Melk Abbey

We are now in Austria and will visit the Melk Abbey this morning. This is possibly the most famous Abbey in Austria. It was built between 1702 and 1736 to be a royal palace with ceremonial courts, guest apartments (300) grand halls and a library (over 100,000 books, many original manuscripts).

In the 11th century, the palace was presented to the Benedictine monks who turned it into a fortified Abbey. The highlight is the Abbey church with twin spires and a high octagonal dome. The interior is baroque and so beautiful but not as awesome as the church in Passau, at least to me. The is a difference of opinion amongst the passengers on that subject.

There are still black-robed monks that stroll the Abbey since it is also a prestigious monastery school with more than 700 students.

This corridor has a mirror corridor on the other side of the grand stairway up. It has a combined length of 193 meters.

This is a replica of the re-usable caskets that were employed in the Middle Ages. There was not a sufficient supply of caskets so the used it for the burial and the funeral party and then they opened the casket and dropped the body into the grave.

Love the locking mechanism on this "safe"

The grand hall in the Abbey

 

View of the town of Melk taken from the Abbey

 

This is the bottom of the circular staircase. Even the underside of things are decorated.

So here are photos of the church. You saw photos from Passau, be the judge and make up your own mind on which is better.

 

 

The following shots are two side chapels with skeletons of catacomb saints.

 

 

 

 

 

Love the doors here!

Here's the Abbey taken from our walk back to the ship.

 

This little guys was not moving as fast as us.

Bratislava, Slovakia tomorrow!

 

 

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Passau

We are in our last German town today. It is still raining and the folks around here are quite concerned about the possibility of flooding. This town has two major rivers going through it and last year had serious flooding with a lot of damage. In fact, several home have just completed the repairs and now the waters are pretty high and they might have flooding if it continues to rain. The night before and that morning, the crew were raising the sun deck and putting up all the railings on the sunroof again since we have now gone through all the low bridges. We were supposed to dock at a specific location but the docking authorities said that we couldn't get there with all the railings up and the sun roof up since the river is so high. So the captain docked right before the bridge that we were supposed to have gone through and we disembarked. We were told when we return to the ship, it will have moved further down past the bridge - once they lower everything again. Thankfully we were able to get past the bridge and will move down the river later that night. There is another Viking River boat that started in Nuremburg and will take the same route we will until Budapest. We found out this morning the the Freya (other ship) was in the middle of the river and planning on docking on the other side of the bridge - like we were going to - and communications obviously got mixed up and the captain didn't realize he should have docked before the bridge. The pilot house was raised and he hit the bridge. They were put in a repair port and repairs were made on the pilot house while the passengers were in port. It seems that the river boat companies have parts warehouses all along the river to handle problems and they luckily had the necessary parts to repair. Wish I had seen that!

Passau was a pretty little town but what made this day even more special was St. Stephen's cathedral. This is our first church in the baroque design. This church was built on the highest point of the old town so had never experienced any flooding but it was nearly destroyed by fire in 1662. It was rebuilt by an Italian architect who favored the baroque style.

On top of that, it is home to the largest cathedral organ in the world, with 17,974 organ pipes, 233 stops and four carillons. All five parts of the organ can be played from the main keyboard, one at a time or all together. The organ was built I. 1928At the end of our tour, we were able to hear an organ recital. I will admit that the four pieces played were not particularly to my liking but they beautifully demonstrated the versatility, range and power of this magnificent instrument.

This is the Rathaus

High water marks through the years

 

We walked up this street. This photo does not do justice to the walk since the street curved twice and I couldn't get a photo of the entire street

View of the cathedral from the back. The exterior just did not prepare one for the interior

This was the view when I walked into the church.

 

 

 

I just cannot describe how breathtaking this church was. As I said, the music selection was not one to my liking but when the organist played some of the chords, I believe the building vibrated. Oh my gosh, what an experience.

Tomorrow we will be arriving in Melk, Austria. We have heard that the Abbey there will make St. Stephens church look a bit plain. Can't wait to see that!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Regensburg

Tuesday morning we cruised along the Danube and it was nice sleeping in. We reached the highest point on our river tour during the night (we started at sea level in Amsterdam and were now about 1400 meters above sea level so all the locks we had gone through to this point we raising us up, now we started going down.

We went into Regensburg for an afternoon tour and had the rest of the day and evening to ourselves for shopping, drinking, whatever. Oh yes, the old town of Regensburg is another UNESCO World Heritage site. It is one of the best preserved medieval cities. We even walked across the 12th century old stone bridge, Germany's oldest bridge on our way to Germany's oldest restaurant late Wurstküch, or Old Sausage Kitchen, has been in the same spot since 1135.

We passed by the Bishop's residence and as always, there was this beautiful beer garden in the courtyard (we were told it was always this way in the old days).

 

 

This is Goliath. He was painted on the building that you see when crossing the stone bridge. It is said that this was done to warn people coming into this town that the town of Regensburg is strong and proud and you should not mess with them.

 

 

There was this great cuckoo clock store and we were privileged to a demonstration of these gorgeous creations. One of my favorite clocks was one of the very earliest made in the Black Forest. It had only four wooden gears, one clock hand and a stone for the weight. Love it!

 

 

Tour over and on our own now. Headed to the sausage kitchen with Ernie, Laurie and Dan.

Can you imagine cooking in this kitchen?

 

Have to finish now cause we are on our way to a wine tasting. I do have my priorities you know!

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