Thursday, 6 October, Bamburg, Germany

Written 6 March 2023

Somewhere in the last day or two, we made the turn from the Danube onto the Danube-Main canal (probably during one of those times on the bus, catching up with the ship, which had continued on its way after dropping us off for a tour—maybe in Regensberg or Nuremberg). Anyway, Marek assured us that by the time we caught up again after this morning's tour we would be on the Main. We once again opted for the "leisurely" walking tour, so we piled aboard the bus of driver Susanna and rode into town.

The city core of Bamberg is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, because it has 1400 half-timbered and baroque buildings all clustered together in one place. It escaped serious bombing in WWII not, as legend would have it, because bomber pilots were unofficially advised to avoid it but because it was too small to iterest the bombers. They only bothered with places over 50,000 in population, and at the time Bamberg was just under that; today its population is 77,000 (of which 1/5 are university students).

No parking is allowed in the inner city, because they still have the narrow medieval streets (the 1602 map is still usable), and we were warned to be very careful on the sidewalks because the students are crazy on their bikes.

We didn't get to see it, but apparently right in the middle of the city is a large area of about 20 commercial market gardens, also shown on the 1602 map!

The town is no longer subject to flooding; security basins upstream are opened as necessary to take excess flow. They get a million tourists a year; tourism traffic has increased by 15% a year for 10 years. Cruise passengers are referred to locally as "the boat people."

I wish I remembered what this was the door to. From the variety of craft-related motifs surrounding the lion, I would have guessed the guild of craftsmen's guilds, but I can't find a set of search terms that brings up an image of it on the internet. Pretty modern, though, as I would interpret the motif one row below the lion and two steps to the left as that of electrical linemen.

The whimsical little statue shown on the right (perhaps 3/4 life size) is of E. T. A. Hoffmann (writer, composer, music critic, and artist), the Hoffmann of Offenbach's opera Tales of Hoffmann, and Delibes' ballet Coppélia (Coppélia was one of the characters in the tales), and Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker (which Hoffman also wrote). The cat perched on Hoffmann's shoulder is Tomcat Murr, a major character in others of Hoffmann's works.

Hoffmann is strongly associated with Bamberg, even though he wasn't born there, and even though he couldn't really be called a "favorite son," at least in his lifetime. He moved there in his thirties, when he was hired to conduct the orchestra at the local theater. According to our guide, he tried hard to raise its standards, but his efforts irritated the performers, who "played wrong on purpose to get him fired." He was in fact promptly fired, and hated Bamberg, but he stayed for 20 years anyway, leaving only after his proposal of marriage to a much younger woman was refused.

The large and impressive music and theatre venue facing the statue is now named for him.

Bamberg was full of interesting monumental street art. I liked this fountain with four musicians perched on top. Here you see a lute (mandolin?) and sax; on the other side are a clarinet (maybe?) and an accordeon.

The Jewish community of Bamberg has a very long and not very happy history. In 1348, they were blamed for the black death—fewer Jews died of the plague because of all their cleaning rituals and food laws, so they were accused of poisoning wells to give everybody else the plague. At one point in the 15th century, the Jews were expelled from the town, but the economy promptly collapsed, so they were soon ordered back. The plaque at the right commemorates a synagogue that stood here from 1664 to 1910. At the turn of the 20th century, the synagogue here had third largest Jewish congregation in Bavaria, and a huge new synagogue was opened. In 1939, that one was burned down on kristallnacht (alng with ca. 3500 others in Germany). The jewish community was then billed for the rubble removal. Two thirds of the community emigrated, and the rest ended up in concentration camps, so for about 40 years the community had 150–180 members. It's now up to about 900 because, since 1989 many Jews from inside the iron curtain have come back here where their ancestors came from.

In compensation, the city bought and renovated a building and sold it to the Jewish community for 1 euro. This new, modern synagogue opened in 2007. It has a female rabbi, only one in Germany—she's also a pediatric urologist, as four kids, and teaches Hebrew; busy lady!

According to our guide, it was around 1500 that people were forced to acquire family names—thought it wasn't clear to me whether it was the Jews or everybody. Anyway, people tended to take family names from their house names. The example he gave was the Rothchilds, who lived ""at the sign of the red shield."

Many of the buildings were beautifully decorated, and our walk was very scenic. The city core is on an island in the middle of the river (the Regnitz, not the Danube), so we walked back and forth over several lovely short bridges. I was taken with this painting on the side of one historic house of a young man carrying a beer tankard bigger than he is.

At the right is a porch facing onto a branch of the river with a gorgeous herb garden hanging over the rail, mostly rosemary and parsley.

Here, the guide shows us another of those great bronze relief maps. I wish we could have those around here, but in the US it just wouldn't be practical—the skyline, and even the street plan, changes too often.

As we crossed one such bridge, we looked upstream and—at last!—there was the image used on the Viking website as the emblem of this trip! It's the city's old town hall, now a museum of porcelain and beer mugs. As usual a few hundred years ago, the bishop and the city government were struggling for power (the bishop) and autonomy (the town). The town wanted a town hall, but the bishop said they couldn't build it on his land. Since he actually owned all the land, they sank a bunch of pilings and built it in the middle of the river!

As you can see in the right-hand photo, it's long and narrow, to fit in the middle of the river.

And the sides, which we got to see a little later in the walk, are flamboyantly and decoratively painted!

Another lovely feature we happened to walk by was this little sunken amphitheater. I don't know whether it was actually part of the café whose tables surrounded it.

Then, in a broad pedestrian street where we later spent our free time, we encountered this troop of red-vested folks waving signs. Having spent so much time in France we asked the guide what they were protesting, but as it turns out, they weren't protesters at all—they were collecting money for a childrens' charity.

In the photo, they are standing around the base of the statue shown at the left here. It's Poseidon, but he's apparently known affectionately to the locals as "Gabelman" ("Frogman").

Both here and elsewhere, we noticed these little brass plaques set into the sidewalks. These two commemorate Meta Obermeier and Norbert Berg, deported a year apart to different concentration camps during WWII. She was 70 years old; he was 48. They both apparently lived in this street.

Written 7 March 2023

Imagine my delight, when we were turned loose in the wide pedstrian street, to find that a good-sized greenmarket was in progress! In addition to numerous food trucks selling mostly variations on hot dogs and hamburgers and Middle Eastern meze, I browsed yards and yards of fruit and vegetables.

At the left is a display of several kinds of mushrooms: in the lower tier, nearest the camera, large boletes (cèpes, porcini, steinpilz), each cut in half longitudinally to show that the stems are solid and not riddled with bug holes; behind them a big heap of chanterelles, looking as usual like they were brought to market with a push broom. Both of those were wild collected. Above them, nearest the camera, king eryngii, and behind them portobellos, both cultivated.

At the right, flanked by walnuts in the shell and more mushrooms, were prune plums! About time. It's the season, and we're in Germany for Pete's sake; where have the prune plums been? I promply bought a bunch.

At the left here is another array of veggies—two colors of onions and two of potatoes, tomatoes, mushrooms, etc. But my favorite part of the photo is the right-most bin of cabbages, which are pointed on top! I've never had a chance to tasted pointed-head cabbage, but my father raved about it; it's supposedly sweeter, tenderer, and juicier that round-headed and is supposed to make superior coleslaw.

When I'd walked the whole market twice, and bought some figs (another fruit I expected to see more of on this cruit), I strolled back to join David at a sidwalk table—he's less interested in produce than I am, and at markets lives in dread of encountering raw meat or seafood, especially in regions where they display pieces parts he'd rather not look at. At the right here are my hot chocolate and the two conical paper pouches in which the vendors packaged my plums and figs.

The plaque at the left informs us that here lived E. T. A. Hoffmann, from 1809 to 1813.

Then back to the boat, where we were greeted on the gangway by the chef himself, Job Quintana, bearing a tray of little savory canapés topped with fresh red currants.

By on the way, our guide had provided much more information about Bamberg. Today, the city is 2/3 Roman Catholic. It was an independent bishopric until it was annexed by Bavaria. The diocese dates from 1007; the cathedral was finished in 1012.

In those days, Bamberg was ruled by the very pious Holy Roman Emperor Henry II and his equally pious wife, Cunegunde of Luxembourg. They had no children, and getting into heaven back then depended solely on the number of people praying for you. A single person couldn't do it alone; you needed children to do it for you or you wound up going to hell. They therefore built that cathedral (the only church in Bamberg that has four spires) in exchange for the parishoners' praying for them.

The two reigned jointly for 40 years, and perhaps the principal reason they had no children was that, although they slept in the same bed that whole time, they both supposedly died virgins. She served as interim regent after his death in 1024. They are both saints now, the only canonized couple in the church. They are buried in the cathedral and she is buried to his right, by his wish, to show that she was his coruler and most important political advisor and that he considered her his superior.

That didn't sit well with some, so there were always plots against her. At one point, she was accused of adultery and requird to walk barefoot over 100 glowing red ploughshares as a trial by ordeal—if her feet healed cleanly, she was innocent; if they got in fected, she was guilty. Of course, she walked the whole thing without injury; her innocence was proven by divine intervention. That's the miracle that got her canonized. I don't know what Henry's was. (All this throws a very different light, at least in my previously ignorant mind, on Voltaire's use of "Cunegunde" as the name of Candide's love interest.)

Statues of them stand inside the cathedral. The statues were originally painted, and analysis of remaining paint traces reveal that Henry's eyes were brown and his hair black, debunking Hitler's claim that he was a blond, blue-eye Aryan. The statue also faces southwest and not east, as Hitler claimed.

And as a side note, Henry's sister, Gisela of Bavaria, married Saint Stephan I of Hungary (remember him?).

In the Middle Ages, Bamberg's water wasn't safe to drink (at one point we walked past a house with an ox on the front—the old slaughterhouse—from which, until 1911, the blood and guts were thrown into the river), so the residents drank up to three liters of beer per day per person. But the beer was only about 2%, and people had a high tolerance from drinking so much of it.

Bamberg is particularly known for smoked beer (rauchbier). The first sip, our guide assured us, is a shock, but it improves with more consumption. He assured us that everyone should at least try it, as an experience. Everyone used to make smoked beer, because all malt was dried over wood fires, but everybody stopped (except here) when they could dry it on heated metal plates instead. The WWII GI's called it "bacon beer" or "liquid salami." (The US had a military base here until the 60's. I think the guide said the last Americans left in 2013 because Russia was no longer considered a threat.

A particularly famous, historic smoked beer brewer is called Schlenkerla, which means "wobbling guy." The original innkeeper, whose knees had been crushed by a beer barrel, was called "the Wobbler" because he couldn't walk straight. After his death, his children renamed the inn, originally called The Blue Lion, after him. The "star of David" on the front, with the point up, is not a sign of Judaism but the sign of the medieval brewers' guild.

For 120 years, beer cost 11 cents a liter, an hour's work for a craftsman. Then in 1907, all the brewers except two conspired and raised the price to 12 cents. Beer drinkers boycotted the lot of them, and the two breweries that kept the original price did a land-office business. After a few months, the conspiracy was broken, and the price went back to 11 cents.

Modern Bamberg is actually quite industrialized, though you don't notice it from the center of town. The city is surrounded by big factories—Bosch, Michelin, Siemens, and many others— employing 35,000 people. Bosch makes 80% of its 15 billion sparkplugs in Bamberg.

Bamberg also has the most successful professional basketball team in Germany, the Bamberg Brose Baskets. They are required to have some minimum number of actual Germans on the team, but apparently a lot of Americans who can't quite make it in the NBA come over here. The name of the local fan club is "Freak City." Bamberg is known to other places in Germany as Freak City because they are so fanatical about basketball.

Many mills used to be active in the river; some still exist but they generate electricity rather than grinding grain

There were dynasties of Prince Bishops, and the successors were supposedly nephews, but DNA analyses reveal that most of them were sons.

The reason Bamberg is such a mixture of half-timbered and baroque buildings is that stone was very rare and expensive. Half-timbering was much cheaper. But somewhere along the line, a ruler liked baroque, and to improve the appearance of the town he offered a tax break to anyone who would plaster over his half timbering. The fashion changed from medieval to baroque in just a few years. in 1900, though, the baroque facades were removed, leaving a combination of the original half-timbering and buildings that were built baroque to begin with.

A neighborhood of half-timbered buildings and old fishermen's houses near the old town hall is called, inevitably, Little Venice. The only way to get one of those houses is to marry into the family that already owns it.

Rods that we saw hanging in the river are aa practice ground for kayaks, for slalom.

In WWII, the Nazis destroyed all the bridges to slow down the allies, but because the river is so narrow it only held them up for 2–3 hours.

Many of the older houses in town sit a step or two down from the street, because the level of the street is always rising.

The ship had stopped only briefly in Zeil am Main (already on the Main!) to pick us up, so it cast off immediately and continued on its way while we sat down to lunch. At the left is the remains of my corn soup (good as always), and at the left a single mussel remaining from my fine-print appetizer of mussel salad.

The best choice among the four main-course offerings was a muffuletta sandwich on foccacia, though I still felt silly eating New Orleans food in Germany.

The dessert was "cassis bavarois"; at least appropriate since we were in Bavaria—layers of cake, vanilla mousse, and black currant gel.

In contrast to the raging Danube, the canal and the heavily canalized Main were smooth as the proverbial millpond, consisting as they did of nothing but the stretches of water between closely spaced locks.

The Main must once have been pretty swift, or at least steep, to need that many locks. Along the shores, we began to see many modern windmills, generating electricity, I presume.

Camping along the banks was very popular. These are just a couple of photos of the many, many tents, campers, and trailers we cruised by.

No excursions were scheduled for the rest of the day, so it was just a lazy and scenic afternoon. At the left is David, seated in the lounge, reading a book he found in the onboard library, as vine-covered hillsides glide by in the background.

At the right is the fruit I bought in the market in Bamberg. For the rest of the cruise, I'd take a piece or two with me to breakfast each morning. Yummy.

Swans were a frequent sight.

And at sunset, I got this nice shot of a sillouetted church steeple.

For dinner, we started with forest mushroom timbale with black truffle sauce.

Then followed it up with marinated rack of lamb.

The desserts were walnut caramel cake with vanilla ice cream and orange sauce and apple crumble pie. Here are photos of both.