Fred Olsen cruise boasts three countries, two rivers and plenty of delicious food
While travelling down the river Rhine and Moselle, we tasted Swiss chocolate in Basel, peeked inside a medieval castle in Cochem and joined guide Ludwig for an early-morning wine-crawl around Rüdesheim
“OH LORD, won’t you buy me a Mercedes Benz?”
Janis Joplin’s classic anthem is whirling around in my mind as our guide, Ursula, takes us to see Mannheim’s top attraction — the world’s first car.
Built in the German city in 1886 by Karl Benz, it could move at ten miles an hour, but the safety- conscious authorities made him drive it so slowly he was overtaken by horse carriages.
It probably didn’t help that Benz lost control of his first vehicle in a test drive and careered into a wall.
The car had three wheels, ran on a four-stroke engine, was open to the wind and rain, and must have been uncomfortable but that didn’t worry his enterprising wife Berta.
Early one morning in 1888, she crept out of the house with her two sons, cranked up the engine of his Model III version — a posh number with powered rear wheels — and drove it 60 miles to the Black Forest to prove it worked.
It took them a whole day to get there.
The engine was so underpowered the boys had to push the car up hills and Berta had to get a cobbler to fit leather brakes when the wooden ones failed.
And then there was the small matter of the journey being illegal because the authorities — still wary of the new-fangled machine — hadn’t given her permission to make the trip.
I guess that makes Berta the first person ever to commit a driving offence.
As marketing stunts go, though, it was genius. Who now doesn’t want to own a Mercedes-Benz?
I was in Mannheim on day four of a seven-night voyage from Basel to Dusseldorf with Fred Olsen Cruise Lines that ticked off two rivers (the Rhine and Moselle), three countries and 18 locks.
We tasted Swiss chocolate in Basel, peeked inside a medieval castle in Cochem, Germany, and joined guide, Ludwig, for an early-morning wine crawl around Rüdesheim, a town of alleyways and bars in the Rhine Valley.
They grow mostly Riesling grapes and most are picked by hand because the slopes are too steep for tractors. But it’s not all hard going for the vintners.
When soil gets washed away in heavy rains, they use helicopters to drop more. And I remembered all of that despite downing three large glasses of wine before 11am.
Our journey also took us through the Rhine Gorge, a scenic stretch of river lined with 40 turreted castles. My favourite was Burg Maus (Mouse Castle), which is said to have got its nickname from the Count of Katzenelnbogen, who built nearby Burg Katz (Cat Castle).
Fred Olsen is known in the cruising world for four traditional ships that are as British as a stick of rock — think roast beef dinners and afternoon tea accompanied by a classical quartet. Now it also sails some of Europe’s rivers on a ship called Brabant. She is still geared to British tastes but with spacious cabins, French balconies and fashionable furnishings.
There is a giant chess set on the sun deck, a large lounge where we gathered for pre-dinner drinks and to dance the night away with the Divine Duo, aka Didi and Vivien, and a gentlemen’s club-style hangout to have a natter over a cup of tea or coffee.
From Basel we sailed to Strasbourg, a beautiful city where back in the day the locals would go to bed French and wake up German.
OK, I exaggerate, but it did switch between the two countries five times between the French Revolution and the end of World War Two.
It has been part of France since 1945, but is still very German. One of the main squares is named after Johannes Gutenberg, a German blacksmith who invented the printing press, and the locals do love their choucroute, French for sauerkraut.
To avoid accusations of favouritism, I had pork schnitzel (German) and fries (French) for lunch in a restaurant in Petite France — a pretty part of town that got its name because a hospital was built there in the 1400s to treat people with syphilis. The Germans called it “the French disease”. These days the only thing you’ll catch there is a taste for the local Kronenbourg 1664 Blanc wheat beer.
In Cologne, Germany, I made a beeline for the chocolate museum located near to the boat. But I felt so guilty after eating all the samples, I climbed 533 steps to the top of its cathedral to atone.
Boy, is it a long way up!
The cathedral is spectacular but it is almost as famous for surviving the World War Two bombs that destroyed the city as it is for its intricate stone facade.
The architects did a great job rebuilding Cologne but I get the feeling they ran out of ideas at Mannheim, which is laid out on a confusing grid system with letters and numbers instead of street names.
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Ursula pointed to a carving of German composer Beethoven above the Congress Centre’s entrance, one of the city’s few surviving historical buildings.
“You see, he looks very frustrated,” she said. “That’s because he never came to Mannheim.”
Or maybe he did, but he kept getting lost.