Rudesheim to Passau

Saturday 19 April

After breakfast moored at Rudesheim, we boarded a miniature train, actually a tractor with the body of a steam engine and small carriages, and were taken to Siegfried’s Musical Cabinet, a museum of musical devices from the 1700s onwards. This museum has the largest collection in the world ranging from music boxes up to a large machine with 20 different instruments; this was played with the equivalent of the old pianola roll. For those not old enough to know how it worked, the paper roll has a series of small holes which passes over a metal strip also with small holes and tubes to the various notes, when the holes coincide it breaks the vacuum and allows a note to be played.

The museum had many wonderful units and we were treated to a concert of many varied tunes played on various instruments, including one with six violins a piano and other instruments and one that played a banjo.

Leaving the museum we walked through some narrow lanes of the old town back to the boat and sailed for Mainz at 10:30 am. An hour after sailing, while we were having lunch we sailed under a bridge, the first bridge across the Rhine for 80 km.

Mainz was the next town on our itinerary and we joined our guides for a walking tour of the town. The first stop was St Martins Cathedral, built in the Romanesque style, construction of the cathedral started in the late 900s. Leaving the cathedral we walked on to the Gutenberg Museum which is devoted to printing and contains four floors of exhibits, the highlight being two original Gutenberg Bibles, the first books in the world to be printed on a printing press using movable type. In the basement is a reproduction of Gutenberg’s original printing press and we were given a demonstration on how he made the type and then they printed a reproduction of a page of the original bible.

We then wandered past portions of the old town with half wooden houses on our way to St Stephen’s Church to view the Chagall Stained Glass Windows. After the WW2 the priest of St Stephens had converted from the Jewish religion to Roman Catholicism and he convinced Chagall a Jewish artist to design and make the windows for the church. These are a modern design and are light blue and white and look as if the watercolour had run down the window, we weren’t very impressed with them but the church receives 200,000 visitors a year to view the windows. As today was cold and wet we returned to the boat around 5:30. At 11:00 the boat sailed for Frankfurt and by the noises we docked around 2:30 am.

Sunday 20 April

Today is the day we change boats due to the closure of the locks on the Main-Danube canal for repairs and we boarded the coaches at 7:30 to transfer to Passau. The coaches stopped at an Autobahn wayside stop after two hours, to allow people a toilet break or buy a snack or coffee, as if we needed any food between meals. To enter the toilet required a 50 cent coin to pass through the turnstile and the machine dispensed a 50 cent voucher that could be used in this or other similar stops over the next 12 months.

We arrived in Nuremberg just before noon and we were taken to a restaurant for a three course Bavarian meal, clear soup with a rissole, tiny bratwurst sausages (8), with sauerkraut and potatoes and apple strudel. After lunch we were given an hour to wander around the town centre, which was rather disappointing as the itinerary said we would visit the 900 year old ramparts, the Imperial Palace and Kaiserburg Fortress, none of which we saw. The time we spent was very disappointing as the town is also famous for its gingerbread and gingerbread shop, the Nazi Rally Ground and the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, which we thought we would see.

Several hours later after travelling along the autobahn and visiting another wayside complex we arrived at the outskirts of Passau to join our next boat the MS Sound of Music. The boat was moored on the opposite side of the river upstream from the town as buses aren’t able to enter the normal wharf area. After we passed under the old town walls and the Ilz River, the drivers we directed away from town by detour signs after climbing up the hills for several kilometres we were stopped by the police who directed the drivers back to the Ilz bridge and told them the detour didn’t apply to where we were going, so an hour later than expected we arrived at the boat. After our luggage was loaded the boat turned around and sailed downstream to the normal mooring point near the confluence of the Danube, Ilz and Inn Rivers.

After the wonderful service and enthusiastic crew on the Amelegro, the staff on the Sound of Music appeared to be untrained and lacking knowledge, when asked what the wines were, the waiter replied “red and white”. The waiter on the Amelegro told us about the grape and style of wine and information about the region where the wine was made. The service was slow and the staff didn’t appear interested, we gave up waiting for coffee, we are certainly going to miss the Amelegro.