This time, just as in 2017, some of the stops along the river that we weren't expecting to be highlights turned out to be just that. On the Danube, Passau is a great example of this phenomenon; I'd never even heard of it before we got our cruise itinerary, and it turned out to be, possibly, my favorite city on the trip. Speyer, Germany, was a similar nice surprise. (Although for folks who know more European history than I do, it's obvious Speyer is a lot more famous than Passau!)
The highlight-within-the-highlight was of course the Kaiserdom (Imperial Cathedral) that you can see behind the cool statue of the pilgrim above. I mean, when a slew of Holy Roman Emperors are buried there, and construction on it was begun in the eleventh century, how could it not be a highlight? You can read about its very colorful and interesting history in the Wikipedia link above, but we were mainly entranced by its beautiful appearance...
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| the Dom as we approached it from the river |
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| gorgeous stonework on the eastern side |
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| more amazing stonework on the north side; our guide told us this is the result of more recent restorations |
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| and of course...the doors! |
The interior was also impressive, as these enormous structures always are:
It also offers a variety of unusual items in a little side chapel: some very highly decorated relics. This one might be—supposedly—a bit of the "True Cross." "Kreuz" means "cross"; sorry, but I didn't take a photo of any informational signage. It's attractively displayed, at any rate.
And this is what the Dom looks like from the other end of the pleasant pedestrian avenue of Maximillianstraße...
...where there's another Speyer architectural highlight...
This is the Altpörtel, or Old City Gate (ironically, not as old as the Dom, with construction having begun in just the 13th century). As you can see in this link to the Speyer tourism office website, you can't go up into the tower, but we wouldn't have had time for that anyway. We just enjoyed passing through its cool archway, and, especially, admiring its unusual clock:
Our guide explained (and you can read about this in the tourism link) that the large face only gives you the hour, while the smaller one tells you which quarter of the hour you're in. It seems like it would take people twice as long to figure out what time it is in this arrangement, but I guess they weren't as concerned with exact-atomic-clock-time in the 18th century, which is when the clock was installed.
Henry, as is his wont, did some extra exploring on his own, and toured this church, that the rest of us only looked at from the Gate:
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| St. Joseph's Parish Church, of much more recent vintage, but still impressive |
Another handsome church that we glimpsed but didn't have time to explore, was this one, the Dreifaltigskeitskirche/Trinity Church:
In addition to these monumental structures, we got to see some of the more intimate side of Speyer, as our guide (one of the best of many good ones) walked us down a cute little alley. Along the way we saw signs that some buildings had been the homes of guild members in the past...
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| we were assured this wasn't the birthplace of the former Chancellor, but rather the site of a craftsman who might have been a barber/dentist (note the pliers!) |
We learned of another custom that was unfamiliar to us (and we saw it often elsewhere after learning about it):
The chalk-written symbols here signify that this house was "blessed" by the three Wise Men on Epiphany this year: the letters stand for Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, and of course there's a star. What happens is that groups of people go around singing carols at this time, and if you give them a donation of some kind, they "bless" your house for the coming year. (I suspect this place might need a blessing: the horseshoe is hung upside down! At least that's what I'd always been told, but this website says the "wrong" way makes sense and also works. You learn something new—and sometimes many things—every day, especially when travelling.)
Just strolling down the Maximillianstraße to get back to the river* was enjoyable and interesting. For example, we saw these tiles laid into the cobblestones of the street. The Jewish family that owned the building so marked was forced to flee ("flucht") in the late 1930's. Seeing these markers reminded me again how well Germany has dealt with the terrible parts of its history, in ways that I would hope we could eventually match.
And their younger generation is providing inspiration in Europe's current crisis as well. These young ladies were performing on the street to raise funds for Ukraine:
*Since I usually sing Viking's praises throughout this blog, for parity's sake I need to mention that this day's touring did begin with a hiccup—although it was remedied in almost perfect Viking fashion.
We were supposed to make a brief stop in Mannheim, a large city a bit downstream from Speyer, and then continue on the river, while having lunch and some onboard entertainment as we sailed, until we reached there. Well, the brief stop got elongated rather alarmingly, due to "technical issues" that were never explained (we suspected some sort of covid problem, although it could have been a docking slip snafu).
Which wouldn't have been so bad, had they just told us, "Go stroll around Mannheim for a few hours while we sort this out." But instead, possibly because they didn't know how long we'd be held up, we just had to twiddle our thumbs on Alruna for quite a while (which, to be sure, is not the worst place to have to do this, and of course we had a wonderful lunch). Eventually, they did tell us we could go explore the city, and gave us a nice map, but told us we needed to be back in an hour to catch busses to Speyer.
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| fruit tree in glorious bloom near our dock in Mannheim |
So that's what we did, although we couldn't see too much in the time allotted, and there was some stress when we had a little trouble finding our way back to the river (you'd think it would be easy!). Mannheim is an interesting place, with some very scenic architecture, etc., and it would have been nice to have had more time there.
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| Jesuit Church that we didn't have time to visit |
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| a pretty impressive academic quadrangle at the University of Mannheim, with tourists for scale |
I didn't notice, until I was going over things for the blog, that there is a Schillerdenkmal (Schiller memorial) not far from the river. Since the dude was one of my favorites back in the day when I was a German major (which I abandoned before graduation) that would have been nice to see.
Oh well, a minor glitch in an otherwise fabulous day on the Rhine. We made it to Speyer on time via the busses, and the shipboard entertainment (the interesting and informative "nautical talk" that goes into all kinds of interesting river- and ship-related topics) was re-scheduled for that evening. When we finished touring Speyer, there was Alruna waiting for us, technical issues resolved and ready to take us further upstream, and into a whole different country! Stay tuned.
