Guten Tag

Frankfurt our first night…..

   In the year 2,000 Randal toured the world by bicycle with a group called Odyssey 2000.  He has kept in touch with several of his fellow cyclists.  Charmaine and Linda who joined with us in North Cyprus and Israel rode Odyssey.  Michael Kahn is here in Germany doing a 6 week cycle trip along the rivers and also visiting the town in Germany where his mom lived until the late 30s when she had to leave the country. 

It was a fun reunion for all of us as Randal and Michael swapped stories.  There were over 100 riders on the “group” tour  and each person had his own year-long adventure that often was more individual than group anything.  After some wine, cheese, and talk we all walked across the river to  somewhat soggy festival and ate some meaty German fare.  And beer.

Ru

Randal and Michael swapping stories A pose with Dora Mac

Walking across the river to the festival of food and music!

Michael said the place was quite crowded earlier but perhaps the drizzle chased them away.  Or we were too early for the evening crowd.  The group sang American pop music.

We probably had enough food for 6 but it was all gone by the end.    I ate my share of the ribs for sure but not that whole plate.  Though I could have!  They tasted good and there’s not so much meat on them.  I’ve pretty much given up meat but who can resist ribs right off the grill.

Not the best evening for ice cream but Randal wanted a banana split and Michael knew just the place.  I helped Randal just a bit with his.  Just a bit.

A photo of a duck and a distant landscape?  That’s what it looked like to me until I looked at the next photo and saw it was a reflection of the dock.  The ducks eat the growth on the docks and on the boats.

On the Main having left Miltenberg this morning and the 5^th lock  to go today before we stop in Lohr if there’s room

   Every town we stop in has at least one thing special.  Bingen is where we met Franc and Hildegard and where I finally bought a flower pot to replant my one squished boat plant.  Luckily there was a dirt walking path near the marina so I could get some dirt.  The shops only sold giant bags. 

Ru

“Lying where the Nahe flows into the Rhine and exactly where the Rhine begins to break through the slate mountain range, Bingen has had strategic importance. This was first exploited in Roman times after Caesar’s Gallic wars (58-51 B.C.) when a garrison was built here to secure military passageways.  As the main axis road of the Hunsrück, the "Via Ausonia" connected the regions of Mainz (Moguntiacum) and Bingen (Binginium) with the former antique imperial city of Trier (Augusta Treverorum). The "Ausonius Way" is named after the Roman poet Decimus Magnus Ausonius who travelled by coach over the Hunsrück from Mainz to Trier in the year 370 A.D. to assume duties as educator at the Court. He wrote the poem "Mosella" describing his experiences during his travels.

     On the other side of the Nahe, across from Bingen, is the hillock Rupertsberg, where Benedictine Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179), who was born in the region of Alzey and grew up on the Disibodenberg in the Nahe valley, founded her first convent. She is a remarkable woman who, as the first female German mystic, has recently reached a high degree of popularity with her writing and music. Her works in the field of biology and medicine are just as distinguished; she collected and documented the flora of the Nahe region. In Hildegard von Bingen’s "Physica", more than 250 types of plants are recorded and many folk cures and "natural" methods of treatment are described.”

http://www.maasberg.ch/eBingenH.html

“Thank you for visiting Hildegard Publishing Company. Our publishing mission is to seek out and publish compositions by women composers which display the highest level of excellence and musical merit. Because works by women composers have been historically overlooked and undervalued, our hope is to make these gems more widely available for concert performance. Our publishing mission reaches to all centuries including the present day and extends to a wide range of musical forms and genres.”

http://www.hildegard.com/

“Bingen was totally destroyed 3 times so the inventory of historic buildings is modest.  No burgher’s house is older than 1689.” 

DoraMac in Bingen We spent one night in Bingen and met a lovely couple Frank and Hilde (short for Hildegard) who had come to the marina to look at a boat that was for sale.  (Not ours.)  They have a small fishing boat and a red corvette now but have decided to sell both to buy a bigger boat to travel the rivers with their two teenage children.  We have given them our email and who knows, maybe one day they will visit us in Virginia.  We also met a very lovely Danish FedX pilot in Cologne who spent an evening with us.  His wife and children live on the Fareo Islands as does he on his weeks off.   But he has a floating home that acts as his base when he is flying. One of the best parts of travel is meeting people along the way who are willing to share their hopes and dreams.

DoraMac is past the arrow up river so we did a bit of walking to get to town.

I’m including this for our pal Sharman and the memory of a very funny day in North Cyprus.

We drank coffee in the plaza and watched the locals.

Images of Bingen

I think Bingen has a connection to carnival but we never could find out exactly what it was all about.

Several painted buildings.

Street art

We had to climb down the spiral stairway to get across the railroad tracks back to the river.

I was impressed with the mission of the Hildegard Publishing Company so will remember Bingen for that reason and Frank and Hilde.

Traces of Hildegard in Today’s Bingen    http://www.hildegard.org/spuren/espuren.html

http://www.hildegard.org/documents/flanagan.html is a fairly detailed, but short, biography.

Born in 1098 in Germany, Hildegard von Bingen composed music, founded a convent, created poetry for her music, and wrote about religion, art, politics, philosophy, science, medicine, and herbs. The high quality of her broad range of activities has assured her a prominent place in Western civilization many centuries later.   Named to pay homage to this “Renaissance woman,” the Hildegard Publishing Company celebrated its tenth anniversary, and Hildegard’s 900th birthday in 1998, with

the addition of eight new editions of her music.  Hildegard scholar Marianne Richert Pfau has prepared over seventy of her chants in eight volumes containing new introductions and text translations. Octavos of single antiphons are still available in multiples of ten or more at special prices to celebrate

these two events. In 2002 Hildegard’s “Ordo Virtutum” was published in a new edition by Hildegard scholar Audrey Ekdahl Davidson. The complete works of this remarkable composer are now available from the Hildegard Publishing Company.

Founded in 1988 by Sylvia Glickman to promote and preserve the music of women composers of the past and present, the  company has been described by Ms magazine as “ … shaping a music heritage for generations to come …,” and by Piano and Keyboard magazine as “ … in the vanguard of the women’s music field … its bold catalog contains unique reprints and first publications … .” For more information, visit www.hildegard.com.

The Hildegard catalog contains over 500 entries, and is growing each month. In addition to their own publications, they also publish the Casia Publishing Company line and reprints from the twelve-volume G. K. Hall/The Gale Group “Women Composers:

Music Through the Ages” series (1996-2003).

http://www.presser.com/marketing/catalogs/hildegard.pdf