Rhine River Rafting Adventure – Day 4

---

Today we see two cities, two docks, and enjoy the quite of Sunday morning in Germany.

We docked in Mainz, last night, and this morning, we arose, ate breakfast on the ship, and began the walking tour of Mainz. As you may or may not know, Mainz is where Gutenberg began using his invention – the printing press. Before moveable type, people copied books, by hand. They did have printing before by putting the image on wooden blocks, but you can imagine not having a backspace or delete key when you make a mistake, just recarve the entire block. With the ability to make the type, and reuse it, printing a page was so much easier, and the type was able to be reset on another page.

Johannes Gutenberg was a nobody, and while there are portraits of him, no one really knows what he looked like. They really don’t know when he was born. Just what he did, and when he died. He had a wealth investor who fronted him money to print 200 Bibles, which he did, but he had not sold them within the term length of the contract so he bankrupt Johannes, and he was poor again, while the printers of Mainz continued their printing.



Cathedral of Mainz was in use for Sunday services, so we could only see the outside. Walking around and learning about the homes that survived the bombings of the war, and was educational. It seams that everything North of the Cathedral was bombed, the Cathedral was not damaged too badly, and the homes South of the Cathedral were not damaged. They are old, and a lot of them refurbished after the war and look very nice on the outside, and are modern on the inside.

Back on board for lunch, then cast off for Rudesheim. A cozy and cheerful little place. Mechanical Instruments have a museum. We dock at Rudesheim, and a little minitrain picks us up and takes us to the Siegrieds’s Musikkabinett, a museum of mechanical music instruments. We are talking player piano on steroids.

After the museum, we had a coffee tasting at the Rudesheimer Schloss. It is a hotel, and coffee bar like you haven’t experienced before. They have a recipe using a brandy made from Reisling wine, sugar, a flame to carmelize the sugar, coffee, whip cream and grated chocolate on top.

At 6:00 we got back to the ship, to get ready for supper, and a Port-Talk to let us know what to expect for the next couple of ports.

Supper, then the end of another wonderful, enjoyable visit to some historic German towns and villages.



Tomorrow we go through the Rhine Gorge, and dock at Koblenz.

---

Photos

Choo-Choo train
The train that brought us from ship to study the MusicCabinet and party.

Movable type.
The world is a lot better because of it.

The alloy just poured for our show-n-tell.
The letter "G".

Not your normal "player piano".
From early 1900's. Was found all taken apart and gathered from a merry go-round in middle east.

Music Cabinet workshop.
The owner has passed on the tradition to his son, and his son to his daughter. The skills are being transferred to younger generations.

Bell Tower at Rudesheim The bell tower really works.
It chimes on the hour, and the figures move about and go back inside after the hour is signaled.

Comments

[JKeating]

Day 4
I know Gutenberg but did not know he was from Mainz. That's cool you guys were there. The coffee sounds better than Starbucks. :-)