Home in Germany, Bacharach and Cologne

May 30 - June 7: Not much new to report here, we spent most of this time relaxing in Wutha Farnroda, my dad got into town while we were off in Amsterdam. We have spent the last week doing some errands, working in the yard, and meeting some of my dad's friends and a few different bbq's...German style...lots of bratwurst and beer. We also went to Church in the woods to see Eric's Dad sing in the chior (yes in German!). We didn't really understand anything that was going on but there was some cool music, check out the horns in the pictures. They also served beer at this Church Festival (very cool).

June 8: Grabbed another bus and train ride out of WF this morning and traveled to the Rhine valley...where we stayed in a small town called Bacharach. When we got off the train, we hopped onto rocky grassy ground, not exactly what we have been accustomed to, while arriving in big cities. The town had one 'major' street and the street we stayed on was actually more what I would call a sidewalk/alley...let's just say you couldn't drive your SUV down it. We stayed with a lady named Irmgard Orth, she rented out a couple of rooms and was a very sweet old lady. She spoke practically no English but was overly excited about our attempts to converse with her in German. She served homemade honey and jams with breakfast. We ended up buying a jar of honey...as the Germans say 'Es Schmeckt'. It was very hot but did a Rick Steves walking tour of the town and climbed another crap load of steps to Burg Stahleck Castle, it now operates as a youth hostel and is very well preserved, we hung out there a little while and enjoyed the views of the Rhein valley. During our walking tour we also saw a few of the high water marks (popular in Germany) where past flood waters have risen too. Very much of the town wall is still intact and we had dinner outdoors on the top of it at a place called Land Restaurant Stuber then followed that up with wine tasting at Weingut Karl Heidrich. Although the picture doesn't do it justice a GIANT BEE was flying around the entire time we were in the restaurant. After kidding Leslie about it crawling on her shoulder when we lost sight of it, she later fled from our bench seat only to point and tell me to stay still while she escaped and the bee slowly crawled up my back onto my shoulder...finally my life was saved as she swatted the bee away from a distance.

June 9: Took the Rhine river boat an hour down the river to St. Goar for the day. This was a quick 45 minute ride passing the famous Loreley along the way. The Loreley is actually only a big cliff along the Rhein, but has a tale that goes along with it of a beautiful women that sung a song that often led sailors to their fate, with their ships running aground. When we passed by this point all of the German tourists began to sing Heinrich Heine's Song of Loreley. Pretty amazing considering the reserved German culture and stereotype. We spent the day in St. Goar touring the Burg Rheinfels Castle ruins. Very cool place with lots of good views. During its heyday the castle was capable of housing the 4000 townspeople during seighes. They were capable of survival for six months with their own pantry, slaughterhouse, wine cellar, prison, etc... We took an optional detour or the 'fox hole' which was a series of tunnels only three feet high, that were used to set explosives against enemy attacks underground outside the walls of the castle. These tunnels provided them a means to kill hundreds of would be attackers at a time. The ones we were in were never blown up. So to the exciting part...the length of the tunnel was 600 feet long, assuming no wrong turns are made, and yes there were several turns to be made. It was recommended to use a flashlight, but if you were overly prepared like us you could wing it with a couple of candles (only 50 cents each). There were many alternate routes, not clearly marked, luckily with the directions from our book we were able to make it though. It was a scary experience, because it is literally pitch black, wet with muddy slippery floors and with the candle light it was impossible to see any of the wall markings that we would eventually recognize when looking at our pictures later. We were both about ready to turn around after the first corner and realization we had no idea what we were doing and we were all by ourselves...but we went for it anyway. Later that day we took another boat back to Bacharach and went out for wine tasting at another location. This time we were given 15 glasses to taste, after polishing off the first one the waitress informed us we weren't supposed to drink the whole glass at once...apparently she didn't really understand why we were 'tasting' the wine.


June 10: Took the train this morning to Cologne for a quick one day visit. We added Cologne in since we were going to pick up my mom from Frankfurt the following day. It was Leslie's first trip there and she definitely thought it was worth it to see the Kolner Dom (Cologne Cathedral). It is probably one of the most impressive Cathedrals I have ever seen with thousands of stained glass windows that were preserved during the second world war by being stored underground in what is now the German Roman Museum. We completed the hike to the top of the bell tower, 400 plus steps, the last 100 or so are up the center of one of the towers in a metal scaffolding, Leslie was about ready to turn around as we were both feeling a little weak in the knees and stomach. The final few step were up a small spiral staircase that let to the landing above, we spent the next ten minutes or so watching the faces of other tourists reaching the 'summit'. Pretty entertaining. Besides that we didn't do too much there, we had dinner at a big tourist spot, it used to be the 'Kolsch' brewery...now they just serve the local beer there and local food.