Tag: Strasbourg

Celebration thwarted: Strasbourg, Kehl, and true love

I planned our cruise on the Rhine River to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary, and redeem the ruination of our 25th. I purposefully reserved a cruise which docked at Strasbourg on our anniversary, looking forward to all it promised. The Year 2020 had teamed up with my back to scuttle our (limited) plans for our 25th. As that day dawned, I experienced a spasm in my back which necessitated taking an emergency muscle relaxant I keep on hand for these occasional problems. A fine dinner which we had planned to cook for each other became a take-out pizza, and for my wife, some wine. I crawled into bed early. Therefore, 2025 promised to atone for all of that. The pandemic had subsided, we had our health, and, well, what could go wrong? The trip had far exceeded our expectations for four days.

The day promised much: Strasbourg with its cathedral and its amazing clock where I planned to walk inside of it and marvel. Then my wife croaked from bed, “I don’t feel well.” We traded our anniversary cards, and she dragged herself out to breakfast. I chose to forego the group tour of Strasbourg on the French side of the river. “I can catch the afternoon shuttle back into the city,” I told myself. “At least I can see the cathedral and that famous clock.” I tucked my wife into a deck chaise to soak up some sunshine and spent a few minutes observing the begging swans and a heron across the river…

Swan at Kehl’s riverfront park. August 2025.

Finally I decided to go wandering. I stopped first to admire the mooring strategy of our ship, the Hlin, wondering still why the woman at the guest services desk couldn’t explain to me why our ship’s bow pointed southward when we were cruising northward. Later I learned from our “hotel manager” that the captain turns the ship around when docking so that the bow points upstream whenever the river runs high and the current proves strong.

The good ship Hlin pointing south as I photographed it looking to the north. Note the pedestrian bridge supports in the background. They figure into my afternoon adventure. August 2025.

I watched river ships carrying freight along the Rhine. Gases, coal, cars, and livestock all sailed past me. As I walked south, the river to my right and the park to my left, I saw a strange tree not far ahead. It proved to be a manmade thing, demonstrating the Germans’ ingenuity while reinforcing stereotypes about their precision and exactitude. The ‘tree’ looked real enough, and the whimsy of opening a neighborhood for sociable birds seemed admirable, but I couldn’t help noticing how the houses spiraled around the trunk in a near-perfect corkscrew. Other pedestrians paid it no mind, apparently inured to its presence.

I reversed course and headed north. The children’s waterpark to my left had become a bit too boisterous for me.

Bird treehouse. Kehl, Germany, August 2025.

I soon encountered a small marker in the ground, its painted message cracked from the sun’s rays and the weather, modestly announced, “Biblischer Garten/Jardin bibliqu” the remainder of the French title cut off by the sign’s erosion. I intuited it announced a Bible Garden and intrigued, set off on the graveled path. I learned at the end of the path its plan had been for residents to approach the river from land not vice versa; I had walked it backward. It made little difference. Each stop along the path—there were 17—announced an important aspect of the Judeo-Christian Bible, and not entirely the ones I expected. Yes, The Resurrection received a marker, and so too Pentecost but The Field of the Dead? And some I didn’t understand until I could translate them. (I didn’t think to use my smartphone.) Here are a few:

Das Totenfeld / Les ossements desséchés or in English, The Fields of the Dead. Biblischer Garten, Kehl, Germany, August 2025.

I especially like how The Last Supper rose up out of the shadows in my photo and how wheat had been planted in support of the marker.

Das Letzte Abendmahl / La Sainte Cène i.e., The Last Supper rising out of a field of wheat. Biblischer Garten, Kehl, Germany, August 2025.
Crossing the Red Sea, Biblischer Garten, Kehl, Germany. August 2025.

The marker for Paradise evoked humankind’s ignorance of what is to come: it consisted only of a shiny cylinder rising out of a simple terra cotta marker similar to the others. A separate, hexagonal marker had the names of six different churches on it of varying denominations. I realized they had paid for the installation and marveled how such a thing could be placed in what seemed to be a public park, given the “separation of church and state” we have in America.

I returned to the Hlin and my wife, took her to lunch on board, and then tucked her into bed because she felt even worse than before. For my part, I planned to catch the 2 p.m. shuttle to Strasbourg. One learns to be prompt on board, so I gathered in the ‘lobby’ of the ship at 1:55 to walk with the other guests to the bus which we had been told would take 15 minutes. Remember that pedestrian bridge in the background of the photo above? That was the first bridge. The bus would be parked at the next bridge downriver. When I arrived at the gathering point, I surmised something might be amiss when I found myself alone with the guest services representative. She informed me the bus left at 2 p.m., not the group of guests walking to it. “But you still might be able to make it,” said the chipper (and overly optimistic) young lady. Google Maps tells me the hike should take twelve minutes; I had five. The distance (900 meters) equates to more than a half mile. I tried, really I did, but I simply can’t walk six miles per hour, and at my age and physical shape running isn’t an option. I missed the bus. I watched it/them drive across the bridge when I still needed about two more minutes.

Dejected, I attempted to see the upside. Yes, I had just force-marched myself through 92+ degree weather (Fahrenheit), but my wife might appreciate some medicines, right? And the steward for our deck had mentioned a pharmacy very close to the ship. I walked toward the center of Kehl. Along the way, I encountered a very, very strange sign:

Yes, just STOP. I do not think Beethoven would approve. Kehl, Germany, August 2025.

I located the pharmacy. Kehl is charmingly small (38,000), similar to so many small cities in America. Its downtown proved easily negotiable, and my first encounter with a European pharmacy enlightening. The ability to get a physician’s assistant-grade consult from the clerk impressed me. I returned with aspirin and throat lozenges. As I walked back to the ship, not sure exactly where I needed to go, I realized I would need to drop off the meds, turn around, and immediately march my way back across the park again to catch the final bus shuttle at 3 p.m. My first exercise session in mid-90’s weather had caused my shirt to stick to my back and chest. I realized some things are not to be. My wife and I would need to return, together, to experience Strasbourg as we had intended. Meds delivered, I grabbed my tablet, retired to the lounge for my first beer, and fired up an eBook. Later, the setting sun seemed to say, “You did alright today, sir.”

The sun sets over Strasbourg, France. August 2025.

The Black Forest

Many tales have been told of this forest. I won’t recount them. Our guide said the rugged hills finally became settled when financial incentives were made (“land”). At the end of our mesmerizing ride in a tour bus on winding mountain roads, we were dumped into a created-for-tourists facsimile Black Forest village where seemingly every tour bus stopped. It didn’t engender itself. After starting on the guided tour to the small church on the grounds, it got a little better.

The Black Forest with creek. The bridge in the background is for passenger rail. A train appeared there minutes before this photo. September 2025.

Things were looking up! Until an “elderly” gentleman (i.e., older than me) fell badly on our way to the St. Oswald’s Chapel on the property. He escaped serious injury, thankfully. We meandered past pastures to the little chapel.

Cows outside the chapel. The slope well represents the entire Black Forest. September 2025.

This guided tour yielded one of the two poor guides we had during the six full days of the cruise. (Embarkation and debarkation days don’t have tours.) I remain greatly disturbed that she noted this chapel still saw use—meaning it’s a sacred space to any Christian—yet encouraged our group to grab a convenient rope to ring the church’s bell, all with a conspiratorial tone of “well we really shouldn’t…” The altar area was fenced and locked, but the rope snaked out under the fencing. (I’m also disturbed I didn’t say anything about how it disturbed me.) Annoyed, I went outside where a different kind of disturbance awaited me. When churches consecrate burial grounds and use them for decades and centuries, they fill up. Practically, this requires them to remove the older bones to make room for the new ones! Because these bones still deserve some respect, churches designate a more convenient place to store them, not worrying about whether they mingle. As I left the chapel and walked toward the sanctuary end of it, I saw a small locked grating which accessed a crawl space under the altar-end of the chapel. “Why would this mesh grating have a lock and a crucifix on it?” I wondered. Surprise!

I believe this would be called an ossuary. Black Forest village chapel, August 2025.
A closer look at the ossuary. August 2025.
Detail of framed crucifix on the Black Forest village chapel. August 2025.

Other buildings were less impressive and/or photogenic to my eye. A building Goethe once slept in (lived in temporarily?) couldn’t be photographed well due to all the intervening people. I had better luck when I got closer.

Goethe House, Black Forest village. August 2025.

Typifying a traditional village in the Black Forest, this made-for-tourists village leaned in to the central reason for such villages: commerce. A quick in-and-out of the glass shop sufficed. I didn’t want to break anything worth hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Another building proved more eclectic: a $5000 bicycle with a handmade frame of spruce or fir; steins taller than my wife; cooking utensils of all sorts; knives; Christmas decorations; and fine spirits. We purchased a set of nice flat Christmas decorations which could transport home easily.

Upon our return to the ship for lunch, we discovered a second Viking ship had docked to ours, and now our veranda literally had only four inches between it and the other ship’s veranda. We had known this could happen, and I wonder if a person could book to avoid it. I’ll detail the considerations in case others might be considering a cruise like this:

  • Our voyage started at Basel and ended (supposedly; more later) at Amsterdam. Thus, we were traveling downstream.
  • Other than this first docking, our captain turned the ship around every time it docked. Significant rain had fallen in the weeks before our cruise; the Rhine therefore had risen much higher than normal and the current was particularly strong. Pointing the bow into the current meant the ship wouldn’t be knocked around as it would if the basically flat stern were facing the current.
  • The ship always docked on the east/north side of the river. Even the stop labeled “Strasbourg” in the brochures actually occurred at Kehl, Germany.
  • Our ship always docked first. Whenever two Viking ships were docked in tandem, the other ship was the one on the outside, furthest from the shore—not ours.
  • Putting the previous bullets together, our cabin on the port (left) side of the ship meant we always faced the shore with no other ships in our way…except the first stop. We only were docked two (or was it three) times with another ship en tandem meaning we were unlucky the first docking, but lucky all the dockings thereafter, and the ship docked more than once per day sometimes.

Your mileage may vary: we likely would have faced the river all the time if the water flow had been low. If rains haven’t fallen, it’s possible the ship cannot clear the bottom of the river when it comes to certain sections. In those cases one must re-pack all the suitcases, get bused to a different ship, and carry on with the cruise. That would be extremely time-consuming and eat into a leisurely but short and expensive cruise. The same can occur if too much rain has fallen, and the river runs so high the ship cannot clear the bridges it must go under. It’s a crap shoot and a fairly expensive one. We were affected by one of these unplanned events. It should have been planned, and I’m glad it worked out okay. Stay tuned for the end of the cruise.