Day 7 - Lost in Bamberg & a New Ship

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Today had been scheduled to be a nice quiet boring day, at least until last night when they announced that there wasn’t enough water in the canals for us to make it to the Danube. We thought there would be enough water, but not quite. Fortunately, Viking has been through this all before and what they do is called a ship swap. While we have been proceeding from Amsterdam to Budapest in the Viking Lif, an identical ship, the Viking Vidar has been proceeding from Budapest to Amsterdam. When we both reach the point where the water is too low to pass, but from opposite directions, we will be moved from the Lif to the Vidar and the passengers on the Vidar will be moved to the Lif. The Vidar will turn around with us on board and return to Budapest, and the Vidar passengers will board the Lif and it will turn around and return to Amsterdam.

All we need to do tonight is pack our bags and leave them outside the door in the morning as we leave for our 8:30am tour, and when we board the coach after our tour, we will be returning to the Vidar with our suitcases waiting for us in our new identical room on the Vidar. Other than a couple of hour coach ride between the ships, it should be completely transparent to us. Surprisingly, some of the people on the ship were very upset about the swap. I’m not sure why, we were warned before we left that it may be a possibility as a lot of rivers in Europe are experiencing low water levels due to drought. Jody & I just think of it as part of the adventure. The staff remains with the boat, but the cruise director is coming with us to the new ship so we can maintain continuity. Evidently, some of the passengers develop relationships with the waiters, waitresses, bar staff, and housekeeping, and are upset that the staff are not following us to the new ship. We don’t really understand the dynamic as we are always nice to the staff, but assume they have lives of their own and are not really interested in a lot of interaction with the guests. There are a few staff members we like, but we’ll just meet new ones on the other ship.

This morning was spent sleeping in late, as our tour didn’t leave until 1:30. After breakfast and lunch, we headed out to the coach to meet up with our local guide Stephan, who explained that even though his name was spelled Stephan, the proper German pronunciation was Schtephan and that no self-respecting German would ever pronounce it Stephan except the Germans who lived near the coast, and they were strange “fish people” anyway. Schtephan was young, but a historian and knowledgeable about Bamberg. He was a lot of fun and made a lot of bad puns and Dad jokes.

Bamberg is a university town of about 77,000, with about 15,000 of them being students. But evidently school was not yet back in session, because we saw mostly old people as we wandered the town. The old part of town is from the Middle Ages and has been completely untouched by WW2 as the town had no military importance, and it was too small to be destroyed for demoralization purposed. Local legend says that the town was actually spared because of the many fine breweries, and the allies wanted to make sure there was plenty of beer available once the town was occupied. Speaking of beer, Bamberg is famous for its Rauchbier or Smoked Beer which is made by drying the barley over an open flame. Some people say it has a bacon flavor, others say it tastes like an ashtray. Since we don’t drink, we have no idea, but people from the ship who tried it had both reactions.

It has Bamberg Cathedral, a typical Baroque church from about the 12^th century and the same legacy of prince-bishop rule as Wurzburg, but these prince-bishops were not as rich as Wurzburg as the residence was not nearly as opulent, and in fact, while the front was decorated with a baroque façade, in the rear, the façade was smooth, but the features of the front were painted onto the smooth façade like a fresco.

Most of the buildings are half-timbered, but you can’t tell because many of the half-timbered elements have been plastered over to give a smooth stucco effect. Evidently, one of the prince-bishops thought the town looked too old and wanted to get rid of the old half-timbered houses and replace them with more modern stone houses. But he didn’t have the money to do this, so he offered several years of reduced taxes to anyone who would plaster over the half-timbers on their own personal house. The city was transformed almost overnight!

Today there are strict regulations governing the exterior of these centuries old houses. The interiors can be modernized, but the exterior appearance cannot change at all. Most of the old roofs have begun to sag significantly over the years, and owners can apply for a 100,000 Euro grant from the government to structurally reinforce the roof from the inside with steel beams. But the roof must remain crooked from the outside! So even though the buildings look old and crooked, they are actually sound structurally.

The other famous structure in Bamberg is the original town hall. Back in the 14^th century, the prince-bishop would not give the town the land to build a town hall, so the townspeople decided to build the town hall in the middle if the bridge by driving piling into the river and building the town hall on both sides. There is an archway through the building so that people can still use the bridge.

After completing the walking tour of the town, we were left with a couple of hours of free time to do some shopping. Jody was excited, as we had seen a couple of artisan jewelry stores as we were walking around. After the tour, we found one of the shops and Jody found a marcasite pendant and earrings that she liked, and my birthday present to her dilemma was solved. Also, we were able to find a couple of t-shirts and a magnet before sitting down to a cup of mediocre gelato. By now we were just hanging around the market square, doing a little people watching, so by 5:30 we decided to head back to the bus meeting point. We followed the directions give to us by the local guide and we could not find the pickup point. By now it was getting close to 6:00 and we were getting worried.

We spotted a sign for tourist information and got there just before 6:00. They were very nice and spoke great English, but we couldn’t remember the name of the building where we were supposed to meet. Viking had given us a map of Bamberg, but it only showed the shopping district and did not show the pickup point. We remembered it was a distinctive looking building with a modern art sculpture out front. I tried to describe the sculpture to him, we he suddenly brightened and ran over to a pile of books and opened one up to a picture of the sculpture I had described. Were supposed to go the Concert Hall! He gave us a map with the path highlighted and we took off in search of the bus. By now it was after 6:00 and we were really getting worried. About 6:10, we were getting close to the Concert Hall, when we saw the bus in front of us driving down the road. We waved our hands and the bus stopped and we boarded to a round of applause from everyone! Evidently we had been spotted by several people on the bus and they shouted “There they are!”.

Needless to say, we were very relieved, as I’m not sure what would have happened, and we’d rather just not think about it. Both Jody and I thought we had heard the tour guides instructions correctly, but after talking to other people on our tour, they had also gotten lost and had arrived at the bus only a couple of minutes before us. I guess we’ll pay better attention and make sure we know exactly how to get to the rendezvous point next time. I will say, that had something like this happened while we were on our earlier Insight Vacation bus tour of Spain/Portugal, it would not have been a problem as with Insight, we all had the personal cell phone number of our tour director so we could have called him, and he had all our cell phone numbers so he could have called us. Of course, that was a group of 28, and the river cruise is a group of 165, so that’s probably more difficult. It any case, its over now and we are back to our next adventure in Nuremburg and resuming our cruise on the Viking Vidar tomorrow.

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