Tales of the river bank

Captain Mai has spent all his life on the river. ''It's trickier than any passenger,'' he said. ''It twists and turns so much, you have to be friendly with every duck on the water.'' We were on the 1000-ton MV Dresden, built specially by the Deilmann cruise line to negotiate the Elbe - six feet at its deepest and the longest river in Germany after the Rhine.

Whichever way you look at it, there's not much Elbe-room. At Wittenberg Bridge, where the headroom is only 1.5 inches, the deck railings were dismantled and the wheelhouse retracted like an old cinema organ. At Usti, passengers picked wild flowers from the walls of the lock-chamber, only a foot away on either side.

But the real marvel about our 400-mile cruise from Hamburg to the edge of Prague was that we were doing it at all. For more than 40 years, the Elbe formed the border between east and west, a liquid Berlin Wall. Long stretches of the river were fenced off and navigation severely restricted. Sinister-looking GDR watchtowers still peep above the treetops.

Now for the good news. The result was conservation by default. Miles of riverbank remain empty and unspoiled, with not a building in sight, the scenery unrolling on either side like some old-fashioned stage

diorama.

Herons and buzzards flap over meadows winnowed with wild flowers. Thick forests sweep down to the water's edge, the trees bulging with mistletoe. Yellow butterflies flutter across the deck. Medieval villages cluster round onion-domed churches wearing storks' nests like frayed straw hats. Noble palaces and baroque mansions drift past almost absent-mindedly and castles perch on crags, waiting to become tourist posters.

River cruising is not the same animal as oceangoing. Entertainment is minimal. A Bohemian oompah band, led by a trumpeter bursting out of his white jacket and flared trousers, came aboard at Leitmeritz with a repertoire that hadn't changed since the 1950s. And at Lauenberg, the local sea-shanty chorus treated us to their version of ''Vot shall ve do viz de trunken sailor''.

Cabins on the Dresden are neat rather than grandiose, but there's room to spare for all 110 passengers on the sundeck. The food in the conservatory-style restaurant is outstanding - with up to nine courses in the evenings - and you get your own, personalised porcelain nameplate on the table.

Imagine the thrill that ran through the British group when someone spotted two plates inscribed ''Sir'' and ''Lady''. One American passenger yelped ''Awesome!'' and photographed them.

Most of the passengers are German. You can tell by their punctuality at mealtimes, the precision of their instructions - ''The conducted tour of Torgau will be one hour and 19 minutes'' - and the way they always return just in time for tea, descending hungrily on cream cakes the size of pillows. The cruise takes a week, with excursions to some of the most historic towns in eastern Germany, many of them untouched since the end of the Second World War.

We followed the footsteps of Martin Luther through Wittemburg, ''The Protestant Rome'', where in 1517 he nailed his 95 Theses to the church door to ignite the Reformation.

Beneath the walls of Pillnitz Castle, built in 1718 in extravagant chinoiserie style like some mislaid extension to Peking's Forbidden City, a broad flight of steps led down to the river. Here, the mistress of Augustus the Strong of Saxony would wait for her aristocratic friends to arrive by gondola after the six-hour journey from Dresden.

The city of Meissen escaped the war with barely a porcelain cup-and-saucer being rattled. Meissen porcelain has been famous since 1710 and in the town square - like a Lego model conceived by Hansel and Gretel - a porcelain glockenspiel chimes the hours from the church tower.

At the bottom of a steeply cobbled path leading down from the Albrechtsburg castle is the Vincenz Richter wine tavern, built in 1471. Halfway through my #3.50 beaker of salmon-pink Schieler wine - their own speciality - owner Gottfried Herrlich shouted, ''Let's all go down to the torture

chamber!''

Jokes don't come any more Teutonic or heavy-handed than Gottfried's ''torture'' routine. His cellar is a bizarre S&M playground of shackles, chains, thumbscrews and leg-irons. Every night, he picks the prettiest girl volunteer, goes through an elaborate ritual of chaining her up and - in return for a kiss - hands her the keys to free herself. All good kinky fun for the whole family.

The Meissen porcelain factory still employs 600 artists to hand-paint each item. In the showroom, you can buy anything from a #52 thimble to a six-piece floral coffee-set for more than #5000. Not the sort of thing you stuff in the dishwasher.

Dresden's meadows slope down from the town to the river's edge, giving it a gentle, countrified air.

There are few reminders of that dreadful night in 1945 when Allied bombers dropped 660,000 bombs on ''the Florence of Germany'', destroying six square miles of the city.

Dresden has been rebuilt on a heroic scale. The gilt is back on the statues and rooftops. Cafe parasols spread like mushrooms through the streets and squares.

Children paddle in the fountains of the stupendous Zwimmer Palace - built in 1709 as an open-air playground for the nobility - and at the Kreuzdamm Cafe you can commit calorific hari-kiri by ordering marzipan ladybirds as big as your fist.

We sailed out of Dresden straight into a Disneyworld Switzerland. A strange and spooky forest of 900 sandstone pillars towering up to 1300ft.

Around the 1000ft Bastei Pinnacle, the columns are linked by bridges and walkways with spectacular views across the river for those not paralysed with vertigo. I noticed tiny white boxes on each summit. ''They contain visitors books,'' our guide explained. ''Climbers sign them when they reach the top.'' It sounded too Germanic to be true.

So was my compulsory task of helping to polish the wooden floors at Sanssouci Palace at Potsdam, built for King Frederick the Great in 1745. When you enter, they give you an outsize pair of carpet slippers on which to slip and slide from one outrageously ornate room to the other in an indoor version of langlauf.

A narrow lock system prevents the Dresden from sailing up the Vltava tributary straight into Prague, so I forked out #50 for the coach excursion.

In the lovely Old Town Square - like a Baroque stage-set waiting for an opera to happen - I sat under a parasol and sipped a large Czech beer, still only #1.50. Above me, the fifteenth century astronomical clock struck noon, releasing a fantastic parade of mechanical figures, including a podgy representation of greed.

It reminded me. I had to get back to the Dresden before the Germans finished off all the cream cakes.

Noble palaces and baroque mansions drift past as Perrott Phillips takes a cruise on the River Elbe from Hamburg to the edge of Prague