The Danube River, Germany.

When we began this cruise a week ago in Amsterdam harbour, we were two metres below sea level. Our ship began ascending as we passed through the first lock, and a week and dozens of locks later, we reached the top of the European divide, over 400 metres above where we started. The Rhine and Main Rivers flow to the west, therefore we’ve been travelling against the current. We’re now on the Danube River and travelling with the current. The locks are now lowering us down instead of lifting us up. Last night’s lock was huge, lifting this large ship by an astonishing 20 metres. We entered its damp, dark corridor, and the door behind us slowly closed. Water was pumped into our dim enclosure and we gradually rose up out of the gloom and into the sun to be greeted by a panoramic view of pasture and forests. It was an engineering spectacle. The Rhine and Danube Rivers are connected by the Main-Danube Canal, completed in the 1990s, 170 kilometres long, and crosses over the top of the European divide, connecting west with east. It enables ships to sail from the Atlantic Ocean to the Black Sea.

Regensberg.

It’s virtually impossible to travel these parts and not be confronted by the Second World War. Most of the cities we’ve visited were 90% destroyed by Allied bombing. We did see some exceptions, such as the charming little cities of Bamberg and Regensberg. Their remarkable medieval town centres are still in their original state from 800 years ago. Perhaps the most confronting off-ship excursion was at Nuremberg. Our tour guide was a young German guy who had studied history and now philosophy, and the way he explained the events that led to the start of the war was a revelation for me. His explanation talked about propaganda, deception, ignorance – and then he compared Nazi Germany with ISIS in the Middle East and North Korea. You can see history repeating itself.

 

The Nazi Congress Hall, Nuremberg.

He showed us where the Nazi Party held their rallies each year from 1933 to 1938, attracting hundreds of thousands of young Germans. These Nuremberg rallies gained momentum for Hitler’s plans for German domination of Europe, and it was eerie to stand in the very spot where the Fuhrer actually addressed his fanatics. Just across the way was the Congress Hall, its red brick façade reflected in a thousand-year-old man-made lake. This building is one of the few remaining examples of Nazi architecture. Its design was based on the Colosseum in Rome but much larger and imposing. The war interrupted its construction and it was never completed. We saw the Grand Road, several kilometres long, where Hitler wanted to parade his troops. There were never any parades, and it’s now used as a pedestrian mall for markets and beer festivals.

The "Blue" Danube.

As we prepare to sail into Austria, Germany has been beautiful to us over the past week. Its people are beautiful, we have felt amongst friends. The history - ancient, medieval and recent - is astonishing. The countryside is green, the forests are a different shade of green, and everywhere you look there is something to see. This is a country that’s beckoning us back.