Germany's Rhine Valley

After a week in Italy, we're back in Germany to tour the romantic Rhine valley, also known as Germany's castle region. Our destination was Cochem, a small town in the shadows of a castle on the Mosel River (which feeds into the Rhine). Cochem is just a few hours by train to Basel where we fly back to the States in a few days, so it seemed like a good idea to make one last stop before our vacation was over. Our Ryanair flight took us to Frankfurt Hahn airport which is nowhere near Frankfurt, but it's a short bus ride from the airport to Cochem. So we waited by the bus stop for a bus, but a taxi came instead. The fare was cheap, so we hopped in for a dizzying, stomach-turning ride up and down mountain roads. Fortunately, the ride was only 30 minutes, but it seemed much longer than that.

In Cochem, our home was at Weingut Rademacher, a bed and breakfast on a vineyard next to the train station. As soon as we checked in, we rented bikes and started exploring the town. I even took the bike on a boat to Beilstein, the next town over and rode back along the Mosel River. The weather was good and life was easy. But as we looked around, we didn't see many people our age. It seemed that all the tourists in the area are retired folks in their 60s. And the food in the restaurants reflected this. It seemed that almost every restaurant in town served the exact same menu -- tomato soup, schnitzel, and bratwurst. Fortunately, we found a Turkish döner kebab place to tide us over until we got back to civilization.

I don't know why, but I'm a big fan of fairy tale castles. Maybe it's all those Disney movies I watched when I was a kid or maybe I'm just a hopeless romantic, but one of my favorite movies is Miyazaki's Castle in the Sky. To fulfill my castle fantasy, I wanted to visit Burg Eltz, a castle hidden deep in the forest near a town called Moselkern just up the Mosel River. This castle has been in the Eltz family for over 800 years and is one of the very few castles that was never abandoned or destroyed. According to Rick Steves, the hike to the castle from Moselkern was supposed to be magical and Burg Eltz was supposed to be Rick's favorite castle in all of Europe. Unfortunately, neither the hike or the castle lived up to my fantasies. The only way to see the castle was with a guided tour and it seemed like our guide was still in training. We only got to see a small portion of the castle, perhaps eight rooms at most. Although the history was interesting, the overall experience was rather disappointing.

Instead, the real highlight of the Rhine valley turned out to be a steamboat ride from St. Goar to Bacharach. Many boats go up and down the Rhine, but there is only one Goethe, a paddle wheel steamer built in 1913 and is operated today by the KD Line. The Goethe only runs once a day, so with a little planning, we timed our train trip back to Basel with a scenic detour on a historic river boat.

Stepping onto the Goethe was like stepping through a time warp. This was truly a boat built for first class travel, complete with original art deco motifs and outfitted with beautiful wooden interiors. We chose the most romantic section of the Rhine for this cruise and we were not disappointed. There's nothing quite like having a cold Franziskaner wheat beer while watching fairy tale castles float by. If I were to do this over again, I would have planned more time on this boat so that we could have a sit down meal as well.

The train trip back to Basel itself was a scenic journey itself along the both the Mosel and Rhine rivers. We rode a combination of local trains, regional trains and the super-fast ICE. The Deutsche Bahn web site was so well designed that we were able to plan this whole itinerary using the Internet.

When we got back to Basel, we stayed with Immanuel for one more night before saying good-bye and heading to the airport once again for the flight home. It felt great to be home again. I was away for four weeks -- the longest I've ever been away from home. And it's going to take weeks to process this amazing trip.

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