After Duernstein, we cruised through lunch up the Danube River to the city of Melk. This city boats about 2,700 inhabitants and an incredible Abby of Benedictine Monks. My command of English isn’t enough to describe this place, particularly the church in the Abby. I have never seen anything so ornate – to the point of being almost gaudy. The tour was centered on the Benedictine version of Catholicism, and I would have appreciated something much more historically focused. The major source of income for the Abby is tourism and about 450,000 people per year pay admission to tour a very small part of the Abby. The probably translates to some $5 million dollars a year just in entrance fees – perhaps more as I don’t know what the price of admission was. The library, having more than 150,000 books, was astounding. Anyone can come to the library, visit the reading room, and read any of the books. Those that are too old or fragile are on microfilm. The Abby has a current membership of 31 Benedictine Monks, 16 of whom live at the Abby. The rest are stationed at Parish churches around the country. I’d guess each of those 31 monks has available about 50 rooms apiece in the building. The Abbey is rectangular, three stories tall, with a large inner courtyard. Most impressive.

We set sail about 6:00 p.m. At the daily port call briefing at 7:15 p.m. (just before dinner), we learned that the boat has a propeller problem. While we were in Vienna, divers had gone down to inspect the bottom of the boat, the drive shafts, and the propellers. One of the propellers needs to be replaced. So, rather than sailing to Passau, our original destination, we are going to put into port in Linz about 7 a.m. We’ll go by bus to Passau after breakfast and spend the day there while the boat goes into dry dock to have the propeller replaced. If all goes well, we’ll be back sailing up the Danube on Saturday.

More on the propeller problem (added later, of course): The propeller had been damaged a couple of weeks before when leaving Melk on the previous cruise. The pictures of the propeller taken while the ship was in drydock and we were in Passau showed a very damaged propeller, so whatever had happened was serious, enough that the captain of the ship at that time had been placed on leave and a new captain assigned to the boat. As our cruise ended a week and a half later, we learned that replacing the propeller had fixed some of the problem, but that the drive train had also been damaged and the entire drive system — engine, transmission, drive train, and propeller — were going to be removed from the boat and shipped to Rotterdam for repair. The process sounded quite complicated!

When we got off the boat in Amsterdam, the ship was turning around for the final cruise back to Budapest. It was then going to Vienna and was going to do one-week trips between Vienna and Nuremberg through January 4th. A sister ship, the Viking Spirit, however, was also headed to Nuremberg to drop off passengers and then go idle for the rest of the season. The plan was, after the Spirit dropped it’s passengers, it would then sail to Vienna. The Neptune (our ship) would complete its cruise to Budapest, then sail back to Vienna. The Spirit crew would get on the Neptune and the Neptune crew would move to the Spirit. The Spirit would then finish the season in place of the Neptune. Meanwhile, the former Spirit crew would take the Neptune back to Linz where the boat would go into drydock once more. The drive train would be removed, sent to Rotterdam, and then reinstalled, a six week process. The previous captain of the Neptune had indeed done some serious damage when he grounded the boat in Melk. He would have been far better off getting a tug to pull them out in the deeper water…!!