Day 10 (11th July): Bamburg in Honeymoon

Today we had a half-day in Bamburg, and spent the afternoon and evening sailing out of the Main-Danube canal into the Main river. Sailing is kind of an over statement, because for the most part I felt like we just drifted along at a snail's pace. This is because the canal and the Main have such shallow waters that there is very little room between the bottom of the hull and the river bed. Apparently at some point there were only 60cm of clearance underwater. I could see people biking along the canal who could overtake us.

The previous night was rough because we crossed so many locks, and for each lock, the ship has to position itself to fit in, and often times would hit the left or right walls of the lock chamber, resulting in a jolt that wakes everyone up. I luckily slept through most of it, but La Professeure didn't and she was tired.

The ship we are on is specially designed for crusing in this canal. The canal was originallly designed for cargo ships - barges that are long and thin, and thus the locks are shaped exactly like that. Now when the designer of the cruise ship want to make a boat that can go through the locks, he operated under those constraints, resulting in the long and thin shape of our cruise ships. When it goes into a lock, there are only a few inches of space left on each side. We were allowed onto the sun deck today as we went through a lock, and we could see the vertical clearance isn't much either. In order to pass by the low bridges, they had to fold down the the canopy, remove the raiings, and remove all the chairs on the sun deck, so the 'floor' level of the sun deck is now the top part of the boat. Even the wheelhouse could collapse so its top is level with the top part of the boat. When we went by the bridge, sitting on a sunken part of the sun deck, you can see it only has a few feet of clearance from the top. If I raised my arms I could have touched the bridge. I am writing in the lounge (it's like the Ten-forward of this ship) now and watching the ship go under some low bridges, it's amazing how the cruise ship could squeeze these tight spaces originally intended for barges and scowls. It's like a transformer.

Anyway, Bamburg is a nice college town that also has a lot of medieval architecture. We had our city tour that took us to a castle with its rose garden, where we had a lot of pictures taken. The only couple picture we took, however, was in front of a 50s mustang that was being used as a wedding car for a couple who were taking wedding photos there. We spent time walking down the winding cobblestone streets to the Regnitz river and took some more pictures, and then headed to the green market to get souvenirs. All in all a very beautiful city; I wish we could have spent more time in it.

The captain and hotel manager did a Q&A session on the running of the ship and hotel in the afternoon which was very informative. The most informative part is that our ship is going to be sold by the cruise company to someone else. Presumably the buyer will contine to use it as a cruise ship in his own operation (apparently these ships can ast for 60 yeras if properly maintained, and ours is only 15 years old), but it saddens me to know that our cruise line is getting rid of this boat. Apparently the cruise line is focusing on the newer, bigger, and slower boats that are newer (less than a year old) but incidentally more susceptable to low or high water conditions - we ran into many people from other boats on this trip who had to be bussed around because their boat coudn't get pass some pieces of river with low waterlevels. I quite like ours - its small size is the only reason we can avoid the hassel of switching boats. Also, it just looks cooler.

Incidentally I discovered that a picture of our boat I had taken in Budapest - it was so nicely composed, with the cathedral in the background, the Danube in the foreground, and the ship in the middle, that it could have been used as the cruise line's advertisement - was actually not our boat. I feel stupid. But this made me determined to get a picture of it before the trip is over.

I spent time practising in the afternoon; I feel like I should get a head start on the Schumann concerto before I get back since I had lost time trying to learn the Chopin. I am surprised how much I am forgetting of that piece. Still, it's going to be easier to pick it back up than to learn the Chopin. I also feel a little bad subjecting the other passengers to my practising, so I am trying to play something that sounds good while I am there. None of them have left the library at the sight of me yet, so I hope that means I'm okay.