Mainz, Germany
Today we were in the town of Mainz. We had a hearty breakfast to start before we left on our walking tour of the city . We walked first to the Natural History Museum where the Gutenberg Museum is temporarily located while a new one is being built. Our guide was very proud that he has always lived in Mainz and that it was the home of Johannesburg Gutenberg. We saw a replica of the first press and our guide showed how everything was done. It took a lot to get one page printed. Then we went into a very dark room where there were spotlights on one of the first Gutenberg bibles. All the printing was done in black ink. Then the text was illuminated with fancy letters and colored ink. That was all done by hand.
From there we walked through the town to the old section. To get to the cathedral we had to walk through a couple market squares. The first was the farmers market which was in a couple of areas because it had been displaced by the Christmas Market. When we got to the Christmas Market we dropped out of the tour and started looking around. I needed to sit for a bit so we found a cafe and went inside. Of course we had to order a snack with our coffee and lemonade. The waitress took us to the counter so we could pick out our treats. I said no nuts and ended up with a dry cake with streusel on top. Betty and Rudy each had an apple strudel. It came topped with Chantilly cream-looked wonderful and it was.
‘Rudy wanted to see the cathedral so he left us and we began our shopping. We mostly just looked but we each managed to find a thing or two. I had seen a wallet when we first walked in. I thought about it and decided to get it before we left. I bought a gleuwine mug with nothing in it to add to the collection. We kept seeing people walking around with potato pancakes and applesauce. They looked wonderful. There were 3 pancakes to an order so I got one for us to share. I was afraid they would be greasy but they weren’t. They were delicious.. Rudy asked the German couple sharing the stand up table with us what they were called -kartoffelpuffer.
That wasn’t enough to sustain us til dinner so we started looking for a restaurant on the way back to the ship. We went into one place and they were full. We kept walking and were headed to a pizza place when Rudy walked into a small restaurant and said it was very nice inside. So we went into and were informed they don’t take credit cards. We sat at a table amongst the locals. We ordered potato soup with sausage. It was really good and filling. From there we found our way back to the ship. I collapsed for 45 minutes. We went to the lounge and I listened to a lecture by a college lecturer about the relationship between France and Germany. I found it interesting but everyone else kept nodding off. He was a bit on the boring side. Wonder how his students stay awake?
After dinner we had a musical contest. Emma played snippets of songs and we had to identify the singers, song title, year and country of the singer. We did pretty well but not good enough. Then she had Willy Nilly points listed. When she played back the songs we had to get up and sing or dance around. There were some creative people. We mostly danced. There was a Dolly Parton song so I shoved a pillow under my shirt. It was lots of fun. The captain and others of the crew and staff were in the room so Emma had them line up for the last song. She played YMCA so everyone was on their feet YMCAing.
‘Now it’s almost midnight and we’re going to crash so we can get up and do this all over again.
‘Photos: the printing press, the Bible, a statue of Johannes, a church that had been bombed and was left as a memorial. Market photo. I have a couple shots of the music mayhem. I can post them tomorrow.
