Day Thirty-Seven: Germany

Well, we returned in one piece from Germany and oh my goodness, if I was to try and sum it up in one word, it would be 'Medieval'. There's just something about the look of the area we were in, the food, the wine, the castles, the rolling hills and valleys and vineyards and cows... It was not at all what I had expected. I'm not sure what I was expecting, because I admittedly don't know very much about Germany passed the big cities. The German countryside absolutely blew me away.

On Thursday, Rob and I started from Rotterdam and took the train to Utrecht, and then hopped on the high-speed ICE train which took us to Cologne. It took us about two hours on the high speed train to travel from Utrecht to Cologne. In Cologne, we found the car rental company and picked up our car (a Mercedes Benz B Class, I believe). The best part about the car, in my opinion, was that it had built in navigation, which made my job as navigator a millions times easier (it's hard to see the sights when you're looking furiously at an Iphone TomTom map, hoping that the satellite reception won't crap out and it's heading you in the right direction!). Rob and I both liked the car a lot, having a car just makes traveling and exploring so much more interesting and gives you more options.

We took the Autobahn south and about 1 1/2 hours later, we found ourselves winding down the German countryside, surrounded by rows upon rows of grape vines, passing through quaint little German towns and loving it! The most intense road saw us winding down a steep riverside embankment, and finally down into the town of St Goar, which is nestled up against the beautiful Rhine River. It was easy to find our hotel, Hotel Hauser, which was a quaint little place with a full restaurant on the main floor and 12 rooms on the levels above. We were in room 3 and the view out the little balcony was completely astounding. We could look out over the Rhine and check out Burg Katz, a relatively small-ish castle nestled halfway up the Rhine embankment. To our left on our side of the river we could see the ruin of Rheinfels Castle, a huge ruin that survived straight up until the French Revolutionary Army troops blew it up in 1797, destroying a good portion of the structure. We visited it on Saturday, so I'll talk more about it then.

Rob and I found out that our friends, Kirsten and Dave, had already checked into the hotel and were in room 11. We knocked, but there was no answer, so we went downstairs to eat dinner and check emails. They served what I assume is fairly traditional Germany food. I had Pork Goulash with Sauerkraut, Potatoes and a lovely German beer. Just as the food was coming out, Dave and Kirsten walked in the door and a round of boisterous hugs ensued. Kirsten and Dave are traveling through Germany on their honeymoon, and we were really excited to be able to meet up with them on their Germanic tour. It gave us a great excuse to visit Germany, and I'm SO glad we did!

Thursday night was spent catching each other up on our adventures and plans, playing Euchre and sharing wine. Rob had unfortunately come down with the cold that has been circulating through his class at Erasmus, so he headed to bed early to get some rest while I stayed up in Kirsten and Dave's room for a while longer.

We planned that the next morning we would have breakfast together, and then head out early toward the Moselle River where the most fertile land for vineyards is located. We wanted to start in Zell and work our way through Beilstein toward Cochem. It was, frankly, a gorgeous drive. We stopped in Zell and tasted grapes growing along the side of the boardwalk, crossed the wonderful pedestrian bridge, and marveled at the cute little houses. On our way out of the city we came across this hilarious house which reminded me of something out of a Dr Seuss book!



We continued on in the direction of Cochem, and stumbled on a tiny little town whose name we didn't know at the time. It had a beautiful old church and I knew we had to stop and check it out. The town ended up being Beilstein, which was a town we had wanted to visit anyway. It was built into the riverside embankment, so the streets were steep with lots of little staircases snaking between the houses. Initially, we tried to drive up to St Joseph's Church, but the roads were so narrow, and so steep, that we had to give up and walked instead. The church was gorgeous and the view from the top of the embankment was rewarding. After taking what seemed like thousands of pictures in the cozy little hillside town, we moved on toward Cochem.

Cochem was great. It was much larger than any of the towns we'd been in so far (including St Goar, where we were staying), and there was a lot to see. It was fairly touristy, but we took some time to do a wine tasting and bought a few bottles of wine, had lunch together at an outdoor cafe, and watched the river traffic from the bridge across the Moselle. After lunch and wine tastings, we were on to our next destination...

...The Nürburgring, mecca for gear heads around the world and one of the vary few public race tracks ("public toll road"... which means you pay twenty-two Euros to make one lap) in existence. While it features a modern Grand Prix track, there is also a much longer old North loop track which was built in the 1920s around the village and medieval castle of Nürburg in the Eifel mountains.


The old track was nicknamed The Green Hell and it's widely considered the toughest, most dangerous, and most demanding racing circuit in the world. And the four of us shared the 13 minutes of pure racing adrenaline together against many, much faster and more intense drivers... it was absolutely ridiculous! We got passed by every single car on the ring, but it didn't matter. It was like being in a real, live video game, except you begin to realise if you make one tiny misjudgment, especially in a rental car, very big mistakes can happen very quickly and very dangerously. When we got there, the track was on hold because, as apparently there often is, there was a stalled car on the track that had to be removed. We waited in the parking lot for about an hour before we were finally allowed to take our lap. It was unlike anything I'd ever experienced, and I can't even imagine how Rob was feeling.



It took him an hour just to completely regain his composure afterward. Oh, and there's a video. Rob also got a Ring Card, which means he can come back at any time and put more money on the card to race again. I doubt that will happen, but he now has bragging rights and a card to prove it.


Since we had conquered the Nürburgring, we headed back to St. Goar and found somewhere to have dinner, after which we went off to our room and watched a movie together on Rob's computer... I would not recommend MacGruber to anyone. We unanimously decided that it was pretty awful.

On Saturday, we spent time discovering the area around St Goar. We had received from our hotel booking free tickets to a number of things in the area, including tickets to the Doll and Teddy Bear museum (which we didn't get to), tickets and transportation to Rheinfels Castle, and a boat tour from St Goar to Bacharach and back on the Rhine river. We started the morning off with the castle, which was absolutely unbelievable. It is the largest castle overlooking the Rhine, and historically covered five times its current area, which is saying a lot! It was quite amazing, and I couldn't help but try to imagine what it might have looked like hundreds of years ago, bustling with activity. The remaining towers were cool to climb and the views amazing, but the best part for me was the tunnels. Here's a little commentary from Rick Steves on the subject: "To protect their castle around 1600, the Rheinfellers cleverly booby-trapped the land just outside their walls by building tunnels topped with thin slate roofs and packed with explosives. By detonating the explosives when under attack, they could kill hundreds of invaders. In 1626, a handful of underground Protestant Germans blew 300 Catholic Spaniards to — they figured — hell. You're welcome to wander through a set of never-blown-up tunnels. It's 600 feet long, assuming you make no wrong turns; it's pitch-dark, muddy, and claustrophobic, with confusing dead-ends; and you'll never get higher than a deep crouch. It cannot be done without a light (bring a flashlight; otherwise, candles and matches available at entry." It was totally cool!




After that, we made it back to St Goar with enough time to grab our picnic lunch from the rooms, and the catch the boat cruise from St Goar to Bacharach. It was a really busy trip with standing room only out on deck, but we had time to eat our lunch and drink some wine indoors before arriving at Bacharach. It was yet another wonderfully Medieval town, with timber-frame houses; the oldest of which dating from 1368. That's 642 years old! Burg Stahleck and Wernerkapelle were probably my favourite things here. We climbed up this steep hillside vineyard to an old guardhouse that gave us an incredible view of the town! Wernerkapelle was this amazing old church ruin. The history of this chapel goes back to 1287 when a young man, Werner, was found murdered on this spot. His death was blamed on a ritual killing by the local Jews and a pogrom followed. The chapel was built to house Werner’s bones and became a pilgrimage chapel. About a century after the event, it was acknowledged that the evidence was faked and Werner was scrapped from the church calendar. It took around 150 years to build the Wernerkapelle - from around 1287 to 1430. It was destroyed in 1689 when the French attacked Castle Stahleck and rubble rained down on the chapel - which had not previously been damaged. Kind of a sad story, but the ruins are still very pretty in their own way.



From Bacharach we took the same ferry back to St. Goar, grabbed our jackets from the room, then hopped in the car to head to Oberwesel. The Rhine in Flames was going on that night on the river, and we didn't want to miss out on the awesome fireworks display. When we got there, we discovered there was also a Riesling festival going on, so we paid the couple of Euros to get in and sample some great German Rieslings and eat our faces off. We had giant cheese pretzels, bratwurst on buns with mustard, BBQ pork ribs, Flatbread pizza, and roasted chicken. No veggies for us! We hung out at the festival until it was dark, bought a few bottles of wine, and headed to the riverbank to get a good spot for the fireworks. We found the absolute most perfect spot! I didn't quite know what to expect from the show, but it SO surpassed all my expectations! It was absolutely wonderful! fireworks and lights exploded across the river in front of us, and the river was filled with boats and ferries covered in lights, and the fireworks were synchronized with a twenty minute compilation of songs by the Who. I've never seen anything like it; what a great show!

The next morning, we all piled into the car with our luggage and said goodbye to the sleepy little town of St. Goar and the Rhine River which had given us so much beauty, and headed back toward Cologne. Kirsten's uncle was planning to pick her and Dave up there to take them back to his place, so we decided to spend the morning at the Chocolate museum in Cologne. Thanks to the awesome navigation system in the car, we found the museum with no problem and enjoyed learning all about the production of chocolate and the industry it's created as well as the rich history it's enjoyed. Probably the most interesting thing I learned there was that there used to be 'Chocolate Bars' (Chocolate houses) where hot chocolate was served. It wasn't until 1847 that chocolate began to be produced in solid form! That seems so crazy to me! There were some great chocolate-related artifacts at the museum as well, and I had a fun time looking at the styles and illustrations involved.



After dropping off Dave and Kirsten, Rob and I headed back to the car rental place and dropped off the car. We then took the half hour of time that we had left before we had to catch our train to check out Kölner Dom, the Cologne Cathedral. We had glimpsed it on our way out of Cologne on Thursday, but I really wanted to see it in person. And I'm s glad we did. I know I've been posting about a lot of churches... but there's something so magnificent about the erection of a beautiful building in the name of God and prayer and worship... and whenever I walk in one here in Europe, it's an intense feeling that just can't be compared to churches in Canada. And this church was my absolutely favourite so far. It absolutely trumped all the other churches we've seen so far. First of all, it was absolutely MASSIVE inside. I could have spent three days in there just looking at things. The stained glass, the sculptures, even the FLOORS were breathtaking and astonishing. The only dissapointment came when we had to leave so soon after arriving. It was very dark inside, and the gothic architecture spoke of such a different time than now... I did some research on it later when I was home, since Rob and I were curious about how it had survived the bombings in the war. Some explanation came when I found that the cathedral suffered seventy hits by aerial bombs during World War II. It did not collapse, but stood tall in an otherwise flattened city. The great twin spires are said to have been used as an easily recognizable navigational landmark by Allied aircraft raiding deeper into Germany in the later years of the war, which may be a reason that the cathedral was not destroyed. It has been claimed that in June 1945 American troops used the cathedral as a rifle range. Turbulent past, to be sure, but I'm glad that it survived... it is a definite must-see to any church enthusiast.



From there, we took the ICE back to Utrecht, and the train back to Rotterdam, then Rijswijk. It was nice to be back home...