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Published: November 29th 2013
Melk Abbey
Glorious domination!Starting later than usual, we took buses to
Stift Melk (Melk Abbey), one of the great buildings of magnificent Baroque architecture. (Melk Castle 976, Monastery 1089, Baroque building 1736) We were driven to the top of the cliff, favoured location of churches and castles here. Walking through a construction site restoring the site, we assembled in the second courtyard. The guide (a young woman, very proud of Melk) gave us some history as we moved into the museum, once the guest rooms of the imperial palace of the
Hapsburgs. The resemblance to the design of the Turn and Taxis palace was evident, and both of them made me think of the novels in which characters leave their rooms for someone else’s after dark – long corridors with many identical doors.
The museum was well-designed, in an original way. Each room (former bedroom) was about 15 – 20 feet square and held a very select number of representative pieces for the age being displayed. For example, in the Baroque room two bishop’s robes were on display (one for funerals, one for celebrations – still used). Each was ornately embroidered in gold. About a dozen silver pieces were shown, including the bishop’s intricately
Vestments
Still used in celebrations ornate staff. In the room for the Benedictine reform period, a re-usable coffin was shown (one per village, body dropped out the bottom) and a single, plain brown bishop’s robe. The rooms were suffused with variously coloured, dimmed, indirect light – the difference of each room was this way very obvious.
After the museum, we moved out to the terrace, affording high, wide views across the valley. Behind us the church building glowed yellow and orange with symmetrical but over-the-top Baroque embellishments. Inside again we moved through the old library (a single room) where all the books had been bound similarly, and into the new library that still had old books but where the bindings were mostly original. This brought us down some stairs into the overwhelmingly magnificent cathedral. The church almost defies description. An outstanding feature was the huge crown elevated maybe 20 feet above the altar – it was gold and must have been 3 -4 feet across. We sat in the pews (relatively small in number) and were treated to an organ concert for about 15 minutes. The music was intricate, possibly Baroque too. It gave us the opportunity to try to drink it all in
Melk Church
Overwhelming! Beautiful ornamentation – actually quite impossible!
Finally leaving the church, we retraced our steps to the first entrance and said good-bye to the guides. Ian and Barbara went back to the ship on the bus. Deirdre and I followed many others down a lot of steps to the town – a wide cobbled main street with small shops. We inadvertently by-passed the specialty apricot product store – famous in this valley. One of the other passengers set us straight, and we went in. We tasted the apricot kernels in chocolate – not much different than peanuts, but the chocolate was good. I bought a jar of apricot jam because the colour was so deep it must be delicious.
As we slowly made our way slightly downhill, we noticed a small church, which seemed simply to be named “Parish Church”. Tiptoeing in, we saw a simple stone church that seemed to embody spirituality as so many of the small churches do. We looked around at the altar and limited artworks and quietly left. Then we walked at a quicker pace, across a fairly large pedestrian bridge spanning the Danube Canal to our ship.
Where the “Aussie BBQ” was in full
Melk town
A steep walk down into the town below the Abbey swing on the Sun Deck. The menu was sausages (white and thin, a wiener, I think), grilled steak, chicken and fish, plus baked potato and salads. I stuck to the salad and sausages and sauerkraut – plus beer of course. There were ice cream cones for dessert.
By this time we were sailing to the small town of
Dürnstein , about two hours away from Melk. Those who wanted disembarked and wandered along its few streets, all a stiff climb up from the River. After a few false starts, we found the main path up – through a fairly narrow, dark archway. The steps delivered us onto the main shopping street – the principal tourist activity here. Wandering along, we sampled the delicious apricot brandy; Deidre found a lovely white bracelet with marbled black; and, Ian shot “a ton of video” of the street and panoramic views. Drifting back, Deirdre suggested we find an old grave-yard shown on the map. After a minor amount of searching, we pushed open a dark wooden gate to reveal the usual but never disappointng well-tended graves with beautifully ornamental grave markers. At the end of this small garden was an old but seemingly
Captain's view
Over-seeing the BBQ still used ossuary. The bones were stacked tight, filling about two-thirds of the cellar. In front were some looser bones crisscrossed in an almost casual way. Behind us, the church was closed – actually it looks non-functioning – a strange contrast to the beautiful graves; however, it seemed that the cellar of the tower was still used as a cellar.
And then we strolled down to the ship to set sail at 5:00.
My appetite was so low I only drank half of my vegetable soup and ate only half of my beef strip loin (a bit tough). After that, Ian and I walked briskly around the Sun deck in barely cool air with a light breeze. We watched a lit castle come into view as we did our laps, and then Vienna revealed itself. Exhausted, I went to sleep at 10:30 and didn’t wake until almost 7:00.
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