Weissenkirchen and the Wachau Valley

On Tuesday we awoke to find foggy, but beautiful scenery outside our window. We were entering the Wachau Valley! This wine-growing region stretches from Krems to Melk, and is well-known for its terraced hillsides that host its ubiquitous vineyards. It's also a UNESCO World Heritage site, which apparently I'm supposed to care about.

Our stop for today was in the middle of the Wachau, at Weissenkirchen. We sailed the first part of the valley, past Durnstein, and Aaron got some lovely pictures. Unfortunately I don't have access to post them at the moment, so I just have these two from my camera.

The view from the Danube as we approached Weissenkirchen.

Weissenkirchen from the boat

A closeup of the white church that gives Weissenkirchen its name, as seen from the River Ambassador.

Weissenkirchen from the boat

We docked about an hour before our scheduled tour, so we first explored Weissenkirchen on our own. At this hour (9:00 a.m.), it was pretty empty and it felt like we had the city to ourselves. We found quite a few wine shops and small cafes/bistros, as well as an abundance of vineyards that seemed packed into any space larger than a few square meters. Aaron and I have tossed around the idea of retiring in Bavaria (we have a long time to consider this), but now Weissenkirchen is on the list of possible locations as well.

The entrance to the village from the main road/port.

One of the many privately owned bed & breakfast options in Weissenkirchen.

The railroad tracks entering Weissenkirchen. In 2010 they stopped running this train because of lack of use, but recently it's been put back in operation three time a day during the summer months, mostly for tourists.

A permanent stone bench along the Danube. I love how Austrians/Germans design their living spaces to encourage people to be outside.

After about 45 minutes we returned to the ship to meet up with our tour guide. We were skipping the tour of the Melk Abbey to take a "Choice" excursion - a village day in Weissenkirchen complete with apricot product tasting, wine tasting, and a vineyard hike. Our group was 40-50 people, so we split in two and our group did the apricot tasting first.

Weissenkirchen started producting apricots when they had some catastrophic crop failures in the past and needed another crop to provide income. The apricots from this particular region are trademarked with the name Mirelles. Our guide told a good story about how the founder of this particular company got into the apricot business, and we tasted Schnapps (too boozey for me), liquor (delicious), jam (also delicious), chocolate apricots (ok), roasted seeds (tasty - would be a nice snack), and barbeque sauce (also delicious, but not what I would consider bbq). This really was a thiny veiled sales pitch, and I fell for it. I purchased the liqour, jam, and sauce. The location was quaint, and the story was good, so I didn't mind being sold the products.

After the tasting, we took a guided village tour. We basically saw what we had explored in the morning, with the addition of the church and a very old elementary school. The guide was nice, but there isn't much to see in Weissenkirchen and he didn't have a good story line to carry us from beginning to end. He did give us some interesting information about the symbolism the village wine shops use to indicate when they have fresh wine and other food products available to taste.

An example of how old the buildings in Weissenkirchen are. This one was from the 1400's.

The church again, right before we climbed the 71 steps to the top.

The view from the church.

Another view from the church.

The oldest school in Austria, still in operation. Although they don't have many students. We walked by around 11:30 and they were aleady done for the day.

This was a fortified church - notice the holes in the wall for cannons.

This was the entirety of the school's playground.

This was a house for bees.

This looks like each student was given their own picket in the fence, but no one actually explained it to me.

The same concept, going up the staircase.

Then it was time for the wine tasting. However, rain was threatening all day, so instead of going to the vineyard, we did the tasting on the ship. I haven't really taken to Austrian white wines, so I left the tasting early to take a nap. I was really looking forward to the vineyard hike, but I understand why they didn't want to risk an outdoor tasting in the rain.

We had lunch on the ship, then donned our rain jackets for one last hour on our own in the village. We walked on a trail along the Danube for a mile or so, and reached the village of Jobing. There we crossed the road and walked back through the village, and through Weissenkirchen. It rained off and on, but it was quite enjoyable. We found their cemetary, which was made up of extremely well-kept family plots, and a lot of traditional Austrian homes, combined with gorgeous modern homes like the one pictured below.

Entering Weissenkirchen from the North, on the road. We found this during our afternoon exploring.

I don't normally take pictures of cemetaries, but this one was beautiful.

Each family had a plot, that was well maintained and decorated with flowers, candles, etc.

One of the handful of modern houses in Weissenkirchen.

Aaron showing his enthusiasm for the vineyards.

Time to leave :(

It was then time to leave Weissenkirchen and continue on our cruise of the Wachau Valley. For the next two hours we cruised, with narration from our Cruise Director Claudia. Unfortunately, it was raining quite hard for most of the afternoon, but I sat in the sunroom to stay out of the rain and continue to enjoy the view. The sun came out, however, as we approached Melk, so Aaron got some great shots of the abbey.

We quickly changed our clothes for the captain's welcome reception and dinner. We were served champagne, appetizers, and treated to stories from the captain and an introduction of all the ship's management. The dinner that followed featured an expanded menu (5 courses instead of the usual 4) and was arranged as more of a tasting menu. The food, as always, was excellent—especially the scallop and the champagne mousse. For some reason my camera has started taking extremely blurrly photos when I don't use the flash to take photos of food. I'll have to start bringing my iPhone to dinner to get good pics. However, it looks like my camera liked dessert as much as I did.