our return to the ship, that another walking tour had come across the current mayor who happened to be wandering around and also stopped for a chat. Perhaps when ships are forced to stop in Vilshofen, the word goes out to all the town pollies who make sure they are around to welcome guests and maybe prosecute a case with the shipping companies that their visits should be more regular?

They love a tunnel passageway

The underground passage that houses the historic information, concerning the brewing history of Vilshofen, stretches along the main street. It was extended during the Second World War to act as a series of bomb shelters. This proved to be a wise move as the town was completely razed. One of the arms of the underground finished under the local bank. It is unclear whether its purpose was sinister or otherwise.

The man, the legend, the beer.

We finished the tour with a local ale and were presented with the beer glasses as souvenirs. The real claim to fame in the brewing world is Joséf Groll, no relation to Dave. Joséf is the creator/inventor of pilsener beer. What a champion. Around the town there were multiple representations of Joséf, attesting to his prominence in the establishment of beer as the commercial and cultural/social essence of this part of the world. What we have quickly worked out is, it's never too early for a beer here - in times past, the water was undrinkable so everyone, adult and child, drank beer from breakfast time on!

The underground

Tempting though it was to stay in town and sample the world class pizza dough (with a beer of course), we returned to the ship to relax and catch up on the blog. It has really been full on since we left Budapest and this is really the first day, we can relax without worrying about missing out on something.

This is where the kids pick up the beer for mum and dad. Nice.

 

Dinner tonight also incorporated the farewell cocktail party. The usual continual wine pour at dinner was truncated to encourage everyone to return to their cabins and pack their bags. All bags were required to be outside the cabin door by 7:30am. Shortly thereafter, we would be on the bus for the 3 hour trip to Nuremberg.

Not for claustrophobics.

This morning had a different feel as everyone was up and at breakfast as soon as the restaurant opened. Since the ship is at less than half capacity, we have had the luxury of rarely feeling crowded onboard but this morning was congested. Once the bags were tagged and out in the hall for collection, we had breakfast, returned to our cabin to pack our personal possessions into the day pack and then headed to the lounge to wait for the coaches to arrive.

Promptly at 9:15am, we bid farewell to the Ama Venita, disembarked and commenced the first leg of today’s journey to Nuremberg. The trip was broken up by a comfort stop at a celebrated chocolate stop, about 90 minutes from Vilshofen and on the bus, punctuated by random information about German life and culture from our guide. He dropped little pearls, such as: someone was recently clocked doing 440 kmh on the autobahn. This is not illegal because there are sections of autobahn that have an unrestricted speed limit; University education is free – imagine a country that values education; the Catholic population struggled with the ‘fish only Friday’ situation and had the church reclassify the beaver as a fish because it lived in water and used its tail to swim. Consequently, the beaver population is now depleted. Waiter, I’ll have the beaver with a side of hypocrisy please.

We travelled mostly through farmland where the main crop was corn, but not for human consumption. I never believed corn was for human consumption anyway, dear reader, but in Germany it is used as animal fodder or as fuel to create gas which is in turn used to generate electricity. Sensible people the Germans. Solar panels also line the edge of many fields. A country that has significantly less sunshine than Australia has solar panels everywhere. Well done to the climate denying, culture war morons in the Liberal and National Parties in Australia who have set our environmental agenda back years. I’m looking at you, Tony Abbott. Go eat a raw onion.

First stop was the Seidl Confiserie, the chocolate shop, which for reasons still undetermined, was decorated with African animals outside and moving models of African animals inside. Wandering a chocolate store looking for bullets and mint chocolate was a challenge because of the language barrier. Thankfully Google came to the rescue and we purchased something akin to a bag of Golden Roughs. Bullets as we know them, did not exist and, despite there being everything from pistachio to macadamia and truffle to tiramisu, there was no mint. Nor were dates to be found.

Chocolate, chocolate everywhere and not a mint in sight.

I have no idea why I'm here.

Back on the coach, we were off to Nuremberg, about 75 minutes away, for a lunch stop, followed by a walking tour of the town. Our guide, Peter, not the same Peter as in Vilshofen, is a former school teacher, not that there's anything wrong with that, and was committed to over-sharing. He informed us that "nothing good comes out of Nuremberg" and that he was born in Nuremberg. You can join the dots on that one.

The "beautiful fountain", in the main town square, was our starting point for exploration and our meeting point for our guided walk of the old town. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, dear reader. Or to quote that great Australian poet Ken Slessor, "you find it ugly, I find it lovely". It was the former. Very kitsch and gaudy.

Beautiful? Yeah, nah.

Time was extremely limited, being divided between freetime and the guided walk. The market stalls contained all kinds of fresh fruit and veg from massive peaches to grapes to tomatoes. I'd shop here if we were locals. A local café beckoned and we had a ham and cheese toastie. So much cheesy goodness. After a quick wander we indulged in a post-lunch ice cream, because everyone eats ice cream here and there are stores every 50 metres.

Now this was a beautiful sight.

Back to the beautiful fountain and we walked around 100m, maybe 150m, to the shadow of a church where Peter showed us photocopied pictures of the area after the war and talked about some of the sights. It was all rather unsatisfactory to the extent where some of our group switched off their audio and disengaged.

Our meeting point before we walked back to the bus was, you guessed it, the beautiful fountain. We were told to be there at 2:30pm and we were all punctual. The guides then wasted another 15 minutes waiting for 'everyone to be there' despite the fact that everyone was there. Many of our number were getting a little antsy about the time - don't set a time limit and ignore it. Not very Germanic.

The next two sections of the tour were partly on the bus, with brief excursions off it. We saw the medieval town wall and moat as well as the castle. The castle was incredibly crowded and for the 10 minutes we spent on the ground in the press of flesh, I'm not sure it was worth it. Peter could have shown us his photocopies on the bus.

The World War 2 sites were what we were fascinated by and would have loved to have spent more time exploring. We drove past courthouse where the war crimes trials were conducted and the gaol behind it, where 24 Nazi officials, including Hermann Göring and Rudolf Hess were held for many months before they could be tried. We then proceeded to the Congress Hall that Hitler built to convene the annual Nazi Party conventions. We didn't see inside it but the photocopies came out again. We actually stopped at the fortified grandstand on the zeppelin fields where Hitler delivered his speeches but it was fenced off and run down. Understandably they are uncertain about what to do with it.

At some point on this part of the tour, Peter went into overshare about how his life changed when  he "was not allowed to return to school" and his partner told him "to find someone else" to instruct and assess. this is how he came to be a tour guide. Ah, yeah. He was also heard to utter the statement, "that was my mistake", hence today's title. Split Enz classic My Mistake from 1977.

On board it was time to refresh prior to dinner. The dinner, drinks, lounge, drinks, bed. We had our first kahlua and probably our last. Meh. Sorry Marg.

Until tomorrow.