October 8 - Wertheim

October 8

Last night after Aschaffenburg we had a lovely concert on board from a group called La Strada. It is a Belgian organization which has over 1000 young musicians in its organization. They hire students, with maximum age of 35, they must play stringed instruments.  They are hired out to venues as trios and they play a one-hour program of classical and semi-classical pieces.

Our trio consisted of a Chilean and Hungarian violinist and a Slovenian guitar player.  They were quite wonderful.  It is a great organization with each musician earning 100 euro/event, and they are doing on average 9000 events a year.  

Today after a leisurely boat ride through the fall colours of the Main, we arrived in Wertheim, a typical German town of wood gabled shops, a market square and a castle and church.  Our guide was Renata Dietrich who had also guided our group thru Aschaffenburg.  Wertheim, being on the confluence of the Main and the Tauber rivers is flooded almost every year and many of the buildings, like in Venice, show the high water marks where the water had reached. We toured the town where a Christmas market was in full-swing,  had a pastry, and then crossed the Main to visit the other side and to learn about wine-making and pretzel making.  The vineyard, Alte Grafshaft, is  fairly new and proud of its success winning with Gault Millau for their Riesling and Pinot. It was lovely wine, and we each tasted three different wines.  This was intermixed by a very amusing demonstration of pretzel making from a small company named Frischmuth who have made pretzels for generations upon generations. We learned that the magic was that they dip the pretzels quickly into an alkaline solution before baking, but then the heat burns off the lye.  (The story being that a pretzel once fell into the washer woman’s pail of cleaning water, and the pretzel was such a success that they made this part of the process).  They were awfully good.

It was amazing how a sunny, warm day made everyone in high spirits.  We returned to the ship and followed our usual routine:  shower, cocktail, announcement about next day activities, dinner and bed.

The food on board continues to impress me – high quality, beautifully served, flowing wines which are excellent, and staff that seem to want to bend over backwards to make everything perfect.  I am very impressed by Uniworld which is truly upscale, and service-oriented. Every day there are activities for the active-minded including 4 hour bike rides, hikes etc., and accommodation for the immobile with taxis, walking sticks, and always one tour group based on inability to climb stairs or hills.

I think another thing that helps is the smaller number of passengers…. Who are all quite affable. I give that to the Aussies who are open, chatty and accommodating….and thank god, no Germans on board.

I would definitely do a Uniworld River Cruise again.