On the Neckar River

On August 7 Sam and Twichell began a four-day tour of the Neckar River towns between Heidelberg and Heilbronn along the “romantic road,” traveling mostly by carriage, train, and boat. More specifically, they traveled by train upriver from Heidelberg to Neckargemünd, which was as far as the spur line had been built in 1878; by carriage from Neckargemünd to Hirschhorn, a distance of about ten miles; and then by boat another thirty miles to Weinsburg, Bad Wimpfen, and Heilbronn. There they “found a good hotel and ordered beer and dinner” and “took a stroll through the venerable old village. It was very picturesque and tumble-down, and dirty and interesting.’ Reversing course, they traveled downriver by small boat “7 or 8 miles to Jagsfeldt,” according to Twichell, “where we stopped for lunch and took another boat.” Sam records in A Tramp Abroad their (fanciful?) negotiation with the boat owner. He was unable to comprehend Sam's broken German, so Twichell “faced this same man, looked him in the eye, and emptied this sentence on him, in the most glib and confident way: ‘Can man boat get here?’” The “mariner promptly understood” because, Sam explained, "all the words except ‘get’ have the same sound and the same meaning in German [Kann Mann Boot geht hier?] that they have in English.” About this time, too, when Sam mentioned “some rather private matters” within earshot of some locals, Twichell cautioned him to “speak in German” because someone overhearing their conversation “may understand English.” The afternoon of August 9 the travelers floated downriver past Eberbach to Hirschhorn, where they registered overnight at the Zum Naturalisten and visited the ancient castle and ruined church nearby, The next day they drifted downriver to Neckarsteinach and Dilsberg, where they again toured the village and a local castle atop a steep hill overlooking the river, then back to Neckargemünd, where they ditched the skiff and took the train back to Heidelberg.