A New Kind of Boating Adventure

Cornelia Stratton Parker discovered for us a new way to travel the rivers of Europe: in a small, collapsible boat. Entering the Front Doors of Medieval Towns: The Adventures of an American Woman and Her Daughter in a Folding Boat on Eight Rivers of Germany and Austria, National Geographic Magazine, March, 1932, is her account of the journey.

The Faltboote (faltboat = folding boat) looks like an Eskimo kayak in shape, is lightweight with a wooden frame and rubberized canvas cover.  It is portable and packable, 18 feet long and 3 feet wide with two seats for the paddlers.  "After purchasing their collapsible boat at Bad Tolz, near Munich (Germany), the author and her daughter cover 734 miles over the Isar, Inn, Salzach, Danube, Weser, Drau, Main and Lahn" rivers (map caption, p. 368).

The inexperienced ladies thoroughly enjoyed paddling and seeing the sights of mountains, cliffs, and castles until they reached their first section of rapids in a river.  "All innocence and unconcern, we were off.  Never do I plan to live through such agonizing moments again.  It is, perhaps, not so important that we could never understand why we failed to capsize, as that we didn't" (p. 382).

After the rapids terror, they decided to ship the boat past rapids and take a bus themselves past the worst of them.  Mrs. Parker and her daughter "lost our hearts to . . . lakes, all in that one lovely region of the Austrian Tyrol and Karnten . . . our bathing suits were never given a chance to dry between swims" (p. 383).

The Lahn River was also especially enjoyable, viewing "woods, the meadows, the towns, the castles, the ancient churches, monasteries, cathedrals, and again and again the wooded hills" (p. 383).  This is the reason they chose to travel by faltboat instead of by motorcar or train.  The roads and rails were crowded and dangerous yet the rivers were the common means of travel in medieval times.  There were still old inns everywhere on the banks of the rivers.

In the town of Wetzlar, the two stopped for the night and found a boat club with "one room ready for faltboaters."  In the morning, they "were shown the town with pride and minute understanding by a number of "our" boat club whose family had been people of more or less importance in Wetzlar for exactly 1,000 years" (p. 390).  They loved the town so much that due to heavy rains, they were pleased to stay there for another day.

One new custom they learned was writing in local guestbooks, "Up and down the rivers of Germany and Austria you write in the guestbook the name and make of your boat, where you started from, where you are paddling to, a drawing, an original verse or two, and how much you thank everybody for everything (and curse the weather)" (p. 391).

There were many faltboaters all over the rivers that summer.  "The river banks at Einod look as if an Eskimo Navy had arrived" (photo caption, p. 392).

To go home to America, the ladies stored their boat and took a steamer on the Rhine River.  They promised themselves that they also would faltboat down the Rhine and reported, "It is estimated that on a good week-end in summer there are at least 10,000 faltboats paddling here and there down that one river" (p. 394).  A most excellent adventure!