Rhine Romance
THOMPSON
Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg. Quite a name. And quite a man – and one to whom I am deeply indebted.
Had Herr Gutenberg not invented the technique of printing with movable metal type in the mid-15th century, you might not be reading this newspaper today. And I might not have had a career as a journalist (no bad thing, I hear some say).
My wife Debbie and I are in Mainz, the city of his birth in western Germany, and visiting the Gutenberg Museum (gutenberg-museum.de €5).
It’s hard to overstate the importance of his invention: it hugely influenced the evolution of the Renaissance, Reformation, Age of Enlightenment and era of scientific discovery and put words in the hands of ordinary people. Not for nothing is he celebrated as the “man of the millennium”.
The museum contains a multitude of print-related artefacts, but the star attractions are the two original Gutenberg Bibles from 1452-54. They are in a bomb-proof vault, behind bulletproof glass and you can’t take photos. But you do get to see an invention that changed the world.
Should you be wondering, they are worth around £30million apiece.
We were at Mainz as a call on a Rhine river cruise on Titan Travel’s exclusive, fully refurbished charter ship MS Serenade 1.
The full 12-day voyage was from Cologne down to Basel and back to Amsterdam, but we joined for six days from Strasbourg to Cologne.
So, after enjoying the total ease and comfort of Titan’s VIP home pick-up service, a stress-free rail journey from London St Pancras via Paris and an overnight stay in the lovely Alsace city, we walked up the gangway at 10am to meet our friendly hosts: tour managers Richard, Ron (who has the best ‘I met The Beatles’ story I’ve ever heard) and Lynn.
While the excellent, hard-working crew run the ship, the “Three Titans” run your holiday, and superbly too, with meticulous attention to detail (in truth the age profile on board is quite high and some of the passengers do need a little extra TLC, which was readily provided).
We dropped our bags in our smart, comfortable cabin and headed back into central Strasbourg, a 15 minute journey by tram.
While you may associate the city with Eurocrats, it has a beautiful Old Town dominated by the 466ft high Notre Dame cathedral, once the tallest building in the world.
On a boiling hot day my sanity deserted me and I agreed to climb the 332 spiral steps up the tower to take in the view.
You pay €5 for this thigh-sapping torture but, in fairness, the view was terrific, all the way to the Black Forest (frankly everything looked black to me, as I tried not to pass out after all those steps). After expending some