Day 12 - Pirate Castles

Today we had two stops along the Danube, Melk and Krems. Melk and Krems are two cities within the Wachau valley along the Danube river. The valley is known for it's wine, apricots and robber barons, as well as the coolest Junior High/High school I've ever seen.

First stop, Melk, this town relies mostly on the tourist industry specifically tourism related to the abbey there. An abbey is a place where monks live and work, monks are like nuns, except they are men. The monks don't get married, they live together and help with church stuff in the area and have to work to support themselves, usually by farming or in this case running a school and a winery. Melk Abbey is important because it was a place where Kings and Queens would often come to stay on their journeys, it used to be a castle given to the monks by a King and it has a very important library to the Austrians. Today it still has the library, a winery, and since 1781 a school for kids in the area. They teach Junior and High school for boys and girls and it only costs 60 euros a month. The abbey has a wing for the monks to live, a wing for the important people to stay in, a church, a school, gardens, and library. It looks to take up the entire top of the hill. It's painted yellow because that is Marie Therese yellow, she was the queen and I guess her color, Passau's oberhaus was the same yellow too. Most of the people in town help run and take care of the abbey/school now. They said it takes 1 million euros a year to keep the place up and running, and there are 900 students in the school. They also told us that when people came to stay they didn't pay the monks for their food or taking care of them, but they would leave gifts to the monks, gifts of golden cups and crosses with jewels on them for example. The church is really fancy, baroque, with gold and murals and marble. The library is huge and has books from the floor to the ceiling in 12 rooms something like 100,000 books. Books about everything history, math, philosophy, science, religion, geography, and astronomy. It's quite the place to go to school in.

Entrance to Melk Abbey

Courtyard of the abbey

The Abbott Bertholdus who made the greatest changes to it

Bones of a saint or someone encased in this gold and glass case

The church ceiling

The church altar

The ceiling in the stateroom where parties and dinners were held

Steel trunk made to hold the most important treasures of the Abbey. It has 14 locks that still work and only one key can unlock it. You can see the locks in the trunk lid.

Around lunch we left Melk and traveled down the valley and along the way we saw towns, castles, churches, abbeys, and cloisters (where nuns live). The story for today is about "The Robber Baron". Duke Albrecht V in 1429 had his chamberlain (guy in charge of the household) Jörg (Georg) Scheck von Wald go to one of his castles in the Wachau valley to take care of the castle, make sure that tolls were being paid from the ships going by on the river and to make sure that paths for the towing the boats upstream were in good working order. Back then horses or cattle pulled the boats up the stream by walking next to the river. Scheck von Wald got tired of collecting money for the Duke and decided to collect it for himself and he did. He would rob the ships as they came through the area and take what he wanted from them and kept it or sold it for money. If people didn't let him rob them he would take them up to his castle and starve them to death or make them jump from the castle tower to their death below. He became known as the "Forest Terror". In 1463 the castle was taken over by another robber baron, Georg von Stain. He defeated Scheck von Wald and took over the castle as his, since the Duke was said to owe him money anyway. So Scheck von Wald was killed.

Durnstein church

Robber Baron's castle

We stopped at Krems where we had the day to go on a side trip to a winery, bleck, or just hang around the town. That's what Grandpa and I did, we just explored. Apparently there are two towns next to each other, which we didn't know, no map. So we went left when we should've gone right. Following Grandpa isn't always healthy either, we had to cross the Autobahn traffic with no traffic lights, just jaywalking. We made it across and walked around the town of Stein and walked around the small little town. Grandpa said it reminded him alot of the areas he tracked when he was a missionary. After all of the cities we've been to, it was kind of nice to be in a small town with no big fancy churches or houses. Once we figured out we went the wrong way we headed the other direction and walked around Krems but it's just like all the other cities we've been to. Nothing really interesting to say about Krems.

Street in Stein

Tomorrow we are in Vienna, Austria! Hopefully no robber barons will take us over during our trip down the Danube tonight!