Take Me To The River
Trip Start
Sep 07, 2008
1
18
33
Trip End
Oct 10, 2008
Rhine Valley,
Germany
Friday, September 26, 2008
At the recommendation of the Lonely Planet our next stop was 9km up the road at the town of Bacharach. This place was a real find as it is a gorgeous medieval city with cobbled lanes and old houses on every street
The Mighty Rhine
. Before we had even walked into the main part of town I had us walking up a steep trail I had stumbled across which turned out to be a walk along the remnants of the old city wall. The city walls extended way up into the hills behind the town and at the top of the hill, to make the walk worthwhile, was the Castle Stahleck. You can actually stay inside the castle keep itself which would have been very cool had we known about that a day earlier. It was still worth the walk as the castle keep is very well-preserved and it provides magnificent views back out over the surrounding vineyards and the Rhine. On the walk down from the castle we stumbled across the remains of a church which no longer has a roof or any stained glass in its high windows. It is called Werner Chapel and has been restored as a memorial to the Jewish community of Germany. Its plaque reads that it is to evoke true remembrance and to serve as a sign of tolerance and reconciliation. Quite an amazing sight.
We wandered around the streets staring up constantly at the incredibly old houses that are still in use today. We found ourselves inside Peterskirche, the large church in the centre of town. It is a lovely church built in 1230 AD with the traditional German black slate tiled spire on top
Castle in the middle of the Rhine
. We had a good laugh at some fellow tourists when one of them piped up in his not so quiet speaking-in-a-church voice and said, "Oh my God, this is the church St Peter built in 1230AD." Clearly he had missed the point entirely although it would have been an impressive feat for a 1200 year old man to build a church. Our next little adventure was to try and work out how to get across the river to drive up the other side. Our very helpful Lonely Planet guide only had one town marked on that section of the map and that town's dot was placed very helpfully IN the river, making it a little difficult to program the GPS. The only town name I could remember seeing across the river was Assmannshausen. Not surprising that I remembered that one as I had already added it to my list of hilarious place names we had discovered. After a few slight detours we found ourselves on the East bank of the Rhine. The scenery was a little different and the road seemed to be a lot closer to the water. It is beautiful countryside along the Rhine with hills on either side of the river, covered in vineyards and with the odd castle here and there. The river itself is quite spectacular as it is very fast flowing and has a constant procession of long riverboats either carrying cargo or passengers with cameras. We drove all the way up to Koblenz on the East bank and unfortunately ran out of time to stop at the most magnificent of all the castles, Marksburg Castle
Bacharach
. I convinced Matt to stop in the town of Braubach at least for a quick photo of the castle but time was getting away for us to get to Amsterdam.Again despite our GPS telling us it was only a 4 hour drive, it took us more like 6 hours as we hit heavy traffic around Cologne and Dusseldorf. It seems that the German autobahns are so close to capacity that something as simple as an on ramp makes the traffic back up for miles. So much for German engineering. Things improved for a while as we crossed the border into the Netherlands. It is amazing also how the scenery can change so dramatically in the space of 100 km or so. Instead of the rich wine-growing valley and enormous river, we were now driving past low-lying pastures full of grazing cattle and windmills. Unfortunately our good run didn't last long as it took us over an hour to make the final 40km into Amsterdam due to an accident on the ring road.
Another late arrival at our hotel at 8pm found us too exhausted to even consider going into town, so we found ourselves at Burger King next to the hotel. I suppose you are wondering why I would bother including a greasy fast food meal, which is the same the world over, into a blog for you all to read. Well it was memorable as we can officially say that we met the stupidest person in the world at that Burger King working behind the counter. It was incredible that this kid could even walk upright and had remembered to breathe for the last 18 or so years. First he didn't know what was on the menu as when we ordered it he just looked at us blankly. We pointed to the menu to get him to understand that we wanted 2 Whopper meals. Still no success, so the manager came over, punched it into the register for him and took our money. He then had the little docket in his hand which said 2 Whopper meals and he still gave us the wrong food. The manager had to come over and help him again. At first we thought it was because we didn't speak Dutch, but the menu was all in English and he was just as bad with all the Dutch people that came in as well. It really was the day of stupid people today.
