Day 5 - Our First Hike Up The Mountain

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Today we woke to a gurgling sound outside the boat. I pulled back the curtain to discover we were looking out at a brick wall just a few inches away. It turns out we were at the bottom of a canal lock and the noise we heard was the water rushing in as the boat was rising in the lock! It was a little unnerving but not unexpected. We were told there would be locks.

We had a briefing this morning where they finally addressed the geography of the river travel. We began the trip in Amsterdam and quickly entered the Rhine River. We followed the Rhine until yesterday when we crossed into the Main River. The Rhine River continues south to Switzerland. The Main River continues east and between its natural path and a series of canals, there is a way to connect to the Danube and eventually to the Black Sea. This means that over the next several days, we will be using 68 of the 70 locks in this path. The reason for the locks is the different heights between the Rhine, Main, and the Danube. Between Bamburg and the Continental divide, the locks raise the boat about 575 ft. After the continental divide, the locks lower the boat about 225 ft and connects to the Danube in Kelheim.

It turns out the Viking longships are the same size as all the other operator longships as the maximum size of the ship is driven by the size of the locks. The lock widths are a minimum of 12 meters, so the ships are designed to be 11.4 meters wide allowing a space of about 1 foot on each side. The length of the ship is also limited to the shortest lock so that the gates can be closed behind us. The ship also drafts at about 5.57 meters or about 18.25 feet. This is the minimum depth of water necessary for the boat to float.

The locks are not difficult to traverse, but it does add to the overall time as only one ship can fit in the lock at a time, so high river traffic can cause delays. For this reason, our 2:45 arrival at Freudenberg was delayed until about 3:30. No big deal, but it made for a long boring day on the boat.

So at 3:30, we headed off the boat to meet up with our guide for the Freudenberg Hike & Garden Visit. This was the optional tour, as the bulk of the people were heading by coach to the Miltenberg Walking Tour, which is just a leisurely walk around Miltenberg, which happened to be celebrating Octoberfest today. We found out today, that including the work “hiking” in a tour name is the kiss of death for old people. We picked the tour specifically because it was a hiking tour, but evidently ourselves and one other couple (Lee & Mimi from Austin, TX) were the only adventurous ones willing to participate in a hike.

We were the only four that got off the boat and did not get on the coach, but met up with our local guides Daniel and a Brazilian girl whose name escaped us as she didn’t talk much. Daniel was great! He took us to his house and introduced us to his wife and 3 children, showed us around his vegetable garden and pointed to a castle at the top of the hill from where we were standing and said that was where we were headed and did we think we could make the trek. Of course we could! So Daniel led us through town, pointing out the various buildings, architecture, and giving us a bit of history of the surroundings. It turns out he is also some sort of environmental researcher, who does environmental statistics, bit with a background in botany. So he was also able to point out a lot of the local plants, and which ones were actually local, which were transplanted, and which were invasive.

The town was beautiful and very picturesque. It was originally only a small village of about 450 people since the Middle Ages, with all the houses of half-timbered construction. But after WW2, the village expanded into the countryside and was now about 2500 people. Some of the original half-timbered houses of the Middle Ages were for sale for only 30k to 70k Euros, but the stit=pulation was that if you bought it, you would need to restore it to the original façade. Some had been heavily modified in the 1960’s to have a more modern siding of asbestos or asphalt, but underneath were promises of the original half-timbered house. Also, since the original structures were wood, straw and cement, they needed to be heated, but not too well insulated, as the exterior walls were porous and held water. The heat leaking through the walls would dry out the exterior walls keeping the timbers and straw from rotting.

After passing through the town, we came to the path to the castle which included included 447 stone steps and was very steep. The climb wasn’t too bad for Jody and me, and Lee and Mimi had no trouble either. We stopped several times along the way to take pictures as the views along the way were spectacular! We finally reached the summit, the castle was mostly a ruin, but the towers were intack and we were able to take some great pictures. Inside the castle, staging and bleachers had been erected, and it turns out the local playhouse performs theater here during the summer.

The walk down was actually much easier as there was actually a gravel road that we could follow that is used to transport patrons to the theater shows. On the way down Daniel continued telling us about life in the village, both environmentally and politically. They really do have a different mindset in Germany as there is a lot of government support for the population, great health care, education and training. There is a belief that the government should support you if you can’t take care of yourself, and that if you are trying to straighten out your life and you show progress to the government, they should offer you help to continue in your goals. Any improvements to community should benefit the community, and not just a few people that are already rich.

As we returned to Daniel’s home, we sat around a table and had some snacks and refreshments. Lee and Mimi had beer, but since Jody and I do not drink, we settled for sparkling apple juice. Daniel was great to talk to about life in Germany, and they really seemed to have a better sense of community than we tend to have in the US. By now it was getting to 6:00 and time to get back to the ship. After a delicious dinner with a little ice cream of course, it was time to head to bed early as we have another hike planned for tomorrow. This time it will be 6 of us!

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