To be a River Queen

Stepping onto the Alena was like walking into another world in which we happened to be foreign princesses.  And so it remained for the 5 days during which we were esteemed guests on the enormous and majestic river cruise ship.

We departed early Monday morning, taking 2 taxis and a train to Düsseldorf, where the beginning of the next instalment of experience and adventure awaited.

On such a 4.5 star cruiser as the MS Alena hosted through Phoenix Reisen everyone is an esteemed guest.  However it must be said that if that’s the level to which all the regular passengers experienced the trip, ours must be somewhere much higher!  We were there with Moni and Siggi on a Weihnachtsmärkte (Christmas markets) tour on the Rhein and Mosel rivers.  It was meant to be a 3-day trip but another company booked most of the other beds on board for their customers and wanted a 5-day cruise so our experience was extended by 2 days at no extra cost.  How super cool!  It took about 2 hours for the word to spread through the staff and guest ranks that there were 2 young Australians on board and we subsequently gained 6 additional grandparents and were adopted by 8 staff members who accepted with enthusiasm their self-appointed roles as our personal waitstaff.  There were two parts to the fascination that surrounded us on board: we were Australians in the midst of an otherwise entirely German guest list, and we also happened to be the only people under 65.  The staff may just as well have curtsied and called us ‘Highness’ for the way they doted regally on us!  Costi and Yanko were two waiters who took it upon themselves to be personally responsible for our dining experience.  Costi was our own Carson from Downton Abbey, but more genial and hilarious.  I think we reminded him of his daughters because he doted on us, serving us dinner first, bringing out extra food so we could try everything and second helpings of dessert just because he could.  He even sent us on a mission for worms so he could go fishing but we couldn’t find any.  Golly our conversations were hilarious!  He was such a variable combination of entertaining, professional and vulnerably honest and blunt that I didn’t know what to say half the time but smile enormously and go ‘awww’ in my head.  What a sweetheart; a big soft-on-the-inside bear. Vladyslav and Ives Opel also signed adoption papers, and we got handmade paper napkin flowers.

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Let’s not forget the Hotel Manager, Captain, Chef and Cruise Director.  The Jemma and I were invited to sit and chat with them in their ‘exclusive’ after-dinner conversation, the Hotel Manager shouting us each a glass of champagne (much to Jemma’s subtle discomfort and subsequent gagging), and were welcomed up to the Wheelhouse (where you drive a ship from), although we came out of there absolutely stinking of cigarette smoke!  Speaking of the Cruise Director, what an entertainer; he sang Louis Armstrong and I thought it was a recording of Louis Armstrong, and he read everyone a bedtime story one evening. When someone makes a story engaging when you can’t understand the entire thing, you know they’ve got it down pat! So many of our fellow passengers were also the sweetest company; classic Anne, Waltraut, Toni, Marion, Dieter…so many names and sometimes just faces without names.  There’s something remarkably relaxing and comfortable about spending 5 days in the company of retirees.  They say that the people make the journey…or maybe that’s just what I say…either way, I stand by it 100% in this instance.

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Also, shout out to the two waiters who took a sneaky selfie – absolutely hilarious!

The order of the 5 days was, in a nutshell, eat and drink – drink – eat – Christmas market and drink and eat – drink – eat – dance – drink – sleeeeeeep.  Not for a moment of the trip did we feel the slightest urge to consume food because every two hours we were each served a portion designed for 3 people. Please, someone tell them that my stomach is not actually physically able to fit so much in!  Moni and Siggi are notorious for their encouragement of ‘more, eat more, drink something’ but they passed a whole new level in cheerleading qualifications with flying colours while maintaining an impressive level of hypocrisy during our trip.  We stood our ground rather well until Jemma found the ice-cream bar…don’t ask how bad it is, I’ll only say we’ve started hunting for a local IA (Ice-cream Anonymous group).  To give the food it’s due, it wouldn’t have been out of place in Her Majesty’s entertaining dining hall.  Now, we all know the appreciation I have for finesse and sophistication (in addition, naturally, to appreciating traipsing through the wilderness in a most ‘improper’ fashion).  Thus, you can imagine the absolute delight with which I sat down to dinner in the ship’s restaurant as Costi and Yanko laid our white cloth napkins over our laps and proceeded to produce a virtual parade of perfectly exquisite dishes that was our five-course meal as classical music filled out the ambient atmosphere of clinking cutlery and quiet conversation!  Many of you will probably understand Jemma’s attitude more, jumping stoically into doing it herself and remaining oblivious to the beauty of class.  Golly though, it felt like we were royalty!

We spent a lot of spare time playing Rummikub and Skipbo with Moni and Siggi, classic game squad. I won a lot (a very important detail!). Live music featured at afternoon tea and after dinner.  A wooden circle functioned as the official dance floor in the evenings and Jemma and I were the first to make use of it, much to the entertainment of the rest of our cruise-mates.  Thankfully others joined, more and more each night, because our evening dancing ability was not to be boasted about!  It was an absolute blast though, and many people approached us to say they were thoroughly enjoying watching us dance and just having so much fun.  A few dared to suggest we were actually good at it, although I suspect they were wrong!

Then (and this is where the noise in your head becomes strangely silent and everything feels still and cold and warm all at once) Siggi got up and danced with us.

To help you begin to understand what that means, he can’t walk easily and with crutches only moves very slowly and often painfully.  And he got up and hobbled his way to the dance floor and danced with us.  I sat back and watched for just a moment, to truly see that image and stick it in my brain forever.  Looking at the faces of those watching, they were so full of respect and joy and I tell you, those moments don’t come around often so when they do you’d better jolly well open your eyes and see them.  Standing in those few minutes with him, Moni and Jemma it felt like time around us had frozen.  It’s one of those moments that lives in a snow globe in your mind forever.

Ah…goodness, how do I continue after that?  Cruise, Dancing, Music…music was a pretty universal theme and feature of our trip, which obviously Jemma and I thought was wonderful! Each time the ship departed dock a certain song came over the speaker system. It was very cool, though I don’t know if I could explain why and I can’t remember the name of the song!

The Christmas markets were the advertised attraction of the cruise (although the ship experience was well and truly amazing in and of itself!) and what more could you want but to walk through 10 classic old German towns on the banks of a river appreciating the history and vistas during the day and being swept up by the colourful celebration of Christmas and all things cinnamon and warmth in the cold evenings.  There’s nothing quite like a German Christmas market and words do nothing to share the experience!  A few of them were closed when we were there because we sometimes arrived in the morning or later in the evening, but golly the towns were beautiful and there were a number of castles and beautiful old old old buildings too, so we weren’t sold short.  Our first stop in Köln (Cologne) was super cool because the (closed) Christmas market was right around the Kölner Dom which is of staggering size and looms, in the moodiest sense of the word, over you.  If anyone’s read the Inheritance Cycle, the best way I can describe it is it feels and looks like what the Ra’zac cathedral in Dras-Leona felt and looked like in my imagination – just what popped into my head when we were walking around it.  Amazing architecture!  On the bus Jemma insisted on the three of us (Moni, her and I) sitting on the back seat as ‘backseat bogans’ which I did not appreciate, suggesting we’d drawn enough attention to ourselves by simply existing as part of the ship’s company!  It seems there’s a rebellious streak in my family line though and Jemma and Moni proceeded with confidence to obtain the obnoxious seats in the centre of the back row.

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The best Weihnachtsmarkt that we visited was by far Rüdesheim, the farthest destination.  It was possibly the biggest, definitely the most colourful and they had music playing over the town’s speaker system.  Ah, and there they have permanent shops that are completely devoted to Christmas!!  One was full of handcrafted very typical German decorations and I wanted to take it with me to Hobart just so I can walk inside it every so often and be transported back to German Christmas-ness.  It’s been interesting seeing the number and size of nativity scenes that grace the Christmas market stage here.  Germany is rather nonreligious (in the broad sense of the word) but they have a lot of tradition, and although it hasn’t maintained the significance of meaning Jesus is still a big part of the Christmas season, albeit only really being spoken about in the same way that the general public speak about witches on Halloween. It so different from home because the majority of people know quite a lot about the story, it’s just that it’s nothing more than a story. It makes me appreciate more the joy that I have in realising that Christmas is more than lights and smells and even community – we actually get to celebrate the birth of the Son of God who came to live and die and conquer death so we can have life – it gets me every time, hahaha! Community is definitely a significant aspect of Christmas for most people, although the Alena staff work over Christmas and New Years. Running off that convenient segway, the Christmas song ‘Driving Home for Christmas’ now makes me think of them because they’re away from their families for 7/8 months at a time, and I cannot imagine how anyone could do that! Speaking of driving, we can’t forget to mention our first train ride of the trip, during which we got to 285 km/h, (we only have evidence of 280 km/h).

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Aaaand so a most exciting and gloriously alter-era-like 5 days passed out of time and into memory.  Definitely a week of new experiences – do you know, coming out of it I find myself feeling lost without a napkin at the table.  Dear me, how quickly some habits form hahaha!!!! Thankfully it’s not a bad one…is it? The cruise ended well and we departed North in pursuit of more family…but that’s next week’s story 😉

Hope you’re all doing marvellously in your own adventures Xx

L & J & B