Author: rphbaker

Greg and I are getting a slow start to our day but it looks like it’s going to be a pretty one based on our view.

Based on what I’ve read in the Viking Daily I think Bamberg is gonna be my jam. It’s described as one of the loveliest of all German towns, located on seven hills, each crowned by a church.

“Bisected by rivers and canals, the town embraces an atmospheric jumble of crooked lanes, medieval buildings and a skyline punctuated by Church steeples.” And, I’m sold based on this description alone.

Bamberg is a UNESCO world heritage site (so was Regensburg which I failed to mention) and is one of the few German cities not destroyed by the WWII bombings.

Bamberg is known for its beer, specifically its rauchbier, which is a smokey beer made with malt dried over open flames. Gavin described it as a beer with a taste of bacon and said that generally everyone thinks think they won’t like it but 80% of people do based on his very scientific methods.

Bamberg is located in the upper Franconia region of Bavaria. This region boasts the densest concentration of breweries in the world.

City Hall is located on a manmade island that serves both sides of town, the oldest section on the West Bank and a flat area on the east side. Its location has been described as “Little Venice.”

Can’t wait to go explore!

After the port talk where Gavin explained our very full day tomorrow it was time to head down for dinner. I got a running start but Paul had beat me to the table!

I wasn’t super excited about any of the chef’s recommendations tonight so I went off the general menu.

I forgot to take a pic of my roasted chicken. I did however capture dessert.

After dinner Greg headed down to bed and I went to the lounge with Carey and Linda to hear a little bit of some local musicians. They were good!

It’s an early bedtime for me. Full day tomorrow and we had an early wake up call to see the locks in action this morning.

Greg and Carey wanted to do the WWII tour in Nuremberg. It’s a four hour tour and I’m not really sure what to expect.

Our guide is Alex who has a second job as a yacht instructor and when he gets tired of teaching people how to drive their new yachts he comes home and does tours. He also lived in Hopkinsville KY for four years. Small world.

We started our drive by passing through the industrial part of town. Many factories here were used by the Nazi’s to produce tanks and other supplies for the war. Because of this, much of the city was destroyed.

There are 520k residents here, about 1M if you include the suburbs. This was the location for the Nazi Party Rally Grounds from 1933-1938. These rallies were held for a week in September and 500k-1M people would travel here for these.

The size of the grounds is equal to four times the size of Central Park which is mind blowing.

Our first stop was the zeppelin fields and grandstand which was finished in 1936. This is where the rallies were held which were to get the Germans in line with the Nazi ideology. This was also the site used to deport prisoners to concentration camps because there are lots of railroad tracks close.

Next stop was Congress Hall. Construction stopped on this when the war started so it’s only 2/3 complete. This was being built so Hitler could accommodate 50k people one day a year to hear one speech from him. The design was based off the colosseum and was to have light shining down directly on him during the speech like a God.

They used the cheapest bricks possible on the inside but stones that looked like marble on the outside.

This area now houses a museum and will be the temporary opera house while the current one is renovated. This apparently is a hot topic in Germany because the temporary structure will cost taxpayers 300M euros and will only be used for 10 years. Their original building will cost 1B euros to renovate.

Our final stop was the Palace of Justice that was built in 1916. This is the site where the famous Nuremberg trials occurred in Court Room 600. This was the first time an entire nation was put on trial. Changes were made to this courtroom by the US to accommodate the numerous media and observers but the courtroom aside from that is exactly the same.

I could type all kinds of facts that were discussed but it’s a lot. I think the takeaway from our guide was how diligent the US was to ensure that the trial was fair so no one could come back on them later to say it wasn’t.

The other thing Alex shared was that for years the Germans wanted to hide history. Even at the grandstand, the Germans tried to remove all the columns by saying they were in disrepair. The truth is that they didn’t want a reminder of what had happened there but the removal got too expensive. Also the newer generation wanted to accept the past and learn from it to ensure it’s never repeated.

Also at Congress Hall, the government tried to plant a bunch of trees to hide the structure so no one would ask questions.

It was a heavy day but yet a beautiful day at the same time. I thought the four hours was going to drag on but it went quickly.

Time to head back for dinner!

We made our way back to the boat just in time for lunch. There’s never a lack of food around here.

We found a spot in our favorite section with Jane and Paul. Another couple also joined us.

Now it’s time to grab our stuff and head out on our WWII tour.

We caught the shuttle bus into town for a little unstructured touring. We did have a guide on the bus that took us from where the bus parked to the edge of old town. He also provided some tips of where to go and what to see.

Nuremberg is known for its grilled sausages and gingerbread. Ninety percent of the old town was destroyed during WWII. Nuremberg is known for the toys it produces and according to our guide has the grumpiest people in the world. He said they assume the worst so they aren’t disappointed. “Not bad” is the best you can expect from a Nuremberger. Maybe I’m a Nuremberger.

Nuremberg has the longest city wall left standing in all of Europe and is 3.1 miles long.

We walked down a street with the original houses made from timber. It was so quaint!

Felt only right to grab a pretzel from a pretzel stand as we made our way back to the bus. The vendor said they had the best pretzels in Germany so I chose well! Although I think I will need to taste many more in order to judge that!

Was truly impressed by how cute this town was. Wish we had had more time to spend exploring here.

We were escorted to our “regular” table by Milo and Jane and Paul joined us a little after we sat down.

Groundhog Day….french toast with bacon for me. Today I skipped the eggs.

Greg went with the Eggs Benedict.

While we were eating Gavin came over the speaker and announced we were behind schedule and would not be arriving In Nuremberg until closer to 9:30. We plan to take the shuttle bus in to explore before our tour later this afternoon.

In the meantime it’s back to the free coffee machine for me!

Our plan was to wake up for the last biggie at 6am and we did so without an alarm. I think the jostling of the boat through the locks throughout the night woke us up. We headed up to the terrace a few minutes early to grab much needed coffee and a pastry.

The ship is incredibly quiet. I’d expected a crowd on the terrace to watch the biggie but seems like that’s not the case.

It wasn’t nearly as chilly as I’d expected. The weather was crisp and the sky mostly clear. We were rewarded with the beautiful super moon.

We arrived to the lock shortly after 6 but were greeted with red lights.

We sat stationary for quite some time as we waited for the go ahead to enter.

At 6:45 we received the green light and we began to slowly enter.

I’m so glad we woke up and went out. It was such a beautiful morning and was so peaceful and to see the lock in action was an engineering masterpiece!

Now…time to go find Milo for breakfast!

We arrived back at the boat and headed up to the lounge for Gavin’s talk about the Danube and his port talk for tomorrow.

We are now on the Rhine-Main (pronounced Mine by Gavin) Danube Canal. It flows east to west and is 106 miles long. The construction took 32 years, connecting 15 European Countries and was completed in 1992. Over 5M tons of cargo is moved per year.

There is a total of 16 locks on the canal. In the middle of the night tonight we will pass through the continental divide which is at 1332 feet above sea level. The three locks after the continental divide and called biggies. Each one has an elevation change of 83 feet.

We will be traveling on the Main River Friday through Monday where we will pass through 35 locks.

This connection was attempted by many leaders over the course of history and was unsuccessful by virtually all attempts.

After learning all about this waterway it was time to rush to dinner to get our favorite servers. Milo escorted me arm in arm to our table this evening. We sat with Paul and Jane again.

While I was so excited for the menu, this was my least favorite dinner.

Erwin and Milo asked us our opinion on the key lime pie and we all said “meh .” Apparently this has been a consisted response since they started working on Viking in 2014 but Viking refuses to change it. It wasn’t bad, it just wasn’t the key lime we are used to. Maybe it’s how the Europeans eat it but they don’t even know what they are missing!

We are scheduled to pass through the last biggie at 6am so off to bed to try to sleep before that. Also we have a full day tomorrow in Nuremberg so we need to rest up.

After changing into warmer clothes Greg and I headed off the boat with no specific destination in mind. Greg wanted to catch up on some emails and we thought that the Bishop’s courtyard might be a good place at the beer garden.

We took off walking and headed up towards the King’s Villa.

We meandered through a different part of town that we hadn’t seen earlier just to see what we might have missed.

We stopped at a grocery store to replenish our toothpaste and to see if there was anything else we needed.

We grabbed toothpaste and some M&M’s for our favorite wait staff and continued on our walk. (Fahoud was so excited when Linda offered him some of hers earlier this week. He’s one of the bartenders who’s excellent.)

We attempted to go to the beer garden as planned but they were closed. We weren’t exactly sure where to go so we continued walking a bit to see if anything jumped out at us. I was getting slightly hangry so we headed toward the original sausage kitchen.

Luckily after a short wait we were able to score a table.

We decided to each get potato soup and split a plate of wieners. If you ordered take away those came on bread but the ones on the menu did not so we ordered two rolls too. Oh ans two beers because when you’re in Germany that’s just what you do.

It was all really good. Especially the mustard which was almost a sweet mustard.

As we were waiting for the check someone came and set a basket down on our table as well as all the other tables. It was full of rolls. We were charged for our two rolls. So confusing. I’m not sure if those rolls were free (they were the same rolls) or if they see how many you take and add that to your bill?

After lunch we continued on our walk.

We ended up walking through a pretty vast park. It was a beautiful day.

We happened to see a car that is really similar to the Amy that we saw in Paris that Brooks wants to import.

I asked Greg if he knew where he was going which was a dumb question because Greg always claims to know where he’s going. We needed to be back to the boat in about 90 minutes and we aren’t totally sure how far away we are.

We found a cute beer garden on the opposite side of the Danube and popped in for a beer and so Greg could work for a little. Not a bad place to be.

Within an hour we needed to head back to meet the bus. The details included in our Viking daily were sketchy at best and we weren’t sure exactly where to go. Once again Greg was not concerned.

Greg wanted to try to find a bathroom before our 45 min ride back. We attempted to walk to one he saw on the map but there wasn’t one there. Our tour guide had mentioned there were almost no restrooms in town which was a headache for the guides. Greg wanted to walk to the one we knew about but I was nervous about meeting the bus and finding it ok. Greg went towards the restroom and I walked to where I thought we were meeting.

I looked for Gavin and didn’t see him or anyone else and I got nervous and called Linda to see if she could go ask the desk. Greg called as I was talking to her saying there were tons of people from our boat where we had eaten lunch. (They weren’t there when I walked past earlier or I hadn’t seen them.) Right after he called I saw Paul and Jane sitting on a bench. Crises averted!

We boarded our crazy painted buses and made the 45 min drive to the town where the boat had traveled to.

Now it’s back on board for a Danube River talk and dinner.

This morning we woke up in Regensburg, Germany and it looks like it’s going to be beautiful.

It’s feeling a little bit like Groundhog Day here but I’m not mad about it. Breakfast this morning was French toast in Milo and Erwin’s section and was as delicious as ever. A lady saw my French toast and asked where I had gotten it and I encouraged her to order it. It seemed like she didn’t know that was an option so I invited her and her husband to sit down with us and assured her Milo would take care of her.

I tried semolina pudding today. Not sure it’s my favorite but wasn’t terrible.

We opted for the longer walking tour this morning that included Jewish history so our walking tour is 9-11am. We met our tour guide Lorri along the docks and headed out.

The Jewish people were used as scapegoats by the traders because they were losing money. Once the US was founded the trade routes changed from rivers to oceans and the traders lost money. Many of them had to tear down their towers to sell the stone for money.

We made it back to the boat around 11:30. Greg and I are planning to hang out in the city until the bus pickup at 4:45pm. Carey and Linda are going to stay on the boat. I’d better get a coffee and a snack to warm up.

While it was beautiful today it was really cold and I definitely underdressed. I’m going to be putting on my long underwear and my bigger coat.

While it’s supposed to get up to 60 the tall towers in town and the narrow streets block the sun from many streets. The temperature difference between the sun and the shade is drastic.