Happy 12th Anniversary!  We can renegotiate our terms in 38 more years.

 

Hi, Kids! Remember when we listened to Patricia Wrede’s Searching for Dragons, and the prince had a bad-tempered gargoyle in his study?  You asked what a gargoyle was (and you should remember that one actually doesn’t find them indoors), and I did my best to explain in words.  But here are some examples from a cathedral.  Here’s one that must have recently been completed but not installed yet.

 

 

Here’s what the look like in position.  They stick out from the roof line, and usually when it rains, their mouths spout out the rain water, like gutter spouts. 

 

Often, I think of gargoyles as grotesque monsters, but these were just mean-faced farm animals. Does the one above look like a jumping cow to you?

This one is probably a wolf, but the demon-child is what gives me the shivers. 

 

I’ll keep my camera-eye out for more gargoyles for you!

Love,

Mama

When looking up from Passau, we could easily see Oberhaus, and with a free afternoon and the company of a friend we met before even getting on the boat, our wanderlust led us over the bridge and up. And up. (Viking, the patron cruise line of older people, highly recommended taking the shuttle up and walking down.  We rebelled.)

And then up on Oberhaus, we had a great view of Passau.

 

Catherine was a ton of fun, in great shape, and fortunately, sweated as much as Dwayne and I huffing up this hill.

And immediately celebrated with very local lunch.  I think we can call mine sauerkraut with sausage (not the other way ‘round).

But Dwayne’s was so beyond our palate that we don’t recall it’s name.  He said it tasted like cold beef stew in gelatin, cut into meatloaf slices.  And beer.  Dwayne might become a beer drinker yet!

I’m not likely to.  I got the most palatable beer I could (pale ale mixed with lemonade) and here’s the unattractive result.

 

The rhubarb spritzer was much better.

 

Wesley, check out this really old carousal!  It is about 190 years old.

 

It simply went around and ‘round without the up and down.

 

This old castle is now a bunch of smaller museums, all under the same admission.

 

The featured exhibit was primarily about the ages of knights and castle life.  It would be hard to find anyone in a first world country today who doesn’t live better than a king back then.

Here I model medieval ladies’ shoes.

  

 

Switching gender roles, I try to accessorize in knight wear.  Kyla, the chainmail shirt hanging on the wall weighs more than you do. 

Peek-a-boo, Piper!

We began our morning in true cruise style—a towel doggy trying to take my hat and sunglasses!

 

Hey, Babe, let’s go explore Passau!

When the guides get a little dull or the tour a bit slow, I try to run around indiscreetly (though I’m a little less noticeable than an excited Saint Bernard) and take pictures of what catches my eye.  Hence the garden…and the dog.

Hey, Pipes, this golden dog is for you!  I believe it is a cute thing that doesn’t poop, so we can get one.

 

St. Stephen’s Cathedral claims the highest peaks on this side of the river, of course, and is famous for the largest pipe organ in the world (or in a church in the world, or something). 

 

It is simultaneously awe-inspiring and sleep-inducing to listen to the 40 minute organ concert.

 

 

There are so many details in a baroque church that almost nothing seems impressive anymore.

Some of the cherubs freaked me out a bit.  Looking “cherubic” may not be the compliment I thought it was.

 

I will say the gold pulpit stood out a bit. I think Jesus is somewhere near the top because I see a cross somewhere below and to the right of Mary.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve never seen a sundial I didn’t like, but this is my favorite!  So clever to only include 8am to 5pm—it’s significant that a clock dependant upon the sun doesn’t need all 24 hours.  This one was exactly one hour off. I guess you can’t adjust walls for daylight savings.

 

I wanted to do what this little girl is doing.  I applaud her mother!

 

I adore these narrow streets, mostly because the minivan is parked safely at home and I don’t need to drive around here.

The church is a popular one to be married in, though one can only legally get married at the courthouse.  Then I guess you can do one for show in a house of God.  Look at this beautiful bride we caught on our way around town!

 

Today we left the Main/Danube canal and entered the actual Danube.  The river is beautiful, and our ship slipped silently through the picturesque  scenery into the town of Regensburg. 

 

We opted to take  tour to the nearby town of Kelheim and then by boat up through the Danube Gorge to a very old monastery and abbey – which was founded in 620 AD.

Towering over the town of Kelheim is the Hall of Liberation, built to commemorate a victory over Napolean.  I really wished we could have visited that monument, but it was not part of the tour.

 

The boat ride up through the narrows was spectacular:

 

The Weltenburg Abbey is monastery complex perched on the shore of the river:

 

 

Among other things, the monastery brews beer – and is one of the oldest monastery breweries in the world having been in operation since 1050 AD.  Their ″Weltenburger Kloster Barock Dunkel″ was given the World Beer Cup award in 2004, 2008 and 2012 as the best Dunkel beer in the world.  Denise decided to give it a try:

 

Dwayne liked it much better.

 

The interior of the church at the Abbey was a good example of the baroque style – as everything seems to be in this area:

 

This part of Germany was really into St. George, valiantly defending good from evil.  As you can see above, the statue is cleverly lit by indirect lighting coming though yellow stain glass windows to illuminate it brightly in contrast to the rather dim interior of the church.

 

Again, with the stabbing of dragons:

 

After lunch we took the walking tour of Regensburg, which started at the town cathedral.

 

It is a beautiful building on the outside, but rather plain and unadorned on the inside – except for the amazing stained glass.

 

The exterior stone showed a lot of damage, so they employ a team of traditional masons perpetually to maintain the building.  The masons were not working at the time of our tour, but we got to see their work area.

Another amazing thing about this town is that you can still see sections of the wall built by the Romans:

 

Another interesting site was the medieval bridge constructed in the 12th century.  For 800 years it was the only bridge in the area to cross the Danube.

 

Denise and I spent the rest of the afternoon window shopping through the old part of town, enjoying ourselves very much.

On the way back to the ship, we saw a building modeled after an ancient Greek temple perched up on the hill.  Named Walhalla, this is another of Ludwig’s monuments, built to honor famous personalities in German history.  Unfortunately, this was also not included in our tour.

 

We had a wonderful time in Regensburg!  Tomorrow we sail for Passau.

There are many things to enjoy about this German City, but significant to me, Nuremburg is my first European Castle.  Kyla, I told you I saw a castle today, and I think you would have loved it as much as I did.  Here’s the details I think you will like.

Primarily, a castle is meant to keep those inside the walls safe from attack.  A really good castle completely discourages anyone from wanting to try.  This was a really good castle. 

First of all, it’s outer walls are zig-zagged so there’s always a good view of anyone coming.  There was only one real way into the castle, and it was a fairly narrow, uphill, and with a strong left turn before you came to the first wooden gate.  Narrow, so large numbers couldn’t easily come in at once.  Uphill, because it is difficult to carry a battering ram uphill and around a bend.  Left-turning because soldiers held their swords in their right hands and shields in their left, so the pointy side of the soldiers were exposed to the defensive walls, making them open targets with no protection.  Then, if anyone made it to and through the wooden gate, they were in this tunnel. 

 

 

If you look up, you’ll see four or five of these in the ceiling, perfect for throwing burning straw, chamber pots, or anything else that might come to mind down upon the intruders below.

 

If attackers made it past all that, they would find themselves in a smallish courtyard with the tunnel behind them, an iron gate in from of them, and high walls with  arrows surrounding them.

Funny, but in the five hundred years or so since it was built, this castle was never attacked.  It took 20th century bombs to do some damage, but even then, there will still parts of the castle that were used successfully as bomb shelters.

Remember that Daddy and I have been building walls in our backyard for 11 years?  These walls supposedly took just seven.  People were “motivated” by the local authority and after one false start, it was quickly built.  You can tell which stones are original from the holes drilled in the middle of the rock.  They used cranes with pincers to lift the stones, and to keep the rock from slipping a small hole was drilled an inch of so into opposite sides before it was hoisted.

 

 

Because the castle was built on high ground, a well had to be awfully deep to reach water.  Back in the day, workers had to dig 150feet down—and it took 10 minutes to get one bucket of water up! 

 

One day, we’ll take all three of you to see a castle or two.  And if Daddy has his way, he’ll build one!

 

Love,

Mama

Despite my maiden name, I know very little about Germany outside of beer, castles, and WWI & II.  Our cruise began in Nuremburg and outside of the infamous Nazi trials at the Palace of Justice, I really had no appreciation for its history.

But a place first mentioned in writing in 1050 as an established town has a history significant even before 1945.  But that was what the first part of our tour focused on.

We only had a few hours in the morning, so we were all put on buses with a tour guide and got to the non-touch tour of the city.  Seeing sites from a bus window is efficient, but it just whet our appetite to really explore. 

This is one of the most arresting first sights (and note that most of my photos I grabbed off the internet as pictures from a moving bus tend to look like this: )

 

 

Yep, basically a Coliseum replica planned as part of a dominating symbol of the timelessness that the Nazi regime intended in the tradition of the Roman Empire. 

 

And then you get to the back and realized that it has never been completed, so it’s now a different kind of monument.

 

And this is right next to the much photographed Nazi Parade Grounds.  I liked this picture of the present superimposed with the past. 

 

Back in the day, the grand stage had a golden swastika atop, which we heard the Americans quickly blew up.  The grand pillars were taken down later by the German government, but the now-weedy stands are still there.

 

And today:

 

The Palace of Justice is where the Nuremburg trials took place, held there mostly for security reasons.  Behind the main building is the prison (still there and operational), and instead of needing secure car transports, only secure elevators and tunnels had to be used.  Of course, we only got to drive around it and the tour guide passed around pictures of the trials with German captions.

 

Then we saw St. John’s Cemetery which may have been the most beautiful one I’ve ever seen, and I really like cemeteries.  Of course, we just drove by it.

 

By this time, I’m getting itchy—I’ve been taunted by tourist window shopping. Thankfully, we drove to the Castle…and stopped the bus.  Here’s the money shot, again swiped from the internet. 

 

Of course, it’s not quite that easy. While absolutely beautiful and history today, this is what it looked like in 1945 (Kyla, that was the end of WWII, and a lot of places in Europe had been bombed beyond recognition).

But here’s that same view today.

 

And here’s one last shot for my kids.  Do you remember the tale of St. George and the Dragon?  He slays the beasts and it is a work of God and is revered by the people for his heroics.  George is all over the area, but I, like you, always root for the dragon.

 

The rest of the afternoon was spent pleasantly cruising down the canal and through many locks. If I were captain of the Hlin (and since this is just it’s third voyage ever, it’s a really good thing I’m not), there would be green stripes of paint on both sides of the ship before we left the first lock.  That good pilot had a few inch clearance on either side.  Of course, I did spot a few scrapes on the black bumpers…

What can one do on a 10.5 hour plane ride with no kids?  Read an entire book, a magazine, and watch 2.5 movies.  It was the middle  of the day for us, so although the served us dinner and then 8 hours later, breakfast, I never felt a bit tired. 

But now, after a 3 hour lay-over for a flight that was canceled at the last minute, an unexpected 2.5 hour train ride through beautiful Germany, having to make new transfer arrangement, and meeting two new friends who had to do all that with us, we are now aboard our Viking longship, named Hlin, which is a name I am glad to type and not pronounce. 

Our room is bigger than we expected—there’s actually enough room to walk between the foot of the bed and the dresser, and the bathroom shower does not flow directly over the toilet.

And, because Dwayne made the arrangements, we have a perfect balcony to lounge on as we cruise past quaint hamlets and  castle ruins. At least, that’s what the commercials and my imagination have concocted. 

 

Well, I’ve been up for more than 24 hours now and we have a captain’s meeting in a few minutes followed by our first on-board dinner.  Hopefully dessert comes before dreams do tonight!

(From our balcony after dinner.

I’m going to beat the sun to sleep tonight!)

Smokey died peacefully(-ish) yesterday at home, and was buried lovingly by neighbors.  We got the news after we landed in Germany, and I was unexpectedly choked up.  She had been with us longer than any of our other pets, or kids, for that matter.  I’m sorry she’s gone.  We feel good that we gave her a fighting chance, but are getting a little tired of $1000 dead cats (remember Seven, who cost us more than that and we didn’t even get to bury him)?

R.I.P., Smokes.

The two cats not  on the endangered list. 

Sorry Smokes.

Yesterday, halfway through our 48 hour layover at home, Dwayne went outside to the usual barking applause from the neighbor dog, something he would have tuned out if it wasn’t followed by a horribly feeble non-dog sound.  When he saw Smokey being dragged off by said dog, he leapt over the fence and rescued our gray fur ball—from what, we’re still not sure.  It’s seems pretty unlikely that Smokey took a nap in Louie’s backyard, and didn’t wake up until she was being gnawed upon.  There had been a cat fight (or raccoon-cat fight) in Louie’s yard the night before, but if it had been a raccoon, Smokey wouldn’t be alive at all.  It if had been another cat, well, Smokey doesn’t deliberately put her life in danger, which is why she is 9 or 10 years old now.  The vet said her wounds were pretty superficial, which doesn’t explain her current almost-comatose state.  There is probably more damage than the vet was able to diagnose with the mere $1000 she billed us (“But wait!  There’s more tests we should run!”—and was I just whining about the $50 of cleaner I had to buy to clean up after the kittens?).  We could have a brain-damaged cat (yeah, redundant, I know) who will have to be given The Shot in a few days, or perhaps she will just lick her sutured wounds in her sick bed and perk up by the end of the week.  The vet seemed very disappointed that we weren’t postponing our much-anticipated Viking European River Cruise to do all life-saving measures for, admittedly, my favorite cat.  But our beloved and generous neighbor is going to be looking in on Smokes and has the undeserved responsibility of making life decisions for us.  However, no cat could be in better hands, and she has all sorts of animal care contacts, so we are very grateful to be sitting at the airport knowing she’ll be be there.  And we are further grateful that it happened yesterday, not 24 hours later as the shuttle drove up to our house.

Either way, when we get back, it will be definitive whether we have three cats or just two.  But as long as we still have three kids, my arms and heart will be full.