Vienna – Melk – Český Krumlov
If you’re a seasoned group tour traveller, then apologies in advance for the ignorance I’m about to display, but for Ness and I who have only previously travelled either on river cruises or self-drive holidays, this whole group touring thing has been an eyeopener. Take travel days for instance. I expected them to be a lot of driving through the countryside, with a tour guide who would occasionally get on to the microphone and explain what it is that we’re looking at, kind of like “and if you look across to your left, you’ll see a monastery/church/castle/village etc. that was founded in the 1st/10th/15th/18th century etc. by the Hapsburgs/the Romans/the Franks/Cistercian monks etc., and was besieged by invaders from Greece/Turkey/France/Outer Space etc., who came seeking gold/salt/treasure/enlightenment etc. etc, etc..”.
There’s been a little bit of that on this trip, but mainly we’ve had a potted history of whatever the ruling family of the country was before the wars, the kind of information that one might read, say, if one were to sit in their seat with their browser open to, oh, let’s say Wikipedia, to take a random stab in the dark. Even then, that information is only there to act as an opener to the main dialogue, which is of course to give out the daily instructions on what time you need to be assembled for the walk to dinner, the single choice of meat option or vegetarian option available for the evening meal, and to remind us all that, as usual, there is one, and only one, drink included with the meal.
I guess where we went wrong in the first place is that we equated, wrongly it seems, the role of Tour Leader with that of the Cruise Director on the river ships – someone who would oversee the entire holiday and work feverishly to ensure that not only the group experience as a whole ran well, but also someone who was capable of getting to know the individuals within the group, and being able to change things up when necessary so that Person A would feel that they got just as much value out of the trip as Person B. Even on the worst of our river cruises, with Uniworld, the cruise director there was still capable of say, recommending (or even booking) a romantic restaurant for a couple who were celebrating a special occasion, or drawing out a personalised route on the map for someone who was a keen movie buff and who would like to go and see where such-and-such a movie was shot. Not on this tour though.
For this tour, we are all given a map of whatever destination we are heading to, with the route to the main feature of the town highlighted, and perhaps a second route to get to the bus if it’s not leaving from the same place. If there’s an introduction to the town or monastery we’re about to see, it will usually be an excerpt from whatever the local guide is going to tell us anyway. Our tour leader is just that, someone who leads us from the bus to the hotel, from the lobby to the restaurant, from the restaurant back to the hotel, and that’s about it. They’ll make sure the bills are all paid before the bus heads off, but ask them to go into bat for you to try and get a room with a working safe/TV/mattress/pillow etc. and they’ll remind you that the brochures promised “charming” hotels, not luxury.
OK, so reading back on what I’ve just written, maybe it’s not really fair that I have mentioned it during this particular post, because on this day, we did get a bit of a background of the area we were travelling through, Austria’s famous Wachau Valley, once the bus had left the motorway from Vienna and slipped on to the narrow road that follows the Danube River. Once again, it was the Wikipedia opening paragraphs version, where it was mentioned that the region is famous for its fruit growing and wine making, predominantly marillen (apricots) and white wine (Grüner Veltliner), and has a lot of castles.
There was also a short history of Richard the Lionheart, and his imprisonment in the castle at Dürnstein, where Ness and I had a momentary pang of sadness as our bus dipped into the tunnel that runs underneath the town, and the blue Baroque spire of the church disappeared from view. Travelling on, I can see now why this stretch of road is so popular with the cycling tours that are on offer from most of the river cruising companies nowadays, as the route travels through some very picturesque little towns and vineyards.
Our first stop for the morning had been at Krems, just before we left the motorway, and although it was at another motorway rest-stop, at least this time it had been a Landzeit restaurant, part of a chain of motorway restaurants that offer a fabulous selection of food and drinks with sit-down service, clean toilets and an extremely well supplied (and expensive) gift shop. The food had honestly looked better than at some of the hotels we’d been staying, but we resisted eating anything as we knew we’d soon be stopping for lunch in Melk.
At Melk, we followed the group off the bus and into the courtyard of the massive abbey, but having been there twice already, Vanessa and I were only interested in stepping in quickly for a wee break (there are plenty needed when the weather is hovering around 0° most of the day). Instead, we headed off down the precarious path from the abbey into the main part of the old town.
The town of Melk sits with the Benedictine abbey hanging like the sword of Damocles above it – no surprise when you discover that most of the residents by the 16th century had turned to Protestantism, but were forced into Catholicism after the “Reformation Patent” of 1627 and the subsequent expulsion of all Protestant teachers and pastors meant the end of Protestantism in public. Only a few noble families in the area could still remain Protestant in private.
At the base of the stairs we turned first to the left, to visit a part of the old town that we hadn’t been to before. A short way up the street we found a good looking bakery, as well as an explanation as to where all the townsfolk were. With not a seat to be found, we retraced our steps, past quirky street art, to the main square and the start of the very small Christmas markets.
After stopping for a local specialty – an alcoholic hot apricot punch, we wandered through the market, however despite the clock having already ticked over past 11:00 am, very few of the stalls were showing any sign of opening. Maybe the bakery at the top of the town was just that good. Sadly, we’ll never know. We did stick our heads inside the town church that had been erected by the Protestant population back before the Holy Roman Empire cracked down on things, but it looked as though there may have been a coffin sitting near the alter in preparation of a funeral later that day, so we didn’t go in any further than the doorway.
Instead we wandered all the way to the end of the old town (which was really only another street or two away), before heading back to a tavern we’d spied next to the colourful Rathaus and Post Office, the Hotel Zur Post (Hotel at the Post Office). Inside it was lovely and cosy, and the food was incredibly good – Vanessa had what is turning out to be her go-to dish of the trip, Weiner schnitzel, while I opted for a venison dish in a cream sauce that was to die for. Ness ordered a glass of what is turning out to be the go-to drink of the trip for her, a Grüner Veltliner, while I perused the beer list and ordered a beer that I thought I recognised, only to realise after it arrived that a “Radler” is actually just a beer and lemonade, what we’d know in Australia as a “Shandy”. No wonder the publican looked at me funny as he sat it down in front of me.
After lunch the weather started to take a turn for the worse, so with one quick look around for old time’s sake, we headed back to the bus to wait for the next stretch of our journey.
Soon we were back out on the motorway and heading north, past the large city of Linz, which is desperately trying to promote itself as a centre of the arts and break away from its reputation as an industrial city and the former home town of a family named Hitler – yes that’s right history buffs, the so-called father of the German Third Reich was actually an Austrian.
Soon after passing Linz, the skies had turned far too dark to make photography from a moving vehicle feasible in any way, so there aren’t any more shots from the next hour or so as we crossed the Danube River again, and then the Austrian/Czech border once again. As the bus made its way down a steep hill and into Český Krumlov, a light snowfall started up, which promised to make it interesting for our 10 minute walk from the bus stop outside of the old town to our hotel on the other side of the river. Thankfully our luggage was taxied to us a little later – the thought of dragging a heavy suitcase uphill across cobblestones was enough to give us heart palpitations.
Our room was cozy, but cool-looking, and the beds looked pretty comfortable, although as we would find later that night, appearances can often be very deceptive. The view from our window across the river below was almost enough to make up for any shortcomings, and when we ventured outside before dinner for a short walk, the scene across the river to the castle on the hill was a promise of things to come. Dinner at the hotel was actually reasonably good, however the bar was inexplicably closed, so we all bid each other farewell and returned to our rooms for an early night.
