Excellent Adventure 2018 Day 9 - Worlitz Gardens

Today was slated to be a relatively easy and relaxing day. All we had on the docket was a tour of the Worlitz Gardens (pronounced Verlitz).

Only about 30 minutes away, our tour guide, Alexander, managed to talk non-stop and yet not say anything intelligible. This has been the plague of almost all the tour guides so far, with the notable exception of Nigel at Wittenberg.

What I managed to glean:

• A German king named Frederich (there seemed to be more than one of them), or maybe other people, built these gardens at some point in the past, possibly in the 1700s.
• There was a synagogue on the property, built at the same height as a church to show that the religions were equal.
• Which of course was utter nonsense (we’re talking Europe in the 1700s, and specifically Germany after Martin Luther). But apparently the Jewish community enjoyed less oppression here than elsewhere. Woohoo!
• The palace on the grounds housed the rich guy’s wife and a couple of mistresses. I think that’s what Alexander said. Hard to tell.
• The lake on the property is very nice. There’s a family of swans living there - they have 6 or 7 almost full grown signets. It was fun to watch them.

Here’s a link to actual information about the Worlitz Gardens at Dessau.

At some point we had to make a choice - follow Alexander for a tour of the Manor House (apparetntly that’s what it was called?), or take a boat ride on the lake. For 95% of us, it was a no brained. An entire hour out on a boat without listening to Alexander. Who could turn this down?

Better yet. For once the weather was fantastic - it was not only not G0d awful hot under a blazing sun, it was a bit overcast and pleasantly in the 70s.

Unfortunately I didn’t catch the name of the guy rowing the boat. He apologized for his perfectly functional English. There were about 20 of us enjoying the lake, the water lilies, the swans, and the ducks.

From the boat we could see Benne magically appear on the shore by the dock. We all seriously wondered how she constantly does that - one second there’s no Benne, next second she’s standing next to you. We decided that there were in fact multiple Bennes.

Once our hour of peace and quiet was over, there was still a little time before boarding the bus. We spent the time looking for a bathroom. Once again Benne magically appeared sitting on a bench, who gave us directions to the bathroom. We told her our theory that there were many of her, which she thought was hilarious, and wished it were true.

Here’s some photos:

Manor House - the middle floor with the big windows was for the wife; the other floors with smaller windows were for the mistresses

Synagogue (no longer in use)

Worlitz Church

Worlitz Church Nave

Worlitz Church pipe organ

View of lake and gardens from church tower

That was pretty much it for the day. Unusually non-hectic. There was actual down-time after lunch, which I used to catch up on these blog posts. At 3:30 was an ice cream party on the upper deck - another flight of stairs up. And I *know* I checked the deck plans of this ship and there was an elevator somewhere! It’s been a bit annoying without one.

It was beautiful sitting up on the upper deck in the shade, watching the river go by.

There was a “future cruises” spiel, followed by disembarkation procedures, followed by dinner.

We had forms to fill out waiting for us in our stateroom after dinner. At 9:00 p.m. there was a performance of Renaissance actors in a short skit and interacted with the audience - they were great! 

Then I stayed up too late working on blogs.

Tomorrow: Disembark, Potsdam, and then: BERLIN Yey!