This day was potentially the highlight of the whole river cruise. It was, you see, the day with the most river cruisin’. We woke up cruising and went to sleep cruising. But in the middle there we did go to the extremely lovely Gottweig Abbey.
To get to the Abbey the ship pulled over at Krems and we hopped on some busses. The drive was only a couple of miles but very scenic, over the Danube and then up to the Abbey on the top of the hill. It’s a great spot for an Abbey, it overlooks the surrounding towns and forest valleys. The Abbey is a bit of a throwback, I am to understand, in that they own like 1300 hectares or thereabouts and lease it out to the locals while the monks also attend the parishes. I guess you can be a monk without being a priest but I haven’t looked into it.
Upon arrival at the Abbey we watched a short video about the Abbey’s history while sipping on a welcome glass of sparkling wine. We then met up with our tour guide, who looked and resembled nothing so much as a young but slightly (only slightly) less buff Arnold Schwarzenegger. I can only assume all Austrians are like this and we got a standard one. He was acting as a tour guide while finishing up his degree, I think in hospitality. The Abbey was a very pretty place to walk around, and as we walked I noticed that the church had a painted-on clock along with some fake, painted-on windows (see top photo). These were meant to be temporary cost-savings measures. The Abbey itself isn’t actually even “finished,” with the latest renovation in the 18th century having envisioned much more square footage. The second clock and painted-on windows were thus only meant to be there long enough until they could install a real clock and keep building the wing, but that never happened. And now the Abbey has a protected status which means they couldn’t install a real clock if they wanted to.
The Abbey’s other claim to fame is the largest Baroque staircase in Austria, topped by a big ole’ mural with Charles VI in the middle. That was nice, we spent some time admiring it. We also spent some time admiring the church. This was also impressive, but less pretty than Mattias church in Budapest I thought. However, what they do have is a skull. More specifically, the head of their founder St. Altmann is in a “precious Baroque shrine” down in the chapel where the monks do their prayers multiple times a day. Metal. The relics in Vienna were top notch with Jesus’ loincloth, but come on. You can see this relic from a bit of a distance, which our young Schwarzenegger was telling us. My dear sweet mother, though, is a bit hard of hearing, and couldn’t understand, and so was asking me what he was saying. So soon enough I was yelling in my mom’s ear about a dead guy in a box right there in the middle of a very peaceful church.
Following the tour we then went off to a dumpling demonstration which we had paid extra for. Besides heads in boxes, the other thing that Gottweig is famous for are their apricots. They like to do a lot with apricots; after this demonstration we also had a tasting of apricot wine which was great. But the dumpling demonstration was all about their special apricot dumpling recipe. I have it somewhere, though this appears to be it online. It’s an old-school boiled dessert and also very delicious with a whole apricot right in the middle. Since going to the demonstration I have just been waiting for apricot season to roll around so I can try making it myself again. Having been both wined and dined at the Abbey, we exited via the gift shop (they have some wonderful stuff) and it was back to the busses and ship for our afternoon of cruising.
And what an afternoon it was! It was us heading on up the Wachau Valley while Paul, our tour director, gave commentary. We enjoyed the tour up on the sun deck in the shade. The valley really is beautiful and cruising through while admiring a book is very nice. Just to run through the highlights, we saw the rabbits of St. Michael’s running along the roof, the Hill of 1000 Buckets (buckets of wine that is, referring to the Hill’s production capacity) apparently dubbed that by Charlemagne, the Ruine Hinterhaus, Willendorf (of Venus fame, so that was an enthralling brush with celebrity), and the Burgruine Aggstein. We were also on the lookout for nude sunbathers, which Paul sternly warned us were a hazard of navigation in these parts, but I’m not sure we saw any. Even without that though, it was simply a great afternoon on a boat in a river admiring the sights, the sort of thing you figure all of a Viking cruise is going to be until they occasionally kick you off to look at a castle.
Right around the time any sunbathers would have been packing up, we eventually head down ourselves for a strudel demonstration hosted by the ship’s pastry chef. This was very entertaining and as an added bonus of course we got to try strudel at the end. There was also tea, and once that was over the lounge cleared out and we spent the rest of the afternoon there lounging of course with our books. This is how every day should go.
