Wurzburg

 

The Residenz

Saturday, June 21

Slept late! 5:30. The sun was coming up when I reached the front deck. Slow progress on glassy – almost mirror-like – water, with forests coming down the hills right to the water. Could easily be Otsego County. The engine and the rotating radar dominate the soundscape; no birdsong, or at least none that I can hear. Looking forward to getting back on the roof deck, where it is quieter. Mist on the water, very slight ripples from the breeze catch the morning light.

And a train whooshes by – bright red modern passenger train is here and gone. We've been in one valley or another since yesterday, and in each valley is the river, the road, and the railroad track at the bottom. And small villages anywhere the land flattens a little. White or tan houses with red roofs, many half-timbered, some with stepped roof lines or other flourishes. And that same simple church with the steep, elegant steeple.

The one disadvantage of the front deck is that there is a plexiglass railing almost six feet high all around it, so you shouldn't fall off the boat. The reflection reduces the view (although, like right now, I can see two views – the one through the plexiglass, and the one behind me, reflected in it). Last night, Abbey and I sat in the rocking chairs for a while, looking at essentially the same landscape as this morning, but became frustrated with the twilight reflection obscuring our view, and moved to a little side-porch at the bottom of the stairs to the roof deck. It resembles a room balcony, but is bigger. It has a hard wooden bench, but we brought pillows. All this was Abbey's idea, and it was a good one. We watched the shore glide by, a small subset of the scenery: trees down to the water, the occasional village, lots of duck and geese families, people in ones or twos sitting in foldable chairs by the water, fishing, or just sitting. Occasionally there was a ripple, where the bottom came close to the surface. It was very nice:

Still trying to get Merlin, currently residing in North America, to recognize a European songbird.

Approaching another lock. Big, blocky infrastructure in an otherwise silent (except for the engine) still life.

Where are all the other ships? We've seen hardly any in the last day or so – these 34 locks are a crazy expensive project if no one's using them. Yet there goes the third train in half an hour, a freight, whooshing silently like all the others.

Two locks in small towns, right in someone's backyard. Sunday morning, traffic is mostly bicycles, including a couple towing a baby trailer. Very pleasant sunny morning with a breeze. Lots of train traffic, some passenger but mostly freight. Do they use diesel engines? Awfully quiet.

Maybe there is time for some odds and ends:

-Vineyards: There have been vineyards in certain stretches of both rivers (including the Rhine Gorge) that are extensive and impressive: endless green lines running down mountains, some of which are steeper than forty five degrees, each section in a different stage of development. Some are laid out horizontally, some vertically; vineyards on the Rhine, as I remember (writing now in August) were vertical; on the Main they were horizontal.  The closest I could come to getting an answer to 'why' was geology, but no details.  Apparently, Rhine wine had been the laughingstock of the wine world, or so we're told, and is now making a comeback. At any rate, there is massive effort being made.

-Campgrounds: At fairly frequent intervals along both rivers – usually close to a town or some more built-up area – there are huge campgrounds right along the river, all extensive and some running for miles along the banks. There are small to medium sized campers, and camper vans, all looking like they've been in use for a long time. Many have tent extensions, and there are also a lot of large family tents. They are absolutely crammed together in what looks like at least a half-dozen rows along the river. What I found odd about these camps was that they seemed more permanent than just a week or weekend camp. Also – except for one or two later in the trip, they seemed deserted – no people to be seen. A beautiful day, you're camping by the river, and no one's in sight, swimming, fishing or even sitting and watching the river go by (which is what I would be doing). Maybe they're all working at tourist locations, or in the vineyards? Not that many people (remember – miles of this). Maybe we'll never know. [UPDATE] – We asked our tour guide today, and he said that they were all on holiday. The sites are free unless you want water and electricity. But he knows a guy who just lives there year round because he can't afford – or doesn't want to afford – anywhere else.

As noted briefly before, we have passed individuals or small groups of people who have found a clearing by the river (must be man-made) and are sitting or fishing. Few tents, but the car is right there. Just passed a single hammock strung between two trees, and a little later, two more. This is very dense forest coming right down to the water, so these are tiny enclaves that someone knows about and enjoys. Just passed a cobblestone lane that comes through the forest and right down to, and into, the water.

Last night we passed a couple of diving platforms, each set up on one of a whole series of giant bollards of unknown purpose. There were metal stairs leading up from a ramp from the shore, and a place to gather on top, and the single platform without a board. Kids were climbing and gathered on top. As we passed one, two boys jumped off into the water, and we all cheered.

It occurs to me that any ordinary traveler, especially one who is planning to create an online travel journal, would have taken a few pictures of the diving kids.  It was fun and unusual and picturesque.  I find that I have missed many of these opportunities, for some reason.  No pictures of early morning, except the first one.  Not enough lock pictures.  No pictures of the bucolic river being bucolic.  No pictures of our room.

I'll do better next time.

This is a beautiful forest, mountain and river environment which seems to be used lightly. And of course as soon as I write that, here comes a sight: river, reeds, an old cement plant, more elderly industrial buildings and from foreground to background:  riverbank, chain link fence around a small abandoned warehouse, three identical red cranes, vineyards, mountain and wind turbines on the horizon. We have seen lots of wind turbines on the horizon – not wind farms, but two or three gigantic turbines at a time.

Our stop today was Wurtzburg, a college town and seat of an 18^th century bishop of unimaginable power, who seemed to be a psychotic narcissist. He caused to be built an enormous palace in the Baroque and Rococo styles, but he died before it was completed – in fact, according to our guide, “it took five bishops and forty years to finish it.” One of the bishops was the first guy's brother, because that's how things worked back then (and still..?).

These were the days when Germany was a mess, a patchwork quilt of duchies, kingdoms, dukedoms, bishoprics and other small statelets which were in a constant state of change. There was no “Germany” as such until late in the 19^th century. In Wurtzburg's case, the bishop seemed to be the man in the area, and he had a lot of money, resources – and chutzpah. He built a palace which, though not quite as big, rivaled Versailles (the Baroque's opening act) in grandeur, scale and sheer narcissism.

This particular bishop -  Johann Philipp Franz von Schönborn - held a position that we had never heard of - "Prince Bishop" - which, as the name indicates, nicely combines all sources of power in the Germany of its day.  It was a Holy Roman Empire thing.  The next town up the river, where we'll be tomorrow, had an entirely different Prince Bishop.  Prince Bishops could, apparently, do just about anything they wanted to, and many did.  There wasn't really anyone with any authority to manage their behavior; the Pope has no authority over a prince, and the Holy Roman Emperor - who was never really a major factor in his empire in the best of times - had no authority over a bishop.

Anyway - the Prince Bishop's snug little cottage in Wurzberg (see above).  Welcome to the Baroque.

In the Residenz courtyard

I hate having to write about things that really delighted me, because I'm not sure I can convey that delight in a way that is comprehensible to anyone. Suffice it to say that from the time we entered the palace, I had a big stupid grin on my face.

You can look up the Baroque, or watch Waldemar Januszczak's delightful documentary** about it; if you're not familiar with the Baroque, I'm not talented enough to help you really understand it. When you come into a Baroque room, it's like an explosion took place in an art supplies warehouse. When your vision clears, you see more and more detail until you can't process the detail; you need a lot of bandwidth to experience the Baroque. It's like fractals. As our guide said, “The Baroque is extreme; and Rococo is the extreme of the extreme.”

Anyway, look it up. You may like it or not, but you can't deny that it's a memorable experience.

I happen to like it, because it's outrageous and novel and unending, and also because it takes incredible talent to do anything in the Baroque style. It makes me smile, and sometimes laugh..

As noted above, the bishop's palace (Wurtzburg Residenz) is a Baroque masterpiece. The three rooms that survived the Allied bombing in the spring of 1945 are completely original. The rest of the very extensive palace was damaged or destroyed, and then, over the course of many decades, restored on the basis of some “very detailed paintings” of some rooms, and photographs taken by a female photographer in 1944 (perhaps expecting disaster as the Reich disintegrated?). But the three rooms that are original are a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

We took pictures, which won't come near to doing the rooms justice. The first room, which is really just the staircase – which in its time was the largest staircase in the world (who measures these things?) - contains the largest fresco in the world. A fresco is a painting painted on wet plaster. This one (left) – on the ceiling, as are most major Baroque frescoes – is 6,458 square feet – 18 m x 30m, and just a little smaller than an American football field. On the ceiling.  Of a stairwell.  Plaster figures in the corner blended into the tromp-l'œil corners of the ceiling so you didn't know which was what. 

Barbarossa's
second wedding

The second room – the guard's room (left) – had over 2,000 plaster figures adorning the ceiling and (mostly) the walls, all hand crafted (no molds) by a master plasterer and his son in nine months. The third room had another elaborate fresco illustrating parts of the life  of the Emperor Barbarossa, Holy Roman Emperor during the twelfth century, who ruled from Wurtzburg.  Among other things, he was able to get an annulment from his first wife by convincing the Pope that never in their ten years of marriage had they consummated the union – even though his reason for getting rid of her was because she couldn't produce any children. The Pope agreed (as was the custom at the time, if you were powerful and rich enough), Barbarossa remarried and had 13 children with  is second wife.

Anyway, another unbelievable room. The rest of the Residenz, all of it restored***, was just as wildly extravagant as the original three. Every single artifact, no matter how small or insignificant, was decorated to within an inch of its life. Overall, an experience to keep your head spinning for a while.

The actual bishop who ordered this built and decorated was a trip, too. His power was so absolute that he did not fear the God he served: all the mighty figures in the fresco above the stairway were Greek gods, and all were gesturing toward the bishop, painted in the prominent position, and inviting him to be the god of all gods. The stories go on in this vein. The tour guide, a Catholic from Lisbon, assured us that this bishop did not go to heaven. I reminded him that people like this had confessors with them at all times, so that at the last moment, with their second-to-last breath, they could confess, be absolved, and thus be ushered into eternal glory. I hope he's scrubbing toilets in heaven.

A relatively brief but interesting city tour after that (in the 90 degree heat), ending at the city's cathedral, which was (are you tired of hearing about this yet? Wait for tomorrow!) bombed during WWII. The nave was destroyed but, apparently, the altar and choir survived relatively unscathed. The nave has been rebuilt – it is sparse, strong, blockily modern, and relatively dark, with statues between large square structural columns. Sitting at the back, we looked through this huge dark tunnel at the apse and choir – which were almost all white, with some gold figures, and brightly lit. It is a very striking sight, analogous to looking through life's dark tunnel into the heavenly light.

Back to the ship. We were sharing a dock right in town with another ship, which had gotten there first. “Sharing” in this case means docking right up onto the river side of the first ship and tying on. When we left the ship, we went up to our flattened roof deck, walked across a gangplank to their flattened roof deck, and down their stairs to the shore gangway. Reverse the process at the end of the day, and back to our ship and A/C, get rid of the sneakers and socks and the wide-brimmed safari hat with the chinstrap and the wireless receiver and the wired earpiece and find a place to sit, recover from the heat, and consider the Baroque.

After dinner we sat on the side porch again, and really enjoyed the experience – gliding along a couple dozen feet from the wooded shore; the occasional clearing or even a village, waving to the occasional person on shore. A guy came out to lean on the railing and enjoy the view. Somehow we found out that he was from Austin, Texas, a city I loved, and when I said I had lived there for three years in the 70s, we were off to the races. We compared notes, mourned the loss of this establishment or that, talked about music and music festivals, and had a grand old time. It was nice.

* - See below, if you have an intense interest in viniculture. 

** - In which Waldemar says, "The Baroque goes after you and ingratiates itself with you.  Other art movements sit there on their pedestals and arrogantly assume you'll be interested in them.  But the Baroque knows you better.  It gets off the pedestal, and hunts you down."

*** - The restoration cost the equivalent of 23 million dollars (20 million euros) and was done with substantial help from the American government.

The Stairs	The Barbarossa             Dining Room	The Stairwell	Second floor landing
Ceramic wood stove		Barbarossa's  Second Wedding	Disassembled Roof Decks

This is below.  Google AI has this to say about horizontal vs. vertical viniculture.:

It is a common observation that vineyards on the steep slopes of the Rhine River, particularly the Mosel tributary, are often laid out in vertical rows (up and down the slope), while vineyards on the flatter terrain along the Main River are more likely to have horizontal rows (along the contour). 

This difference in layout can be primarily attributed to topography and the practical considerations for vineyard management. 

Rhine (and Mosel) Vineyards: The steep slopes of the Rhine and Mosel river valleys, with gradients sometimes exceeding 70 degrees, present unique challenges. Planting rows vertically on such steep inclines allows for:

• Maximizing Sunlight Exposure: Vertical rows, often south-facing, help maximize the vines' exposure to sunlight throughout the day, which is crucial for ripening grapes in this cool climate region located at around 50° north latitude, according to the Geneva Wine Society.
• Drainage and Frost Protection: Steep slopes provide excellent air drainage, allowing cold air to settle at the bottom and away from the vines, thereby reducing the risk of frost damage.
• Equipment Movement: While challenging, winches and specialized machinery can be used to move up and down these steep slopes, making vertical row orientation a viable option.

Main River Vineyards: The Main River valley generally features flatter terrain and more rolling hills. In these conditions, horizontal row orientation is preferred for several reasons:

• Erosion Control: Planting across the slope (horizontal) significantly reduces soil erosion, which is a major concern on flatter, less steep sites.
• Ease of Management: Horizontal rows are easier to work with, especially when using machinery for tasks like spraying, pruning, and harvesting.
• Sunlight Optimization: While vertical rows can maximize sunlight on steep slopes, on flatter terrain, careful row orientation (preferably North-South) can also ensure ample sunlight exposure while facilitating vineyard operations. 

In essence, the layout of vineyards in these regions reflects the adaptation of winemakers to the challenges and opportunities presented by the local topography and climate. While steep slopes in regions like the Mosel may necessitate vertical row orientation, flatter terrains like the Main River Valley allow for horizontal rows, optimizing for erosion control and operational efficiency, among other factors. 

Well, that made me happy.  An answer to a question!  Your mileage may vary.