11-28-2015 MAINZ, GERMANY

11-28-2015 MAINZ, GERMANY

Johannes Gensfleisch (“goose flesh”) was born in Mainz in ~1400 and resided with his parents at Hof zum Guttenberg.  Later, he changed his name to Johannes Guttenberg after his family home.  He was fascinated with the craft of printing and eventually, set up his own print shop.  He was a craftsman and inventor and soon came up with a way to create the letters and numbers from metals and assemble plates of “moveable type.”  He had many assistants and with their help created casts of the alphabet in small and capitals, numbers 0 to 9 and several punctuation marks, a total of 90 characters.  These were organized in wooden compartments on a large pallet.  The largest number of letters needed was the small letters and so the compartments for these were the largest and located in the bottom row.  It is said that this is where the expression “lower case” originated. 

The letters had to be carved and cast and set in plates backwards.  A space for the fancy capital letters at the start of paragraphs was a blank and those were hand drawn later by various artists.  The press that Guttenberg used was an old wine press that he modified and by inking the pallet and pressing a piece of paper against the letters, he was able to print a double row of 42 lines of print on both sides of the paper and thus his format is called B42.  In 1452, Guttenberg launched upon the project of printing the Bible.  It took 2 ½ years to print 180 copies of the Guttenberg Bible (in Latin), 1,282 pages each, and of these, 49 still exist and are worth tens of millions of dollars each.  I regret that I cannot include pictures of the artifacts in the Guttenberg Museum.  No photography was allowed in the vaults that contain a hand-written Bible and two of the original printed Guttenberg Bibles, encased in glass.

(The guide did not tell us this fable but I learned this in another old print shop:  The letters, of course, had to be set in the plates backwards and the “q” and the “p” were often confused.  This originated the expression, “Watch your p’s and q’s.”)

Flammlachs - wood fired salmon

After we toured the Guttenberg Museum, we cruised through yet more Christmas Markets in Mainz.  Well!  This time, we found a booth that was roasting whole pigs on a spit over a wood fire. 

Roast pig at the Mainz market

Another booth was roasting slabs of salmon nailed to wooden planks propped around the edges of a wood fire (“flammlachs”).  So today’s fare included hot roast pork on a brötchen, a pile of smoked salmon and a cup of glüwein.  Once again, we put the miles on our feet and were lucky to find a few things to take to our room just for fun:  brötchens, a chunk of soft mild cheese and links of smoked wurst.  A very friendly German stew from Lufthansa took our picture, smiled broadly and gave us a bouquet of mistletoe.  We’ll see if the “authorities” will allow us to carry that home!

Rudesheimer coffee

An optional tour was offered today.  The buses took us to Rüdesheim, a 45 min. ride, to visit the Christmas Markets and

Weihnachtmarkt Rudesheim

Rob Rudesheim Christmas Market

have dinner (sauerbraten, spätzle and blue kraut) followed by a cup of Rüdesheimer coffee, a specialty.  First, sugar and Asbach brandy (famous locally) is poured into the bottom of a cup and it is set aflame.  Then, the cup is filled with coffee and topped with whipped cream and sprinkled with shaved chocolate. Wonderful!  For the next event, 5 shot glasses are installed on a long board like a snow ski, spaced for 5 people who go up to the stage.  The glasses are filled with apple schnapps.  At the cheer, “Ein, zwei, drei!” all 5 people lift the board and chug.  All 5 are different heights but hopefully, the schnapps lands in your mouth! 

Chugging apple schnapps

This went on for quite a while… er… quite a few bottles of schnapps.  An oompah band performed, we danced the polka and the twist and had a wild and crazy party!  Much later in the evening, we collapsed in bed!

MS River Harmony