Intermezzo
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| Docked outside Passau - a Viking ship heads downstream past the Roman frontier (also visible - railroad bridge) |
JUNE 25
We are on the Danube! A river of history. Over there, on the far shore, was the northern border of the Roman Empire, and here, on our side, what the Romans considered the barbarian wilderness. Germanic tribesmen, in leather and fur, staring across at the uniformed Roman legionnaires, thinking, “Someday...”
Today, it's all quite different. There's a railroad bridge over the river right in front of me, with stone supports. There's a road – busy (and noisy) at 5AM, along the shore, and an industrial complex of some sort (there is a logo on the smokestack: ZF) across the road, where a truck is being loaded with occasional clangs. We are tied up along the dock, and another ship, run by the Tauck Company, is tied up to us. I can hear the ship's engine, humming in the background (generator?), the traffic on the road, and behind it all, just faintly a whole choir of birds on the shore. Merlin says Eurasian Blackbird, Black Redstart, and the Western Yellow Wagtail. Wagtail? Really, Merlin. You're just making up funny names. We're facing upstream; the sun will rise off my left shoulder. The moon has not yet risen; I won't see it again, in the morning, for the rest of the trip. There's a gas station across the river, and a three story – guesthouse? - just above it, but otherwise, the shore is thickly wooded.
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| Our first ship - front half |
I'm on the roof deck!* No more low bridges. The Tauck ship next to us is more luxurious, I guess, because there are couches and easy chairs on their roof deck, and last night there were waiters serving drinks. But for all their luxury, they're not as lucky. They came from Budapest, and have no sister ship on the Main, or anywhere above the low point in the river, so have been here for four days, being bused to cities (including Nuremberg, over 3 hours away) and back again. They are apparently being flown out of here sometime today, to go home. I hate to say it, but we were lucky.
We're on the Viking Ve, a ship named for a goddess of human qualities, such as speech, sight and hearing. The painting at the top of the stairs is colorful and abstract, although you can make out three Vikings with shields. Really? Do these paintings have anything to do with the ships, or are they all generic and randomly assigned? The ship is identical to our previous ship (whose name I never memorized), and we are in the same room. Only the staff is different.
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| Our first ship - rear half |
The sun is here, peeking through a low spot in the hills across the river, lighting up the railings and the factory. I hope that means it's going to get warmer.
Oh -and remember the TV tower I referred to yesterday morning, coming into Nuremberg? This is one of the highest in Germany, but our guide told us it is no longer used since technology has marched on. Wikipedia seems to disagree somewhat, but I'm not sure. What they agree on is that the rotating restaurant up there has been closed since 1991 - “no one could make it pay,” even though other cities have towers that are popular tourist attractions.
Common themes of tour guide humor – themes that have come up every time so far:
Bicyclists are homicidal maniacs
Our football team is the best/worst
Our beer is the best
Our sausages are much better than that trash they like five miles downriver
With the exception of Bamberg, bombing in WWII flattened X% of our city. Here are pictures.
I keep forgetting this – remember when we were talking about how this river cruise is different from ocean cruises? Abbey has always loved the big vases of fresh flowers all over an ocean cruise ship. They add color and fragrance and cheer things up. Here on the Viking ships, they have, as Abbey has dubbed it, “moss on a rock.” We got to the Ve, and found the same, although Abbey is convinced that this moss is artificially colored.
As much as Viking cruises are vaunted, the ships themselves are pretty boring. Furniture, walls, curtains are all beiges, the exception being the carpets- a dull blue. Most of the plants are plastic, with a glued on rock or piece of wood. On the second deck, there is an area of stones with 3 big rocks covered with moss. The set up is exactly the same on both ships, but on this one, the moss has been dyed an artificial green.
Adjoining us, sidebumper by sidebumper is a Tauk ship. (Grammie and Papa always traveled Tauk) I leaned over our railing and chatted with a few passengers from that ship, comparing notes. Ask me about their rooms, and # of passengers, and outdoor lounge.
Anyway their experience puts our complaints of the uncomfortable bus ride into perspective. Apparently, Tauk doesn't have a number of ships on this river tour the way Viking does, and so their ship came from Budapest, and got stopped by the shallow section of the river. They'd been here 4 days, hoping for rain, being bussed to all the cities they would have seen within a 2-3 hr radius, and then will be flown home, completely missing the second half of the trip!
Our shipmates are almost exclusively in our age bracket, maybe ten years either way. Topics of conversation (almost entirely overheard) are generally limited to:
Where are you from?
Your first river cruise?
Details of previous cruises
Long descriptions of family members and where they live
What business or branch of the military you've been in (professionals are rare), and long stories about success (usually) or failure (less usually) in either or both.
Investments
Medical issues, at great length
Everything's funny
Overheard: “Oh, you're from Toronto? You're almost Americans!”
Little of this is of interest to me. Sorry. Sue me. I'm interested in what people think. I'd rather talk to someone, who is not a true believer, about something that is interesting or important. Or about Austin; that would be OK too.
I overhear (it's a small boat and no conversation is private) conversations that make me glad that we have found a table for two. Lots of judgment, lots of stereotypical thinking about important issues, like child development and parenting, for instance, with general agreement that the kids are the way they are because not enough discipline and not enough respect – without any further thought or elaboration. Everyone agrees. I could go on at some length about these, since I am kind of a professional in the area, but no one would want to hear what I have to say, because there is a cultural attitude, a cultural language and vocabulary, that they've bought into, and don't know how to move on from. I
Of course, it's possible that I am caught up in a different cultural attitude and language regarding something I know little about, but I've tried very hard not to be. However -
I'd love to join a discussion group focusing on what we learned during the city tour that day, or listen to a lecture about tomorrow's adventure, but neither is available.
Politics is mentioned rarely; when it is, it is always a right-of-center comment.
And, of course, there's the auditory processing problem. I suppose it's generally understood that I have a really hard time taking part in a conversation when there is one or more other conversations going on in the room. There's nowhere on the ship – except maybe those side porches – where you can converse conventionally: one person talking at a time. So even a great conversation in the Dining Room would be difficult to keep up with; it would be hard work, and probably only partially successful. And meanwhile, the level of noise itself is making me want to flee.
And finally, there's a wide spectrum of social skills in any given group of people. I'm on the lower end of that spectrum; I often don't know how to engage and converse effectively, fluently and appropriately. It's a tremendous risk for me to sit down and talk to someone I don't know.
Not to say that we haven't met interesting people. We've met some, like those guys the first night. I've heard maybe half or more of what they've said. We've had very brief conversations in passing, like with the guy who is typically the second one up in the morning and joins me on the front deck or, this morning, on the roof deck, and we exchange pleasantries and a few sentences of whatever.
This is all maybe startling or uncomfortable for some to read, I understand. I'm different, in a number of different ways, and you can't understand what this trip is like unless I can be kind of frank about some of the more important parts of it. For many – probably most – the social aspect of a cruise is one of the more important parts of the experience. It's great that they get to do that - It's just different for me.
Enough of that. We are here in the suburbs of Passau, on the Danube, all day. Today's schedule originally included a visit to Regensburg, a college town (they all seem to be college towns) which also was not bombed during the war and, according to Program Director, retains its medieval character. I hate to miss it, but it's above the low part of the river and Viking is busing passengers there and back – one and three quarters hours each way. We – and a great number of other passengers – have elected to stay on the ship** and, maybe, take a shuttle into Passau if we want to. Then off again at 7AM tomorrow, sailing just an hour upstream to Passau, where we will be back on schedule. I'm looking forward to the tour – as I said, a beautiful city – but it's three miles in a hilly town.
Spending the day relaxing – I'm writing and learning lines; Abbey's looking at cat videos. Just kidding. She's looking at cat videos and painting. She doesn't like anyone to see what she's doing until it's done to her satisfaction, but that's hard on in this environment, unless she paints in the room, which is not the point of this whole thing.
I've been spending 1-2 hours a day learning and practicing lines – mostly in the early morning – and this will continue every day until the final performance is over, on August 10. And I'm not allowed to get sick, or hurt, during that time. It's all worth it when the play comes together in front of an audience.
It's interesting being outside Passau all day; Passau is, at this point, kind of the end of the line if you're going upstream on the Danube, and there are a lot of boats coming in and out, parking, leaving, turning around, etc. Some Viking, mostly other brands. There are two parked behind us just now; one just came, another just left around the corner, downstream. It's quite a sight to see one of these monsters turn around in this river that is only just wider than the boat is long.
Oh – and I found out some more about our immediate environment. Across the river is actually Austria, and it will remain Austria when we move upstream to Passau in the morning – until we sail under the old deserted railroad bridge, about three minutes after we leave. Then it will be Germany on both sides. When we leave tomorrow night, of course, after we pass the bridge the other side is Austria again, until about 30 miles downstream, when it's all Austria all the time. But that doesn't matter to me. To me, it's Romans on that side, and Germanic tribes – barbarians! - on this side.
Clothes! Viking's literature, and an e-mail the week before we left, defined the attire expected at dinner – slacks and a collared shirt. Not bad; no suit needed. That first night, I wore the good slacks I had brought. But, apparently, no one else did. When I saw a couple of guys come in to dinner in shorts and sandals, I got the message, and I've worn my jeans all day and to dinner every day. I only brought collared shirts, because that's pretty much all I've got, so that's not a problem.
Which brings us to laundry. A story first:
In Miltonsburg, as we were waiting for the bus, we saw couple from our ship who had fold-up walkers which also folded out into nice portable chairs. Abbey went over and asked them about them. They folded up pretty small, considering they were actual chairs, but not as small of my cane/seat. They were actually pretty cool. Look at me, an old man going on and on about walkers.
Abbey asked about transporting them on the plane; they put them with their checked baggage, and they came through with everything else. “Oh,” said Abbey, “that wouldn't work for us – we just bring carry-on.”
Well, you'd think Abbey had said that we just came from the moon. They were astounded. I suspect that many of the other well-dressed shipmates would feel the same way. One of the many ways we seem to be different, a list I might compile someday.
Anyway, living out of just carry on (and I had to fit in my CPAP machine, as well) doesn't work if you can't do laundry. And there are no laundry facilities on the boat, except you can pay them to do it, as I think I mentioned.
So – every few days, when we take a shower, after we're done with soap and shampoo, we put a couple of outfits on the floor, pour a few drops of laundry detergent on the pile, stomp around on them, and then take the hand-held shower faucet and rinse them off. Wring them out, then lay out a big towel, lay the laundry on it, roll it up, and step on them, up and down the long roll. Then hang them up on a hanger. Next day they're ready.
Worth it? I think so. Cuts down the time in airports, and also cuts down on the gear you've got to lug during all the lugging phases of your trip. We laugh about our laundromat, but it works.
Didn't have much for supper tonight – not feeling great – cold/fever, light to medium grade. Comes and goes. Of course, Abbey brought her pharmacopoeia, so by morning I should be a superhero.
* - Here's a view of the roof deck, and a sneak preview of Passau, taken the next day as we were leaving:
** - This turned out to be a mistake. Here's the context: Book recommendation for history folks (actually three books): When Charlemagne, first Holy Roman Emperor, died in 814, his lands (most of Europe) were divided among his three grandsons. Twelve hundred years later, give or take, Simon Winder wrote a book about, loosely, each of these territories: Germania, Danubia, and Lotharingia. I just (late September) finished Germania, and, man, I wish I had read it before the trip. We would have, for instance, not skipped Regensburg. Anyway - a cracking read; Winder is cynical and sarcastic, and nothing is sacred. But I came away from it with a much more nuanced and complete understanding of central European history. I can't wait to get to the other two.
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