Tuesday December 19: Trier/Bernkastel
Region’s Largest Advent Calendar
We slept the same last night. That is, Amy slept fine, and I woke up once or twice in the middle of the night, and then spent some time falling back asleep.
We screwed up the alarm somehow this morning. We were concerned about getting ready for the shore excursion on time. So we were up and ready for breakfast 15 minutes before they opened. Then we got ready for the shore excursion at 8:00. About 7:55 I went out and checked, because there hadn’t been an announcement yet. There was no signs of leaving. Then we checked and found that it was a 9:00 departure, start leaving at 8:45. So I have time to work on this.
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We did the standard bus tour of Trier. We saw a number of Roman ruins, but we didn’t stop or get off the bus. We drove up a narrow steep road, full of switchbacks, which were particularly interesting in a large bus. We got out and got sort of a bird’s eye view of the town from the hillside.
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It was probably about 40-42 degrees, but rather raw and damp. It would have been much nicer if it was sunny and not so damp.
We then drove back down the switchbacks and got out in town. We slowly meandered our way through town hearing about the interesting/old buildings. Apparently this town was the capitol of this quarter of the empire before Constantine moved to what is now Turkey
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At one point, we walked past a camera shop, and I thought, “They still have such things???” (Between people using cell phone cameras and the large internet camera stores.)
The official tour ended at 10:45. The Christmas Market officially opened at 11, but many places opened slightly early. I decided that I should avoid wearing a backpack when we go to a Christmas Market. With the pack, it was harder to move through the crowd without crashing into people, and I was really afraid that I would go into a densely packed store, turn around, and wipe out $1000 worth of merchandise on the shelf behind me.
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We wandered through the market. Amy got a hot-dog. Later, I saw a place that sold macarons. I rather liked the one that Amy got in Reims, so I bought an 8-pack.
It never rained on us, but it was sort of lightly spitting on us. It was a lot better than being rained on, but it made for a very damp, raw cold.
We met up with the group at 12 and then walked a short distance to the buses. I was eager to get to the boat and a bathroom, and I was expecting a quick 5-minute jaunt to where we started. Then I remembered that we were meeting the boat further downstream, so we had about a 20-minute ride.
When we got off the bus, there were some interesting ducks next to the river. They were sort of like harlequins but a bit different from the harlequins back home. We started downstream about as soon as everyone was back on board.
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We got cleaned up / warmed up, and then it was time for lunch. As we ate, we watched the shore going by. We were amazed that almost the entire shore was covered with vineyards, mostly going up steep hillsides. I’m guessing that it was rather a pain to service the plants.
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At one point, we seemed to be entering a channel next to an island. Someone thought that maybe this was the confluence with the Rhine, but I thought it was way too early for that. I thought that it was just a large island. I pulled up our current location on Google Maps, and I saw that it was indeed just an island. I was somewhat surprised that we were going up the narrow side rather than along the wide side. Then I noticed that the narrow side was *very* narrow, and that it was going in a very straight line. I realized that we were probably in a canal heading toward a lock. This, in fact, turned out to be correct.
It looked like the lock was only a few feet wider than our boat, so the side of the lock was only a foot or two from the side of the boat. We stopped, and a short time later we noticed that the walls were rising around us. The boat was incredibly smooth. Without the windows, we would have had no clue that we were going, or that we were stopping, or that we were changing levels.
After lunch, we had the mandatory safety drill. We were told to stay in our rooms until the alarm sounded, then we should put on our life jackets and go to our muster station. Normally that would be on the sun deck, but given the climate, the muster stations were all indoors. What we were supposed to do was described in gory detail over the PA system, so that it was almost impossible to do it wrong.
After the safety drill, we had a little time to kill. We went under some really low bridges, where I’m sure they had to retract the wheelhouse. I would have liked to have gotten a picture of this, but by the time I realized we were going under such a low bridge, it was too late to get a picture. Eventually, I got smarter and moved to the bow of the ship (still inside), so I could see what was coming up.
After a little bit, I noticed that we were approaching another lock. I wanted pictures, so I raced back to the cabin, got my jacket and camera, and then went topside. It was amazingly like threading a needle. The ship is 400-500 feet long. There was literally about 1-2 feet of spaces on either side of the boat. It had to be maneuvered so that it was in the right orientation and the right location, and then glide along the side of the lock while maintaining a 1-2 foot distance between the boat and the wall for the whole length of the boat. It looked easy, but I’m sure it isn’t. I’m sure that if I tried it, I would either miss outright or drift left or right and run into the one side or the other.
Then the tour director, Andrew, started his spiel about tonight and tomorrow’s activities. It was rather confusing to me. Part of my issue is that he was talking at times about tonight and at times about tomorrow, and I couldn’t always tell the difference. There is an official activity tonight which involves a tour of the castle and maybe some wine stuff. We’re not signed up for it. I don’t recall whether we would have wanted to go and it was full, or whether it was a lot of wine tasting, so we didn’t sign up. Our plan is to visit the Christmas market on our own.
Tomorrow there is a visit to some sort of underground Christmas wine market (I think). This was a last minute addition, as the normally scheduled market that we were scheduled to visit unexpectedly closed two days ago. We are not interested in a wine market, so I think we’re having a smaller town tour scheduled, but it is a bit fuzzy to me.
It is now about 5, and they are docking. After they dock, Amy and I will walk to the Christmas market and then return for a late dinner (at 7:30). The dinner is late today because of the optional tour that we’re not going on.
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We just came back from the most wonderful Christmas Market. I think this was definitely better than the scheduled activity.
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The rain was holding off. We left the boat and started walking to the left. We commented that even though it was after sunset, it felt a lot warmer than this morning. We didn’t know if it was literally warmer, or if it was less damp, or less windy, but it felt not too bad (as opposed to this morning when I was borderline cold).
We walked down for a few minutes and then saw something promising down a side street. We went down there and found the center of the market. The architecture was neat. There was a large crowd, and lots of things lit up. We got there at the right time. At one point, I noticed that the music was actually (at that point) live. A bit later, a woman came on reading something. She would read for a while, then a guy would play a little on a sax, and then the woman would read bit more, etc. Of course, I had absolutely no idea what she was reading, but she had everyone’s attention. My guess is that she was reading about the Christmas story, but since I don’t know German, this is only a guess.
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Then we wandered around for about an hour. This place was an order of magnitude better than the place we walked around this morning. It might be the two markets themselves, but it might also be that we were there in the early evening versus late morning.
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I watched one place making something that I think of as “German Pizza”. They put a rectangle of some kind of dough on a board, spread some topping (mayonnaise?), various chopped meats/veggies, and then put it in a small oven. About a minute later, they took it out, slid it onto a plate, and gave it to the customer.
Amy got some postcards, some gingerbread, and some nougat. There was lots of food to be had, but as we were going to be returning to a nice dinner, I didn’t want to ruin my appetite by eating there. We met a few people from the boat here and there.
About 6:45 we started heading back. This was a good time because it seemed to be starting to spit/drizzle out.
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The castle/ruins on top of the hill (where the other group went) was lit up nicely. There was a round tower there, which they had lit up with a red light. They then put a large orange “flame” on top, so it was essentially a giant candle.
We tried to get photos from our phone, but I had trouble not getting the castle to over-expose. We got back to the boat around 7, and I grabbed my big camera and tripod, went up to the sun-deck, and got a bunch of pictures. It was much easier adjusting the exposure with the SLR. I don’t think the boat was moving that much, but we’ll see when I look at the pictures on the computer. I thought that I would have a better angle because I was higher, but I decided that the angle would be better a bit further forward. I didn’t want to bother getting off the boat to get more pictures, so I just took what pictures I wanted (including the city) from the boat, came inside, and put my camera gear away.
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Shortly afterwards it was time for dinner. We ended up sitting with a pair of couples who were from San Antonio, which is where we’ll be going next spring for the eclipse.
After dinner, they brought in two local musicians for a small concert. One played the piano and the other the violin. That was really nice. I took notes of some of the pieces to add to my classical music playlist.
About as soon as the musicians left, the boat undocked and started heading down the river. It is almost sort of freaky to see the same thing all the time out the window, and then to glance outside and suddenly notice that everything is moving. The boat starts so smoothly that unless you are looking outside, you really don’t notice that it started moving.
I think tomorrow will be the last day on the Moselle. After that, we will be going on the Rhine for a few days.
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Just now, I was getting ready for bed, when there was a small thud and a shudder. Our first thought was, “did we just hit something?” It was a very small thud, but it was still rather unusual.
I opened the curtains and looked out, joking that I was checking to see if there were any icebergs in sight. There weren’t, and we were moving along in a normal manner, but a look ahead showed that we were entering another lock. Apparently, they didn’t quite thread the needle perfectly this time, and we managed to make minor contact with the wall of the lock.