Donau, # 1: Time

Sat. Sept 20 (Day 1):  Munich to Kloster Weltenberg

Weltenburg Abbey

...is not on your side.  Neither is there time to spare.  When we have no time we want it; when we have time we use it up.  Either way there is never enough.  I've been particularly conscious of this truism on this rowing tour; we're literally busy from morning to night, with never a minute to spare.  And this is supposed to be a vacation!  But perhaps I should start at the beginning.

     True to form, it took me as long to get from London to Munich as it took my four fellow rowers to get there from Seattle.  The flight from London to Brussels was an hour late and as a result I spent a very long day in Brussels airport while my friends spent theirs drinking good German beer and watching the Oktoberfest activities in Marienplatz.  About 10 p.m. I emerged from the S-bahn at Truderingstrasse in the pitch dark, gamely hoping I was dragging my suitcase in the right direction.  What a relief to get to the hotel, tea and bed.

Oktoberfest in Munich

     The next morning we enjoyed a long, gargantuan breakfast (I can see already that I am going to run out of adjectives to describe the vast quantities of food we've encountered here), and made our way back to the Munich hauptbahnhof, where we found our bus, dropped off our suitcases and had time to take a quick look at the festivities (lederhosen and dirndls everywhere!) and enjoy our first German cafe.  (I really regret not being able to drink coffee here - such a waste!)

Stone Carving at Abusina

    On the way to Weltenberg we stopped at Abusina, a UNESCO World Heritage site where the ruins of a Roman fort have been excavated.  The ruins are significant because the Danube was the northernmost point of the Roman incursion into southern Germany; the fort prevented the Germanic tribes invading from the North.  The Romans decamped from this area in the 5th century A.D. after Rome burned, and were replaced by the tribes whose names eventually led the region to be known as Bavaria.

The Danube from our window

     Kloster Weltenburg (Weltenburg Abbey); founded in 620, is the oldest abbey in Bavaria; now it is proud home to 7 Benedictine monks. A biergarten fills the monastery courtyard; founded in 1050, the abbey's brewery is the world's oldest and its Dunkel beer has won the World Beer Cup several times.  The monastery also has a Gasthof (guesthouse), which was remodeled last year after the disastrous floods of 2013, and which operates almost like a hotel.  The walls are 3 feet thick and the rooms are beautiful and spare; all the building's huge timbers are exposed, and our room looks right out over the river.  The Abbey is situated on a peninsula called the Danube Gorge where enormous crags tower over this narrow area of the river, also a nature reserve.

The Bainbridge 5, ready for action   

      The evening was filled with introductions, information and - being Bavaria - enormous quantities of creamy food; after two days I learned to eat sparely to preserve my digestive system!  After the meal, there was a memorial ceremony on the beach in memory of an Austrian rower, known to many on this tour, who drowned in the Danube a few weeks ago.  A circle of candles next to the water glowed as one of the monks intoned a prayer and all of us threw a flower into the flowing river.

     There is little time, all week, to reflect, take a walk, write a blog post, email or catch up on the news.  Particularly on this first day, though, surrounded by almost 70 strangers, bombarded with instructions and never having seen a churchboat, an hour to reflect would have felt even more luxurious than our surroundings.  Hence my writing this a week later.  Nonetheless, we are happy to be here and look forward, with not enough time even for trepidation, to tomorrow's adventures.