Friday, October 9, 2015
Let me begin this a day later by saying that I hope this was
the low point of the trip. The new people are not a get along kind of group.
They all seem to have arrived in a bad humor and are determined to see everyone
miserable. The biggest issue though is that there is a very large group onboard
from the Netherlands. They seem to be under the impression that they have
chartered the boat for a string quartet musical special cruise. They have a
very pushy tour leader with them as well as the quartet’s leader. I don’t know
what arrangement they made with Amadeus/Luftner, but it should have included
the fact that they in fact did NOT charter the entire boat. So, yesterday we
had fallen still further behind as we had a lot of time spent embarking and
disembarking passengers the day before. You’d have thought the fact that all
these new people arrived in Nuremburg to find no boat and be busing for a few
hours to find us in Straubing would have alerted them that we were behind our
sailing schedule and some flexibility was going to be in order. Anyway, today
we were to have a morning tour of Bamberg. We did not. We had a morning
sailing. That should have been pleasant. It was not. The musical group had already
taken the mic during Simona’s opening day talk and asked the rest of us to keep
out of the Panorama Lounge when they were in there playing. It turns out they
also use the lounge as their practice room! The sun deck is closed for the
cruise. The only small public deck is accessible now only through the Panorama
Lounge. You get dirty looks and/or comments for going in or through there so we
tried to avoid it. We went back to the Amadeus Lounge to find that the tiny
back deck had been turned into storage/smoking area. We set up at a small
corner table by the back windows away from the door. We weren’t there long
before the Hotel Director came in and started moving all the furniture. I asked
him what he was doing when he had only 5 chairs left in place and he said he
was setting up for a lecture. I asked what lecture since there was none in the
program and he said it wasn’t in the program because it wasn’t for us that we
needed to leave. So now we had the use of no public space onboard. We aren’t
getting a discounted rate on this segment for partial use of the boat! We went to the cabin and got coats and walked
through the Panorama Lounge between practice and concert to stake out another
corner table in front. We sat there while most of the boat had breakfast. As
soon as we approached anything remotely interested people would push and shove
us and get in front, beside and behind and push and elbow until it was past and
then we’d do it all over. Simona put out a nice sheet with information about
the locks and the Rhine-Main-Danube canal and gave a talk about it. Everything
I wanted to see was the aquaducts where the canal goes over roads and rivers
and we were off the boat or it was dinner and/or dark when we passed them so I
didn’t get to see them anyway. That just happens but the tour fiasco was again
on the new passengers and the CD’s staff.
During lunch, we started to dock at a sign with a landing in
the middle of nowhere that said Roth. We disembarked there for the afternoon’s
tour. Evidently the next largest group onboard from Hong Kong never understood
a word of Simona’s briefing (which she prefaced by asking if everyone
understood English and then said this would be an English-language only cruise,
Not). So at least one couple walked off with their keys and without their
boarding cards and a map of Bamberg and started walking. I have no idea where
they went since there was only a foot/bike path and one road through an
industrial area, past a giant rock shop and then fields to a bigger road. The
boat left them because they had no way of knowing they weren’t aboard. The
police were there to meet us before we docked and stayed, evidently, until we
sailed again. They found the couple somewhere and figured they were from the
boat. How else to explain an older Asian couple wandered in rural Bavarian?
They called the boat which could not confirm they were ours. The police told
them to put in at the next available dock and call back with a location and
wait. The police put them in a taxi and sent them to the boat which the couple
was relieved to see and they pulled out their keys and went to their cabin.
That was only one of many delays. The other was that because of the hard day of
rain we had 2 days ago, a lot of boats that had been stuck downstream came full
streaming North and the boat wound up waiting hours to get into at least one
lock. So, we just fell further behind the sailing schedule today while
continuing to stick to the touring itinerary. This has been hard, but the
special Dutch group is livid. They have musical performances, theaters and
other things booked and scheduled and paid for and now they realize they can’t
keep their special itinerary but think we should all just fold up and give them
what they want. I don’t know how they think that will happen and it is already
unacceptable that they have taken over all the public space for their own use
while the sun deck is closed. I am still just happy that we haven’t been put
off the boat with our luggage and are not having a bus tour or abandoned. Viking
set the bar pretty low for me when it comes to expectations of river cruising.
The rage continued unabated this morning. Most of these people will never be
satisfied. Simona has committed another 15 Euros per person credit to our
shipboard accounts for today’s missing lunch which will be on our own in
Wurzburg. Our dining companions have been concerned about actually getting that
money. I have opined that the boat has no way of actually handing anyone that
cash on disembarkation. They intend it just to be deducted from people’s
balances. Since we all booked with Amras and are all-inclusive, we don’t have
balances. He pointed that out to Simona today and for the first time, he heard
from someone other than me that they have no way of reimbursing us for these
account credits. Simona told him she’d call HQ today and try to find out how
they can handle it. I told him that best case they’d promise to mail us checks
at home after the cruise and with any luck in months we’d receive something
payable in US Dollars that we could deposit but I wouldn’t count on it. That
won’t satisfy him, so we’ll see if he can shake out enough physical Euros for
all of in Amsterdam or Paris!
Suffice it to say, that once again there was no Captain’s
Welcome Cocktail Party. The welcome dinner did not begin until 10pm. We left
the restaurant at 11:30pm. The really sad part was that we only had less than 2
hours of touring in Bamberg with no free time. We unloaded the 2 buses and
immediately the Dutch leader from the first bus came back to the Asst. CD in
our bus. The upshot was that after almost a 2 hour drive to get to Bamburg the
Dutch had realized this trip was going to mess up their concert schedule, they
needed the toilet and then because some of them weren’t dressed for how cold it
was that they wanted to return to the boat! Once this got around in English, a
couple from our bus got in her face and concurred. So after the independent
touring people had already left with instructions to meet back here at 7pm, the
ACD changed the touring people’s time to return to 6:15pm. Clay and I were
desperate for toilets too, but took the time to point out to here that we were
here for the published program not for what passengers voted for after we left
the boat and she had already announced the 7pm return so it was pointless to
try to change it. You know what happened. Now, absolutely no one was satisfied.
We were all shorted out of the tour, out of free time, and we got to sit on the
buses and wait. The last woman to return came back 30 minutes early in her mind
and thought she was being left while those who wanted to turn around on arrival
after using the toilets were mad about the extra wait. The ACD did not speak
German and the bus driver did not speak anything else so that was another problem.
He was also some kind of pervert, but that is a whole other issue. By this time
she had been reamed out so many ways and the boat was further away than
expected and did not have a place to dock. She just shut down. She refused to
speak to anyone including the driver or her assistant and we drove all the way
to Furth and then on down to Nuremburg which we circled twice in the dark
without any word before the people from yesterday’s tour realized and started
shouting about it. Finally the shouting and berating and he colleague convinced
her to pick up the microphone and she angrily announce we had just had a free
night time tour of Nuremburg and would be on the boat soon. But that was not
true either. We had circled Nuremburg twice but it was no tour. Even without
any narration we didn’t circle the city walls lit at night or anything. Just
the outer modern ugly parts in the dark. People were hungry, tired and still
had to use the toilets. They have not expected any bus toilet use since we
arrived in Europe this time. Not sure what is up with that. We eventually stood
on the side of the canal by piles of sand at an industrial company’s dock to
wait for the boat. When we got aboard they served the cocktail party’s hors
d’ouevres and shots of schnapps. This had been one of the things that had the
new arrivals most upset was that they were having a cocktail party on the boat
while we drove and drove on the bus. The ACD would never really address this to
them, though I tried to quiet those around me by assuring them that they were
not since we were mostly on the buses. The ACD did once say they can’t have the
cocktail party because there are not passengers onboard but she was being
shouted down by that time. That was her own fault for entertaining the notion
that she was taking votes for our program on the Bamberg sidewalk.
Saturday, October 10, 2015
Saturday morning and we are already an hour beside today’s
revised schedule. We are still planning to go ashore for the long day on the
bus with little touring time to Wurzburg and Rothenburg because that is what we
paid to come see, they are worth seeing again and we don’t know what to expect
from being on the boat with these new people and what areas might still be off
limits to us. It is a bad situation but I know it could be worse so I think I
am being positive and trying to enjoy myself. But the CD pointing out we are
not Syrian refugees and should be grateful doesn’t really address problems that
may or may not be in her control. My standard is not that I am not a homeless
refuge at this price, but that I haven’t been put ashore with my luggage and
left to fend for myself in the middle of Europe.
We are back 9 hours later with 2 hours of touring and one
hour of free time. The rest was bathroom and standing or sitting around waiting
or riding the bus back and forth. It is sad to have so little time at the
places you’ve come to see and the people on this segment are largely bitter
complainers. We left the boat after we had transited the first Main River lock
at Viereth. We toured the Wurzburg Residenz, or 3 rooms of it. I wonder what
they do with the rest of it. It was as spectacular
as I remembered. We had a 3 Franconian wine tasting in the cellar. We tasted a
Muller-Thurgau, a Silvaner and a Riesling. They were all good, but I have
always loved these wines. The bad news is those bulbous bottles are never on a
case sale anywhere! We had about an hour of free time and it took most of that
to eat. We had Franconian Brats and wiener schnitzel with potato salad, a dark
local weissbeir and a Coke Light. It was good, the price was reasonable,
service was prompt and courteous. We ate at Café am Dom. We had about a 20
minute walk about. In Rothenburg we learned we had even less time. We had just
over one hour of guided touring and no free time. I cannot get anything by
Internet now even though it says it is connected and has a signal. I can’t get
email or load a webpage. I say this by way of saying that without a map, I can’t
tell you where we are or how far we are behind now. I can’t gauge how long the
bus rides and how short the port visits will be tomorrow.
This morning we put in right beside a campground at about
8am. I guess they were surprised when we came tromping ashore and stood around jabbering
while waiting for the buses. A woman walked up to me and tapped me on the shoulder.
She asked if I spoke German in German. I said no, English. She switched and asked
where I was from. When I told her she repeated it and got very excited. I was a
little mystified because I thought she was one of the Dutch group. Then she
started asking about where the boat was going and had come from and I realized
she wasn’t from the boat. We needed to go to the bus then, so I pointed to it
and she waved me on. I gave her an NC patch and it made her very happy. I told
Clay she was the first German to welcome me. For all I know, she might not even
have been German! The boat left before we did! If I had a map, I’d tell you the
name of the towns where we were dropped off and picked up but I don’t so. It
was an hour and a half drive to Wurzburg and an hour drive from Rothenburg and
the towns were both on the Main River.
I forgot to mention that last night’s Captain’s Welcome
dinner was a repeat of the previous week’s menu. I don’t know if the whole week
will be repeats but I know we all hope not. If I can get the blog page to load
up, I’ll post this. If so, I won’t write anymore about today. If not, I might
be back.
