The River Rhine 2009

Day 6 - Aug 07 - Rudesheim and Marksburg

Rudesheim has the largest collection of mechanical instruments. I was skeptical before we went, almost deciding to skip the tour. Glad I didn't. The instruments went from simple music boxes to orchestral organs that included banjos, keyboards, drums, chimes, saxophones, trumpets... WOW! These guys were really bored during the summer.

This is a player piano, which is not so unusual. However, what it is playing is important: they have piano rolls recorded by famous composers and pianists of the late 19 century. These are the only recording of this music, since audio recording was not common, yet.

The most amazing of the mechanical instruments (not that all of them weren't amazing) were the violin organs. Violins have multiple problems. Of course there is the bow action. The webbed strings at the top moves in a circle continuously. The violins move in and out to touch the bow. The making of the notes is easy with the little pads. But there is also the problem that each string is offset in a curve. You have to tilt the bow to hit different strings. So the have four violins: each violin is tilted so that it only plays 1 string.

We took a gondola to the top of the hill.

The trip up to the top of the hill.

Everyone wanted to know why the grape rows were vertical to the river, which would seem to encourage errosion, but as we have learned - the Germans always have good reasons for what they do. It is so the grapes get equal amounts of sunlight. In horizontal rows, the front rows block the back rows.

At the top of the gondola there is a big statue that we didn't really care about. We had talked about walking down to the ship thru the vineyards, but decided that we didn't have enough time, should we take a wrong turn. So we walked thru the wood, instead. It was very nice.

We took time to sit and listen to the forest. Unfortunately, the birds stayed in the canopy above.

A row of mushrooms.

 

All afternoon we photographed castles. There are SOOOO many. They were built to extract tolls from the ships in the river. Some were sanchioned by the king and others were considered "robber barrons".

Click on the picture for closer view of the castle.

Some castle barons were able to pull chains up across the river to stop the merchant ships.

This is a statue of Lauraley (not sure of the spelling).
She was a siren who sang to the sailors,
causing them to crash on the rocks.

 

Click on the picture for closer view of the white building.

 

Rheinsfeld castle, one of the most important on the Rhine. It was finally destroyed by Napolean. Denece and I visited Rheinsfeld and it is interesting even as a ruin.

 

Picking up stores. This was called a "technical stop". We later learned that if there is produce included (which was not the case here), the chef checks it and will send it back if he is not happy with it.

 

 

To get close to the dock, the pilot has controls on the sides of the ship where he can see exactly what he is doing.

In the background is the pilot house: where the ship is steered. It can be lowered into the deck for low bridges.

In the foreground are Robert and Brenda, our two Canadian bicyclists. The shipped their bikes from Canada to have them on board, which made me feel very stupid for not thinking of it.

Marksburg castle (actually "burg" means castle, so it is Marks castle). It is the only castle on the Rhine that was never destroyed.

The newest cannons in Marksburg. They can shoot all the way across the river, about 1,000 yards.

One of the narrow passageways in the castle.
Most are not this small.

This is Jim. He's the tallest guy in our group.

I took this picture because Denece and I have been to Marksburg before with Sorrin, one of our German friends, who is around 6 foot 8. We have picture of Sorrin walking thru this door like a giant. Jim did the best he could.

This is the bathroom and the dining room table. Hygene was not important to them. They would even keep the door open so they could talk while relieving themselves. The actual toilet is hanging above the ground and empties into the garden below.