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14 June 2018
Today is spent entirely on the river. For me, it's a chance to try to catch up with the accursed blog.
We have now entered the Main River and are officially over the continental divide. Consequently we are travelling downstream, heading basically westward in long serpentine loops. The terrain here alternates between flat areas that are extensively farmed and more rugged areas. The principal crop is grapes for wine. Even on the steepest slopes, terraced vineyards of mainly Riesling grapes predominate.
We stop briefly in Wertheim to pick up our evening's entertainment (more about him later). Other significant towns we pass include Miltenberg and Aschaffenburg. It's hard keeping the "bergs" and the "burgs" straight. As I somewhat vaguely knew before, "berg" means mountain and "burg" means town. But the choice for German place names seems to be arbitrary.
We enjoy sitting on the top deck, watching the charming scenery flow by. As I said earlier, shortly after you sit down, there's a server at your elbow inquiring what you would like to drink. A hard life, indeed. The Taylor-made devices I mentioned earlier are tied to GPS and automatically start telling you about the sites
sliding by. The towns continue to adhere to a similar template as before: Red-roofed homes with white or yellow walls, at least one church, and a castle ruin on the overlooking bluff. Some of the castles just cry out to be explored, but unfortunately I'm on a river boat sipping Johnny Black and cannot do it today. Somehow or other, I miss one supposedly must-see site, Aschaffenburg Palace.
I wanted to talk briefly about the wildlife we have see on the river. I'm talking about birds. The most dramatic river denizen is the swan. Beautiful white swans, usually in couples, are a common sight on the river. I asked Werney whether they are captured and sheltered for the winter, as they are back in Ottawa. Werney was confused by the question; in the end, I realized that these were truly wild swans in their natural habitat. Copious ducks, of course, looking pretty much the same as their Canadian counterparts. Seagulls as well. We have seen several egrets and herons, standing stock still as we cruise by. Birds that resemble cormorants dive for their dinner. Another unknown bird fishes by skimming just above the surface of the water, grabbing unlucky
fish as it speeds by. They are fun to watch.
To occupy the passengers, there are presentations in the morning and afternoon on the region we are travelling through and on upcoming attractions. As well, just after lunch, a question-and-answer session is held with the captain, the chief of operations, and the hotel manager. Good-humoured and informative. Our captain is licensed to command only river boats, not sea-going vessels.
Entertainment before supper is Tomy Temersen, billed as Germany's most famous zither player. Tomy is a really interesting guy whom I enjoy chatting with just prior to the show. He has devoted his life to playing and promoting this traditional instrument. The "problem" with the zither is that it is completely different from any other instrument in its structure and tuning, so skills are not transferable. The zither looks something like an autoharp, with a large number of open strings in the body and a supplementary fretboard with a set of five strings near the performer. Here's how it's played: The last two fingers of the right hand pluck the bass notes (the strings turned in 4ths), while the ring and index fingers of the right hand typically play
chordal tones. The melody is played on the guitar-like fretboard fingered by the left hand, but—and here's the tricky part—it's the thumb of the right hand that plucks the melody strings with a thumb pick. That means the right hand (left brain) is responsible for both accompaniment and strumming the melody, while the left hand is only responsible for fingering the fretboard. I asked about tuning the instrument. It used to take about 20 minutes to tune all the strings by ear but it is now a five-minute job thanks to electronic tuners. Tomy puts on a great show, mixing traditional pieces with songs people know, interspersed with a practised patter about the zither and its part in his life. The least I can do is buy his CDs.
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