What’s a *berg? What’s a *burg? What’s a *dorf?
When a place name ends in ‘berg’ it is a reference to a hill. Miltenberg has a hill. So does Nurenberg.
When a place name ends in ‘burg’ it is a reference to a castle. Salzburg has a castle. So does Rothenburg (or at least it used to).
Some places like Bamberg have both a castle and a hill. In those cases you get to choose, I guess.
When a place name ends in ‘dorf’ it is labeled as a village. In a couple of days you’ll see a photo of Tim and Diane with Deggendorf spread out behind them. And sad to say, Buckendorf has neither a castle nor a hill.
On with the story…
This was a ‘don’t set the alarm’ morning. Our excursion wasn’t till afternoon and we didn’t really need to be anywhere until 10. So we slept in (till 7:30), had a relaxing breakfast, and read/blogged until the presentation on canals by our cruise director. Actually only Cheryl went. I was hip-deep in blogging and chose to work straight thru till lunch.
After lunch I joined our group for a walking tour of Bamburg.
Tim, Diane, and I participated in this excursion while Cheryl stayed back and slept. She’s been working on a sore throat that appears to be moving down into her chest (It’s not lost on us that this is Day 12. She has a history of a throat turning to bronchitis about this time in a trip – which is why we don’t generally travel longer than 2 weeks at a time.). So she elected to lay low and build her strength for three big days ahead.
Along about 1800, the Prince Bishop sought to modernize the town by offering tax incentives to people who stuccoed over their half-timber buildings. The project was more or less successful – giving the city a widely diverse set of styles.
Our tour arrived at the cathedral and residence of the Prince/Bishop.
Like the town the cathedral is a mix of styles. The whole building is like this but a tower best illustrates the progression.
Continuing our investigation into changes in style we viewed both the old and ‘new’ residences.
The old residence dates to the middle ages.
In the late 18th century the prince bishop commissioned a new residence.
Different from the normal construction of a monumental house (i.e. copied from Versailles) this one only has 2 wings. It seems they ran out of money.
Our tour ended at the new Rathhouse (city hall). When it became necessary to build a new city hall the town fathers asked the Prince/Bishop for a grant of land. The response was, “I won’t give you one square foot of land for your project.” So they built the Rathhhouse on an island in the Regnitz canal.
We took a few photos and then wandered in search of ice cream.
Back at the ship we moved to the front deck for a pre-prandial refreshment – that turned into diner and a post-prandial libation.
While there we approached a lock. Locks on the Main-Danube canal have a lift gate on the lower side (that tends to drip on you) so as we approached they brought out the umbrellas.
The quiz this evening involved some type of dancing something or other, so we opted to call it a night and rest up for a long day tomorrow in Nuremberg.
Till then…
R