A Danube Journey Day 7: Regensburg and the Danube Gorge

There is talk of life after the ship. Yesterday we were given instructions by our tour leader about what will happen on when we disembark and are bussed to Prague: something about orange ribbons for this group and yellow ribbons for the other.... No doubt it will all become clear when the time comes. At breakfast guests are discussing the experience and comparing the Danube with other river cruises they have done. Our conversation partners think this ship is second to none, but have reservations about the river itself. They found their Rhine cruise more rewarding because, they say, there is more of interest to enjoy on the banks, and more traffic on the river itself than on the Danube. 'Those long boring stretches of forest - the Danube is a plain Jane among rivers compared to the Rhine' says one.

Meanwhile, the ship has sailed on through the night towards Regensburg. We are at the northernmost point on the Danube. We pass the huge folly called Valhalla, a copy of the Parthenon of Athens transplanted to the north shore of the Danube. I break away from breakfast to photograph it from a cold and rainy top deck. Its white marble gleams incongruously amid the lush dripping vegetation. But it creates a nice undulating reflection in the water which may prove worth getting damp for. 

This old imperial city escaped destruction in the war, so it has one of the best medieval town centres in Germany. We are moored downstream of the famous old bridge, but it's wreathed with scaffolding while repairs are carried out. So we won't get the famous view back from the bridge to the towers and spires of the city. I have worked out a circular walking tour (saves €18 on the official one) so we set off to begin at the Cathedral.

The Dom is an exquisite building. Its twin open work gothic spires are very German: echoes of Ulm, Cologne and Strasbourg. It is largely untouched by the Baroque embellishments you come to expect in Bavaria. In a crypt, Romanesque foundations and a couple of beautiful piers survive. The nave's noble proportions create a sense of peacefulness and harmony: you don't want to speak aloud in this holy environment. The medieval stained glass is outstanding. At the west end, in the centre of the nave, a huge bronze depicts a 19th century bishop kneeling in front of the crucifix, in itself perhaps a bit too rhetorical in taste, but effective in suggesting a sense of scale in this soaring gothic space. 

What moves us most is a small rough sculpture on the wall near the west door. It shows two women embracing, one very pregnant. The kiss on the lips is an audacious but endearing way of expressing the love of these two women, who must be the Blessed Virgin and her cousin Elizabeth at the Visitation. This naive but charming sculpture looks medieval to me, but who can tell? It is in the darkest corner of the building, so impossible to photograph without a tripod, though I try to steady the camera against the angle of a pier opposite. But a troupe of school children passes by, and I abandon the attempt. The memory will be enough.

Outside the Dom, a big stage is being erected. This is for the Katholischen Tag, a weekend of church-based activities inspired by the Berlin Kirchentag. We walk on into the heart of the Altstadt. By the Lutheran parish church we buy figs from a market stall. We visit another church, St Emmeram's, an abbey church at the core of a cluster of former monastic buildings that are now museums. This fascinating building has work of every age from early medieval to Baroque, including a beautiful Romanesque crypt. Then to the so-called 'Scottish Church', founded by Irish missionaries at the time of Columbanus. It has an amazing Romanesque North door, now glassed in to preserve it from erosion by wind and weather. 

It is a joy to roam the streets of the old city. As we reach the river again, we come across another medieval church dedicated to St Oswald. It is a pity that it's locked: we would love to know whether this is our Northumbrian Oswald or some other. A streetside Google search provides the answer and a lot more information besides. This is indeed our saint whose head lies interred with Cuthbert in the shrine at Durham Cathedral. It appears that alone among the North Saxon saints, he had a following in continental Europe in the Middle Ages. This is not principally because he instigated and promoted the Christian mission to Northumbria, but on account of his holy, chivalrous life which became an emblem of how a Christian knight should behave. In the brutalised era of the crusades, the memory of such a saint was evidently treasured. In Regensburg Cathedral, one of the medieval windows shows him feeding the poor in an episode related by Bede. 

The afternoon sees us on the coach for Kelheim. On the way we pass the house belonging to Pope Benedict XVI. As Joseph Ratzinger, he was a professor of theology at Regensburg. The coach slows to a pious crawl as our guide (an observant catholic) tells us reverently about it. It is now a museum devoted to his papacy. We walk through the undistinguished town and are regaled with the achievements of Bavarian King Ludwig I whose statue we pass. My memory of Bavarian history is sketchy, and I am prone to confuse this Ludwig with the mad Wagnerite of Neuschwanstein, a mistake our guide warns us severely not to make. 

This is the highest point at which the Danube is navigable by big ships like ours. So we board a smaller vessel to sail up the Danube Gorge. On the cliff top Ludwig I's monument to Bavarian freedom dominates. It commemorates the casting off of the yoke of Napoleon, but as one writer wittily observes, it resembles nothing so much as a carved gasometer. The river gorge is impressive, though we have to wrap up warmly as a fierce wind is blowing down it. The Danube is forced between high limestone cliffs in a narrow defile whose rapids, and bandits, made this a treacherous stretch of river for sailors bringing goods downstream to sell in the markets of Regensburg. A Franciscan hermitage is cut into the rock, a fitting place of prayer at a dangerous place. A small statue of the watery martyr St John Nepomuk stands alone on the rock face cutting a strangely comforting profile. Then the boat rounds a bend, the cliffs recede and we enjoy our first sight of the Weltenberg Monastery.

It is the oldest monastic site in Bavaria, founded like the Cathedral in Regensburg in the age of the Irish monks like Columbanus. These well-travelled men knew about the Egyptian desert monks and modelled their own religious practices on theirs. And while the Baroque buildings of Weltenberg are a world away from the desert hermits, the riverine site reminds me strongly of hermitages I have seen by the wadis of the Middle East. The rain starts to come down. Inside the courtyard, the scene is more like a bear garden than a monastery. A cafe under canvas is busy with large throngs of visitors. The place's claim to fame is that it brews its version of brown ale and has done this longer than any other monastic brewery. 

We head for the church. It takes a while for our eyes to adjust to the darkness. But then the extraordinary splendour of this building begins to be revealed. It is one of the best Baroque churches in Germany, created for the Benedictines by the Asam brothers who designed the more famous Asamkirche in Munich. One was a sculptor, the other a painter. The church is an ellipse with a small narthex at one end and the altar at the other. It is dedicated to St George whose colourful legend has fed to the full the imagination of the artists. This church is a perfect theatre, a drama of Ecclesia Triumphans, as we were reminded in a painting on the ceiling where we came in. But it's also a theatre of the soul, and in the exuberant profusion of sculpture and painting the message is the same: take religion to heart, listen, hear, obey, and let this foretaste of heaven inspire you to live in preparation for it. 

Our guide is good at explaining the complex symbolic world of this church but it needs longer than 20 minutes to do justice to it. The rain is unremitting. The group is despondent: it has forgotten what rain is like. We had expected to see more of the monastery than just the church, fine though it is. But apart from the museum and the shop, this appears to be the Weltenburg experience. Everyone heads for the tea tent. We joke with our guides about the English weather. I go back to the church.  Another English-speaking group has arrived so I listen to their guide and notice how good the acoustic in this building is. She starts with a joke that I can't believe I've never heard before. What Saint is always depicted with his mother in law? St George of course. But I have to think about it for a second.

I try to capture the marvellous trompe l'oeil effect the artists have created on the cupola above my head. Only it isn't a cupola at all: the ceiling is almost flat. One of the Asam brothers is shown leaning over the rim smiling down at us as from a distant balcony. It's pure magical realism. But it's likely that my snap-shot (which I won't dignify with the title of photograph - it's done in too much haste) will flatten out the curvature that has been so carefully contrived in this illusion. And that prompts the further question about this brilliant but seductive art. What is truth, and what is illusion? I want to say that Baroque tells lies for the truth's sake - like all art, of course, but there is something particularly blatant about the way Baroque does it. Romanesque and gothic seem more truthful, somehow, because their piers, arcades and vaults disclose their structural principles - and yet a great Romanesque space like Durham Cathedral still contrives to make itself look bigger than it really is. It's not just a question of the aesthetic. When we're talking about church architecture, it's fundamentally a matter of theology and spirituality. It would take a Von Balthazar to do it justice. But here is a note to self: research the theology of Baroque when you get home. Try to understand the principles on which St Paul's Cathedral is built, for there are illusions a plenty in that greatest of English Baroque churches. 

The ship is waiting for us at the entrance to the Rhine-Main-Donau canal. The original canal was an ambitious 19th century project deigned to allow cargo to be transported by water all the way from the North Sea to the Black Sea. But the narrow canal was unusable by the turn of the 20th century. The Nazis gave Europe her first motorways, and they also had ambitions to build a new canal across the watershed of Europe. It was only in the 1990s that the project was completed, a considerable engineering feat given the physical geography it had to traverse. So here is where we bid farewell to the Danube. The ship heads through the first lock less than a mile from the canal mouth. It's time for the farewell gala reception and dinner. The ship's crew are brought out one by one to be loudly applauded, and it is true that from bridge to galley, they have been outstanding. We say farewell to our fellow-passengers lucky enough to be cruising all the way to Amsterdam. Tomorrow we shall be back on dry land and head for Prague.

A Danube Journey Day 6: Germany and Passau

There is a lot of noise in the night, accompanied by lurid sodium lights behind the cabin curtains. This is due to the locks we have passed through, and to the industrial environment of Linz. It's a poetic name for a city, with the added lustre of having a Mozart symphony named after it, but the literature does not linger here and neither do we. No one seems to have slept well, so insomnia is a conversation topic at breakfast. There is smoked salmon to enjoy with our scrambled eggs, also much commented upon.  We lament the weight we must be putting on. 

The morning finds us gliding through a steeply wooded gorge. The river is narrower here, and not so energetic. It is not unlike the Durham river gorge, except for the profusion of evergreens and the houses with their large Alpine-style overhanging roofs. Onion dome spires slip into view, and gently out again. At the lock at Jochenstein, we notice a little shrine to the Virgin Mary perched on a rock at the end of a jetty. It's a reminder of the deep-rooted Catholicism of Austria and Southern Germany. The Rhine myth of the Lorelei singing from their rock to lure ships to destruction is told here too. In earlier times, there would have been dangerous rapids at these places, and boatmen would offer devout prayers to the Blessed Virgin for protection as they hurtled downstream on white water. At another lock there is a chapel where votive masses were once said for the same purpose. 

This stretch of the river marks the border between Germany and Austria. This was never a linguistic or cultural frontier, but across the Danube two world empires once faced each other: Prussia and Austria-Hungary. Today as we glide gently between two European nations, we learn of the EU election results across the continent. It is alarming that nationalist parties have made big gains almost everywhere, especially in our beloved France, seduced by the Front National into  blushing deep blue. In North East England, the region has returned two Labour members and one UKIP: not as good as I'd hoped, not as bad as I'd feared. 

On board ship, few seem to be much troubled by this news, even if they have heard it, though we talk to another couple from the North who share our dismay. The ship sails dreamily westwards. There is talk of playing quoits on deck, though we see no evidence that it happens. Novels are read, card-games played, snapshots taken, and in the library, jigsaws are worked on. Some speculate about Passau and what it will have to offer. But underneath the river's tranquil surface are powerful currents and dangerous shoals. All along its length the Danube calls for good navigational skills if ships are to avoid disaster. It's a grim metaphor of how Europe seems to be at the moment, just like it was a century ago and again in the 1930s. Someone tweets that in this Great War centenary year, it is a bleak irony that we are not remembering why the League of Nations was born. Here on the Danube, this river that has both divided and joined together continental Europe at different times, even the most superficial sense of history must make you wonder about the Eurosceptic amnesia that is overtaking the continent, and what the cost may turn out to be. How the peace-seeking founding fathers of the European project would lament this drift away from their noble vision. 

We leave chocolate-box Austria as we pass under a railway bridge by a grimy industrial town. This marks the point at which the Danube becomes a wholly German river. Germany is its birthplace, and it is German speaking culture that defines so much of its character. Along the bank runs a road called the Nibelungenstrasse, a reminder of 'holy German art'. It was news to me that the origins of the Nibelung sagas belong mostly not to the Rhine but to the Danube. It was Wagner, one of the 19th century's great myth makers, who transferred the legends northwards, perhaps because even he could not envisage Danube-Maidens singing rapturously about Donau-gold. It would have been nice if the ship had played excerpts from The Ring to give cultural depth to this Danube journey. Instead, we are treated to songs from the 50s and 60s which someone must think suits the age-group of the cruise. 

Some don't like their Danube trip sullied by industry and commerce along its banks. To me, it not only contributes variety and adds to the photographic possibilities: it also prevents the cruise from being simply a voyage through a theme park. Stretches of the river like the Wachau and the Danube Bend are (cliché alert) breathtakingly beautiful, but this great watery highway across Europe is so much more than that. It's important for the integrity of travel, any travel, to try to see it in its wholeness. Durham Cathedral is magnificent on its own, but it is all the better for being understood against its wider background of the industrial North East, the pit villages and their mining traditions. As a bishop said to me in my first year in Durham, attend the Miners' Gala service and understand what the Cathedral is really about. 

No sooner are we in Germany than the ship rounds a bend and Passau comes into view. Here is another city that needs to be approached by water to get a sense of its historic importance as well as its incomparable setting. It stands at the confluence of three rivers, the Danube, the Inn and the Ilz. From a distance, it sits above the water like an improbable vision of towers and onion-domed spires, a heavenly Jerusalem surrounded by the rivers of Eden (well, three of them), the waters of life. The old city with its cathedral is built on a peninsula, like Durham. Also like Durham, its bishopric had palatinate powers, and in a final Durham correspondence, the bishop lived in a grand castle, the Veste Oberhaus that stands guard over the Danube-Inn confluence. Our ship parks directly below this striking bastion. Once off the gangplank and we are on to the cobbles of the medieval city's streets.

Passau is full of good things, but the Cathedral outshines them all. Like Melk, it is exuberantly Baroque, but there is a lightness and restraint at Passau that allows the outstanding spatial awareness of the Baroque style to be seen to full effect. Baroque is often supposed to be a decayed Renaissance style in which the understanding of space and the way different volumes interact with one another has been sacrificed to a busy profusion of detail which, however fine in itself, has compromised the unity and integrity of the architecture. I don't see it that way. To me, Baroque is a theatre of illusion, an intelligent and subtle manipulation of space to exalt its dramatic qualities.  Scale and perspective are everything: a great Baroque church should beckon to the imagination and invite the worshipper to give it full reign. No wonder the Jesuits fell for it in such a big way (perhaps our young guide at Melk didn't quite appreciate this when he jokingly said he would rather be a Jesuit than a Benedictine). Perhaps it's more surprising that the Benedictines in Southern catholic lands fell in love with Baroque as well. But apart perhaps from Ottobeuren and the incomparable Asamkirche in Munich, I have never seen it done so well as here. 

One detail touches me. At an altar to St Joseph we see a 17th century painting. It's of no great merit, but its subject matter is unusual. It shows St Joseph and the Holy Child in a loving embrace. No doubt it was commissioned for this altar. My book Lost Sons was about fathers and sons in the Bible and this painting might have made an ideal cover for it. I try to remember whether I've ever seen Joseph and Jesus as the centrepiece of an old master before. Nothing comes to mind. 

Back to Baroque. It doesn't please everyone. I overhear another visitor say, pointing to the marvellous pulpit festooned with gilded angels and saints, 'I know what I would do with all that gold, and it wouldn't be building temples like this'. Another visitor from a different ship asks if we speak English, and can we please explain why that man is carrying a scallop shell. So we talk about St James and the pilgrimage to Santiago. Then he starts comparing Passau with Melk. 'An obscene and tasteless waste of money' he says, and makes a gesture. I protest that Baroque is playful and celebratory but he is not having it. 'To blow all that cash in that way - it's like a spoiled child with a paintbox who's emptied all the contents at once without caring'. Out of my hearing, though still in Jenny's, he likens it to a brothel. I ponder for a bit. I've learned that this sort of dismissive comment, however crudely put, does sometimes hold a kernel of truth - our young guide at Melk was perhaps saying something similar, if a bit off-message. I sometimes say at Durham that if we claim to follow the humble Carpenter of Nazareth, we should not have too easy a conscience about our great cathedrals. 

We walk through the medieval city. The Pfarrkirche of St Paul is fine too, more lightly Baroque, with elegant ebony woodwork against which the profiles and colours of the sculptures stand out to brilliant effect. There is a modern side-chapel for silent prayer, a womb-like cave with stylish light-oak seats that are among the most comfortable we have sat in, and much better for prayer and meditation than most church pews. In front of the Rathaus whose ornate tower presides over the waterside, children are playing.   Visitors are photographing something on the wall. It is another hydrometer, showing the levels to which the river has flooded in recent centuries. Last year, 2013, it rose to an extraordinary 4 metres above ground, nearer 6 or 8 above normal. This has only been exceeded once in recorded history, in 1801. But no doubt he inhabitants of Passau are learning that with climate change, it is bound to happen again. Soon, probably. 

I reckon I have time to climb up to the Veste Oberhaus on the opposite bank for the view. The rush hour traffic swirls relentlessly round the end of the suspension road bridge where I have to cross. I head up the steep steps noting a plaque paying tribute to Prince Ludwig. Near the top, there is a lightning flash. The sky to the east is ominously black. I take a few photographs of the old city below, don a lurid purple waterproof to cover my camera, and head back down in haste. It will not be long before the ship will set sail. Gin and tonic awaits.

A Danube Journey Day 5: Dürstein and Melk

On a beautiful morning, we set off to climb up to the ruins of the Burg that perches above the little village of Dürnstein. It is a steep but rewarding clamber up hundreds of steps through deciduous woods where wild poppies bring colour to rocky outcrops. This castle has a place in English Plantagenet history because Richard the Lionheart was imprisoned here as he tried to get back to England during the crusades. The view up and down the valley is magnificent. The church presides over the village, its blue and white icing-sugar tower a beautiful foil for the red roofs of the houses that cluster around it. A dirty barge chugs lazily upstream trailing a long wedge of silvery wake in the brown waters. We exchange polite Grüss Gott greetings as we walk, sometimes answered in kind or with a friendly 'Morning'. On the way down, we pause to read the interpretative plaques that line the route. It is very well done. Here is tourism with intelligence. 

The village is one of those show-pieces that set out to please tourists. It draws hundreds of thousands of visitors every year, many of them on day trips from Vienna. Cruise ships like ours berth there. Every shop sells souvenirs, including jams and liqueurs made from the ubiquitous apricot that is this region's speciality. Purveying olde-world charm is a marketing tactic that always works and it's no wonder that we all fall for it. Durham has it to some extent, Vézelay and Mont Saint Michel even more, so we are used to its devices and desires; yet at the same time it provides employment and livelihood to local people for whom, but for tourism, these remote parts of Central Europe might well be suffering socially and economically, even in affluent Austria.

I go back to the church we called in on before the climb. It is a former Augustinian Abbey, a gem of pure baroque architecture and art. The elaborate decoration is colourful and playful, yet the intimacy of the church keeps the baroque tendency to excess in check. It's a place where you can pray. A walk through the monastic buildings leads to a little terrace on the side of the tower. Here you are in the company of sculpted saints and angels, and of carved cherubs who compete for space to enjoy the beautiful view of the river. While architects and art historians rightly sing the praises of Ottobeuren, Vierzehnheiligen and Melk, this little church shows Baroque at its very best, in its mastery of scale, its theatre of illusion, its focus on detail and its spirituality of joyful celebration.

Melk is our destination on a hot afternoon. It has long been on my list of must-see great churches. There is a splendid vista from the river as we approach this proud, ancient monastery. Like Durham, it is built on an acropolis, 'half church of God, half castle 'gainst the....', or, if not a castle, then a palace for emperors and kings who came here on pilgrimage with their retinues and expected to be treated with palatial honours. This doesn't by itself explain the ambition with which Melk was rebuilt as a masterpiece of baroque in the early 18th century. Its renaissance as one of the most splendid high places of Christendom owes more to the defeat of the Turks, and the aspiration to celebrate the glories of the Catholic Church. This it does with an élan few other places can muster.

Our guide is a young man who cannot be more than 20. He is exemplary, without doubt the best we have had so far.  What makes a good guide? This is something I have pondered in Durham where we have some excellent guides. He or she should: be knowledgable (of course); be enthusiastic about their place; have insight about its meaning, not just its heritage; be a very good communicator (in the case of foreigners like us, this includes fluency in the language); manage the time well and know how to move people through a site courteously but efficiently; and - an elusive skill this - know enough about their guests to intuit how much or how little to convey. In Pilgrim's Progress, travellers must enter the House of the Interpreter if they are to understand the landscape they are passing through. Interpretation is a tricky assignment. But this school-leaver has what is needed, as well as the personal charm that always helps. 

The tour through the monastery begins in an enormous elegant courtyard from which we access the guest quarters where imperial visitors were housed. Everything is on a monumental scale. We reach a beautiful plaster-vaulted corridor fully 200 metres in length, a lot longer than our ship. The state rooms have been converted into an exhibition that presents a time-line of the monastery's history. It begins with St Benedict and the first word of his Rule for Monks: Höre, 'Listen!'. This word is projected on the end wall and is visible the whole length of the exhibition. The first room is devoted to  Benedict and his vision of monastic life, the next to the foundations of Melk in the 11th century and the third to the Romanesque and Gothic periods. The fourth room brings us to the Baroque era and the creation of the present monastic buildings. Here, the exhibits are shown in a hall of mirrors, no doubt a reference to Versailles' Hall of Mirrors. There is a threefold message here: that the Monarch who is honoured here is no mere Sun King but a divine Ruler; that baroque plays with illusion for the sake of truth; and that 'we see through a glass darkly, but then face to face', a text that is displayed as you gaze around the room. 

After an excursus on the Enlightenment, the exhibition ends with the present and the activity of the monastery today. Here, our guide tells us that he recently graduated from the high school that is run by the monks and will shortly go to university at Vienna to study theology. Since he has spoken with such eloquence about the religious life, I ask him whether he is a postulant at Melk. He laughs and says that if he were to opt for the religious life, it would not be in these opulent Benedictine surroundings, but in a more radical order such as the Jesuits. The question we don't pursue is whether the Rule doesn't itself call for a far simpler kind of community life than the 18th century monks at Melk were capable of understanding. What would Benedict make of this wondrously exuberant temple of art and culture? Possibly he would be disturbed by it. But might the same not be said of the great Romanesque Benedictine communities like Cluny and Glastonbury and Durham itself? This was precisely the 12th century Cistercians' quarrel with the Benedictines. Anyone from Durham can't have too easy a conscience about this story. 

Nevertheless, the community here should be given full marks for the way they have told their story. This is far from being a dry record of historical information laced by a surfeit of artefacts. It's clear that someone has thought hard about how to present the spiritual meaning of a community's search for truth: at every turn, the visitor is invited to think about how this place and the investment made in it down the ages can speak to people today. Like the messages carried by Baroque angels and putti on the walls of the church exhorting the worshipper to attend to truth, the exhibition plays on the meaning of that single word Höre from initial invitation to final reflection. Evangelism through art and heritage: I have not seen it done better. 

The ship sets off and enters a lock. The architecture of Danube locks is functional. The lines of the control rooms, hydro-electric dams, sluices and long jetties is severely plain, recalling us to functionalism after an afternoon of Baroque fantasies. You might even call it Cistercian: on this beautiful river, a lock has a job to do and there is no concession to charm. I look back to the east, and there, floating serenely above this brutal symbol of modernity stands the monastery of Melk high on its hill. The western towers and central dome are brilliantly illuminated by the setting sun, like an apparition of Jerusalem the Golden. The vision fades as the ship sails on westwards. Soon, Melk has become a memory. And it is time for dinner.