Another picture from Kloster Eberbach

We drove further south to a town called Bingen, then crossed and drove away from the river to a Cistercian abbey named Kloster Eberbach. Set in the middle of nowhere, this was the site of filming of much of the movie The Name of the Rose. It's now secularized, and they make a popular wine. We arrived too late to do a full tour, but we were able to wander around and enjoy the grounds. I thought it would have been the perfect place to be a monk.

The Loreley

The fabled Lorelei rock. This is where the river is at it's narrowest and deepest. It was very difficult to pass, and many ships crashed here. The legend is that a beautiful maiden sat atop the rock, brushing her hair and singing, inadvertently luring sailors towards the rock to their demise.

"I do not know what haunts me,
What saddened my mind all day;
An age-old
tale confounds me,
A spell I cannot allay.
The air is cool and in
twilight
The Rhine's dark waters flow;
The peak of the mountain in
highlight
Reflects the evening glow.
There sits a lovely maiden
Above so wondrous fair,
With shining jewels laden,
She combs her
golden hair
It falls through her comb in a shower,
And over the valley
rings
A song of mysterious power
That lovely maiden sings.
The
boatman in his small skiff is
Seized by a turbulent love,
No longer he
marks where the cliff is,
He looks to the mountain above.
I think the
waves must fling him
Against the reefs nearby,
And that did with her
singing
The lovely Loreley"

Mike doing some frog-gigging in the Rhine. We were on a walk and he just trotted down to the river and picked up a stick. I took the picture without understanding and then asked him what that was all about. Apparently a popular thing for the Schultzes to do. His uncle Howard, his wife Barbara, and their parents went on a Rhine cruise, and when someone asked "really, what did you do there?" Howard would tell them all about Frog-Gigging, where you would hunt the giant frogs of the Rhine with big sticks. Quite fun. Then he would say "what do you think we did? It's the Rhine. We drank wine and looked at castles." Perhaps you have to know the Schultzes to understand....

The ruins of Burg Rheinfels in St. Goar, which we didn't get a chance to visit. Nest time!

And here is the aforementioned Burg Katz. Now owned by a Japanese businessman. Apparently the German government wouldn't allow the sale of a castle to a foreigner for private use so ostensibly it's a hotel but nobody's ever stayed there.

Hostile Brothers

Two castles called the "Hostile Brothers." They really were owned by two brothers, and the story depends on who is telling it. I've heard that the two brothers were fighting over inheritance and built the castles to defend themselves against each other. Rick Steves says "take two brothers, two castles, a wall, and a lovely maiden and build your own legend." :) The actual names of these castle ruins is Sterrenberg and Liebenstein; Liebenstein is now a hotel and restaurant; looks really cool, I'd love to go stay there sometime!! Anyone up for a road trip?



Oh, SO disappointed! Just found this on a Middle Rhine website:

Sterrenberg, the more northern of the two, was built as early as in the
11th century. The newer Liebenstein Castle was only built between 1284 and 1290,
probably to protect Sterrenberg. When a 2.5 metre thick main curtain wall was
built outside of Sterrenberg as a reaction to the construction of Liebenstein,
people called it the ‘wall of discord’ and created the myth of the ‘Hostile
Brothers’.

DAY 2: SLEEPING LATE AND SEEING MORE OF THE RHINE

After our wild winefest night (the pictures of the fireworks amazingly didn't turn out well), we stumbled downstairs around 12:15 p.m. and asked for some orange juice. The owner chuckled and said if we wanted to stay on the Rhine an extra night he would give us a deal, the 2 nights for 105 Euros. We had wasted half the day already and really didn't feel like doing a lot of active exploring, so we took him up on it and set out to find some lunch and formulate a plan for the day. We ate at a mediocre restaurant on the river, checked out river cruise times, and realized we had missed the cruise we wanted and there wasn't another one until after 4 p.m. So, being the industrious lot we were, we set out by auto to explore some more. We set off due south, stopping whenever we found a pretty walk or a nice photo-op, and I read to Mike out of my guide books. This is Burg Maus, so named because it's just downstream from a castle called Burg Katz (for a family called the Katzen-something).

Being overly cautious making sure we would get in the picture as we set up a self timer on the camera at the Wine Fest. Goofy us...and this was only after 1 glass! Winefests can be dangerous; they sell you these teeny glasses of wine and you try one after the other, going from stand to stand trying to figure out what you like and then whoops, you've drank like 2 bottles of wine! Again, not fun when you're on the 4th floor of a hotel with narrow little stairs......There were great fireworks about 8 p.m., we went and sat on the riverbank and enjoyed the show, then listened to some live music, drank some more wine, and somehow made it back to the hotel.

We fairly quickly figured out that "schmuck" means "jewelry," in German, but it was still funny. ModeSchmuck is fashion jewelry. Which sounds nicer, you think?

A view across the river to Boppard as we wait to board the ferry to go back to the WineFest! :)

Carrie being doused with boiling oil

Carrie in one of the castle gates underneath a "Machicolation," which is the name of that little balcony. Defenders would dump boiling oil or drop heavy rocks onto any enemies that made it to that gate. The door was reduced in size so that people on horseback couldn't get through.

Very cloudy (but rain-free!) panoramic view of the rhine from Marksburg castle.

Marksburg

Our first Castle, Marksburg Castle. A bit north of Boppard on the Rhine, it dates from the 12th century and is very impressive because it's never been destroyed and is almost all original (except for the stucco, which is re-applied when needed. It must always be done using old techniques, but nobody has ever figured out how to do it as well as the original!) The website is interesting because obviously I wasn't able to get aerial views of the thing, and my pictures weren't as good. If you go to the website and click on "Circuit" you can go through all the rooms we were able to see, and if you click on "Panoramas" and then DOUBLE-click on one of the available panoramic shots you can see almost exactly what it was like.


We were a little disappointed that we didn't get to see more of the castle. We didn't see any servants quarters, only saw one bedroom, etc. But it seemed very well preserved and it was a good first castle for Mike.

Boppard hotel

Our hotel in Boppard, the Hotel Ohm Patt. Our room was, I believe, the top one on the right. ABOVE the pink part of the building. :) This became a pertinent piece of information at the end of the Winefest activities on Saturday night.......


The hotel owner was a Brit who moved to Boppard in January to take over running this hotel from his sister and brother-in-law, who I guess were burnt out on hotel life. He was great fun and very helpful when we needed help getting to our room later in the night ;)

Arrival in Boppard

BOPPARD, on the Rhine. We made this our first stop because they were having their annual Weinfest complete with fireworks over the Rhine on Saturday. We were wet as we trekked to the Tourist Information and luckily scored a hotel room in the city (I think one of only like 4 left) and then walked the few blocks to the hotel. We got checked in, and then came back to the main square to get some lunch, which was about when the rain let up. There were about 5 different bands playing music, wandering around on the streets, and boy did that music make you wanna dance!

Mother Mosel, Father Rhine

Here's Carrie, at the point of the Mother Mosel joining the Father Rhine. And it's wet. This did not bode well for the rest of the trip, which this loving wife had agreed to postpone for one week.

DAY 1- KOBLENZ, BOPPARD, MARKSBURG CASTLE

We drove Friday night and spent the night in Koblenz, which lies at the junction of the Rhine and Mosel river. Saturday morning we woke up to pouring rain, but decided to head out to see the only interesting thing in Koblenz, the Deutsches Eck (German Corner,) the point where the rivers join together. The word Koblenz is a derivation of confluence, named for this junction. Anyway, at this spot there is this huge statue of Kaiser Wilhelm on a horse. A statue was erected here in the 1890's but was destroyed in WWII (something one hears more than once on a tour of this region). This copy was erected in 1985. There's Mike with his pretty Cirque du Soleil umbrella, which aggravatingly developed a tear on one of the seams and I've only used it once before. Not happy.

Just got back from our 1 week trip to the Rhine and Mosel valleys in Germany, as well as Trier and Luxembourg City. We left on Friday evening, 30 September and stayed til Saturday afternoon, 8 October. Pictures and stories to follow!!!

So sad, and so hard watching from so far away

Like everyone else in the world, Mike and I have been watching the news and reading on the internet about the devastation on the Gulf Coast. We have many friends in Lousiana and Mississippi, and we were so thankful to find out that everyone we know was spared their life, as well as their family. But many people, including several of my classmates and their relatives, lost their homes.

It's so sad and surreal watching what used to be New Orleans turn into first a giant lake, then a refugee-filled war zone, and now a soggy ghost town filled with dead bodies. We can only wait and see what things look like in 3 monts, 6 months, 1 year, 5 years.....They say the population of Baton Rouge has doubled and it is like a war zone as well in some areas. I suppose we wouldn't have had any trouble renting out our home if we had chosen to keep it, but I guess it's just as well that we sold it. Very strange, not knowing what we will return to if we go back to Baton Rouge in 2008.