Germany - Part 1

Monday 21 July

A couple of minutes from our parking spot we visited Matthiaskirke. It really stood out on the road in pastel colours. It was open, despite being only 8:30 so we went in for a look but I felt it was a bit plain and similar to many other churches we have visited. We drove further in to park closer to the central area and we re fortunate to find a meter park really close and beside the Keiserthermen, old roman baths created by Constantine. Not much left of them except some of the underground heating system and a section of rounded wall in the Roman style of thin red and white bricks.

Nearby to here is the pink coloured prince-electors’ residence which has lovely gardens with so many different coloured flowers all out in bloom and statues lining the path around. Beside this is the Konstantinbasilika. It is now a protestant church but was originally built as Constantine’s throne hall. Inside it is rectangular and 67m long and 36m high. The walls are bare stone and they have set up lots of chairs inside and a simple altar at the top.

We walked along a street to arrive at the Liebfrauenkirche, which is one of germany’s earliest Gothic churches. They are currently doing some serious renovation work to this and it was completely shut of to visitors. Right beside this and connected in the Dom, the city’s main cathedral. It was reportedly given to the church by Constantine’s mother and was built on top of her palace. This is incredible inside. There are a lot of carvings done entirely out of marble with amazing details. There is also a well-carved stone pulpit and the organ just seems to hang from the roof. At the end behind the altar in a locked chest behind glass doors is reportedly the seamless robe of Christ. I believe it was first documented in the church in around the 12th century. It is surrounded by even more elaborate carvings (if that was even possible!). We also found a door leading out into a cloister-type area that had gravestones.

We then walked into the Hauptmarkt where the farmers go to sell their produce. We brought up big on fresh fruit and I took those back to the van and to put some more money in the meter as the two hours we had paid for had just flown by. I then met up with Dave again at the Porta Nigra – the Black Gate. Reportedly built in the 2nd century when this was a capital of the Roman empire, it is held together only by iron rods and gravity. An amazing piece of Roman ingenuity the blocks sit together amazingly snug. The rocks have gone black with age, hence the name. On the outside to the city it has round towers on each side of the gate but from the other side it is all square with one noticeable tower on the left hand side. We climbed up to the top, which has great views over to the Hauptmarkt.

We walked back again through the Hauptmarkt. This is such a pretty square it would be possible to just sit there and enjoy the sights and atmosphere for an afternoon. Coloured buildings and all unique with the tower of St Gangolf-Kirche in the background. We visited the church, which is entered through a well-carved portal but the inside was not so big as we supposed and not very exciting – painted stone walls rather than carvings or stained glass were the main thing that stood out to me so it is really the outside that is most appealing.

We made our way gradually back to the van from here stopping to get some supplies for lunch. We got back about 1 minute before the meter expired so that was fortunate. We decided to make a start towards the Moselle Valley and stopped for lunch at a parking place along the motorway.

The drive along the river when we turned off the motorway was beautiful. Lots of small German villages and vineyards. Most of the vineyards are being grown on what looks like impossibly steep hillside but they apparently produce some very good wine here (not that we stopped to taste anything!).

We have stopped for the night in the town of Cochem. We stopped early and were able to find a place that had some powered sights available as we desperately needed to charge the camera batteries (I didn’t have a camera today because the battery was flat) and the laptop. We found a supermarket and finally did a proper shop so had a fabulous dinner of vegetables and finished off with fresh strawberries with melted chocolate! YUM!

Tuesday 22 July

Today we had a rather slow start. Dave went for a walk to take some photos and I relaxed at the campground. We had a bit of drama last night when we lost our electricity and the office was closed so we haven’t been able to re-charge as much as we would like. Probably came from using too many different things at once.

Our first task was to try and find a mechanic to fix our squeaking timing belt and asked in the visitor centre and was directed to one not far away. Fortunately he was able to tighten it to stop making any more noise but we were told it is stretched to the limit so needs replacing. He directed us to the Ford dealer about 10 minutes away where we got a new one – just need to fit it now.

David wanted to drive back to a previous town that was very picturesque and had a ruined castle above it so we did that (I don’t know the name of it) and then drove back to Cochem. We had to park a little way out of town with the other campervans and then walked through the town up to the castle. We walked through the square with its very Arabian-looking church turret and pained buildings with part wood.

The Reichsburg is incredible. It sits right up on a hill looking down to the village and the river and is very fairy-tale like with a large middle tower and plenty of turrets all around. We got there just in time for their near-last tour after a very steep uphill climb. The tour was mostly in German but the guide had translations on handouts which he handed out at the start and was happy for us to ask questions in the rooms themselves. He interchanged easily between German, French, English and Dutch!

We visited about seven rooms. The history of the castle is very old, with the middle tower dating back to 1000 AD. Unfortunately is was pretty much destroyed by the French in 1689 and remained a ruin for about 200 years when it was reconstructed according to old plans by a Mr Louis Ravene. The Reich made him sell it to them in 1942 but it is now owned by the town. Only the bottom floors are furnished and these are to a more nineteenth century design for a rich-man’s chateau.

We visited the Dining Hall with lovely wood-carvings (mostly biblical scenes) and the ceiling is wood and decorated with poker-work (the patterns are burnt in and then painted). We were told that the ceilings in each room are completely unique, there is never one the same, which was true. There is a pretend door in this room for symmetry and although it down actually work, only opens onto a plastered wall.

We also visited the Gothic Room, named for the brightly painted and vaulted ceiling and the Romanesque Room which is also named for it’s ceiling. This room was interesting because it has two secret doors, both opened by little discreet buttons set into the floor. One of them has a spiral staircase that led down into the rock to the former monastery. The other one goes upstairs to the bedrooms.

The next room was just a small room with views out across the courtyard and views out the window down along the river. We also went into the Hunters room that had a massive boar’s head on the wall (that would have weighed 400 pounds) along with lots of antlers and a few other things. An interesting feature in this room was some tankards that are from the 15th century. These each held a monk’s allocated wine ration for the day, which was 5 litres. I am guessing they would have been quite drunk by the end of the day! This is also shown by the room because the doors are quite special. They are nicely decorated but to a purpose that a drunken man need to unlock the door to pass into the next room was guided by raised bits on the door into the keyhole.

The Knight’s Room was the biggest room, set up to look medieval. There are two sculpted lions on the fireplace, both with shields and are wearing helmets with the visors down. Funnily though the pointed visor makes them look more like frogs.

We went onto the balcony, passing through the weapons room, with amazing views over the countryside. There we went outside to the courtyard and the old well. It is 150 feet deep and our guide illustrated this by throwing a pannier of water down the well and we could hear it splash over the guards but took about 10 seconds before we heard the faint splash of the water hitting below. The last thing to see was the witch’s tower, which is round and probably the only surviving part of the original castle as it has quite old rocks and fashioned more roughly.

We then walked down through the town again and travelled to the castle of Burg Eltz. We walked down to the castle, which is very picturesque nestled amongst the trees on a small hill and has many turrets. We are camping in the carpark for the night.

Wednesday 23 July

A car did go past about 11 pm so the family must have been staying there but they probably didn’t see us so we were undisturbed until the morning when the gate man came to collect his three euros parking fee. Burg Eltz is an incredible place. I learnt that it is named for the river Eltz, which does a horseshoe around the castle. Also while now it looks to be out of the way, this was once on the path of the medieval trade route going down to the Rhine. The castle itself is also made up of actually three living sections for three parts of the family. They still visit the castle very regularly but no-one lives their full time. The lower part of the castle is set up in the old style with dining rooms, bedrooms, hunting rooms, etc. (The families more modern suites are on the top floors.) We got to see quite a few rooms and the tour was surprisingly long as we were not rushed to look at the rooms but could take our time.

We arrived in Koblenz, the beginning of the “Romantic Rhine” and went to visit Festung Ehrenbreitstein, a massive fortress on the bank of the Rhine that looks over to the town of Koblenz and the Deutsches Eck, a promontory built ona sandback at the confluence of the Moselle and the Rhine. (We did not go into the town though to visit this spot). The fortress was indestructible to all by Napoleon’s troops who levelled it in 1801 but a few years later the Prussians took the challenge to build one of Europe’s mightiest fortresses and finished in 1832. We mostly just walked around the buildings here as except for that one great view there was not really too much to see. They are also building a massive garden out the front for some thing in 2011 so there was a lot of works being done.

We continued down the river to Schloss Stolzenfels a few kilometres away. An impressive castle with crenellations and orange towers. Again rebuilt by the Prussians (in particular the future king, Freidrich Wilhelm IV) after being destroyed by the French it is in pretty much the same state now as when the king left it. There was a lovely fountain garden with bright flowers. When we went inside to the rooms we were given big felt slippers to put on over our shoes to visit the rooms. We sort of had to slide our way around as the floors were all wooden (free floor polish by the visitors!).

Driving along the river we stopped several times to take photographs. The castle of Marksburg across the river quite enamoured us with it’s big white tower and the tower is unique in that it has a normal looking part but then like an extra smaller tower sitting on top of it. We visited briefly the town of Boppard, which is much bigger than I had expected. There was a few interesting buildings and the main square was nice but otherwise lacked the charms of some of the other towns we have visited.

We found a nice campsite outside the town back a little way. The reception was closed but we asked in the restaurant and they said to just choose a site and pay in the morning. We walked a long way down the site, which stretches along the river and found the perfect campsite. We were asked not to choose the side by the river but there were lots on the other side of the road and no-one in front so we had a perfect view of the river and practically no-one near us either so it was very peaceful.

Thursday 24 July

We had a very relaxing breakfast overlooking the river then drove a little way back to take some photographs of a very interesting castle across the river then went up the Sesselbahn (chair lift) outside of Boppard. It is a rather old-looking system and is quite slow – takes about 20 minutes to reach the top. Once at the top there is an incredible view over the horseshoe bend in the Rhine that is on many postcards and down to the town. We also saw some paragliders taking off from the side of the hill. They would get their canopy up with the wind and just sort of jump and it would take them up. They made it look really easy. The journey down on the chair was better than the way up because we could look out and really enjoy the view in front of us (and take my mind off how rickety the chair seemed).

We then drove to the town of St Goar to visit Burg Reinfels an incredible fortress looking down to the river. It has a fascinating history in that it was built in 1245 and was just a small fortress to protect the owners toll station on the river below. Ten years later it withstood a 15 month siege. Over time it passed to various people, one whom converted the fortress into a palace for living in then it was transformed again into a mighty fortress. It was quite impregnable and the only reason it is a ruin today is because the owner at the time surrendered to the French, who then destroyed it. Currently we can still see the original medieval interior and the fortifications around the outside. The fortifications have multiple levels in them with a labyrinth of passages running between. There are two suggested tours through the fort, one through each section.

We did the medieval tour first, going through the original tours and I guess the more “romantic” part of the fortress. It is a shame that it was so destroyed and then lots of the material was transported to built a palace down the river. We climbed up the clock tower which has great views down to the river and the town. We next did the fortifications tour and this was lots of fun as we got to explore some of the tunnels that exist throughout. We didn’t have a torch, which would have been very useful as some tunnels we could not look at. There was a one metre high escape tunnel that lead from the lower moat defences up into the battlements with other tunnels branching off, but this one was too dark to explore with proper lighting. We did go into a couple of really dark tunnels without being really sure of where they went and using only the flashes on our cameras to see the way. one went down a spiral staircases into a dark tunnel that was sloping downwards but fortunately we came out somewhere though so we didn’t get to any dead ends! This is certainly one of the more fun places to explore.

The next town along was Oberwesel. The highlight here was that we could walk along a long section of the town wall. There used to be 16 towers around the wall. There was one really interesting tower that looks like someone lives in now. Very tall and has what looks like a smaller tower again just on the top. We are seeing a few of these and it seems like it is a German idea. We also visited the church St Martinskirche – also known as the white church. It is white with pink being used to highlight the corners like brickwork. One end there is an old tower that does not really match the church and this was once used in the towns defences.

We are spending the night in Bacharach in the carpark there that allows overnight camping. We took a walk through the town towards sunset and are very taken with it. Everywhere there are cute half-timbered houses (all looking rather wonky) and small streets. We walked past the church that is pink and white to a ruined church, Wernerkapelle. From there we spotted a tower that looked accessible and had to go through some small streets and through a vineyard to get to. The views from the top were incredible looking out over the town and along the river. We stayed until it was almost too dark to see then went and found the only place open, which was a kebab (kebap!) shop that does pizza and went back to the van to eat it.

Friday 25 July

Well the end of our first week. Today we had a very busy day to fit in everything we needed to achieve. We got up early and went to visit Burg Sooneck, about 8 km from where we stayed at Bacharach. It is right up on a hill and has a high tower but not particularly big. We had a look at the outside and got to stand on one of the smaller towers for lovely views.

The second castle, Burg Reichenstein we missed as it was sitting well back into the trees on the hill so we kept going to Burg Rheinstein. This was a really interesting castle. We had to walk up a steep switchback path to get to it. It has been extensively renovated and the drawbridge and portcullis at the gate are still in working order. We started in the moat and worked our way around, visiting the small chapel that sits to the side and has a lower section with tombs of previous emperors that used to own the castle. Nearby is a garden with a 500 year old grapevine (apparently the grapes still taste good.) We went inside and saw some of the armour and hunting trophies on the wall. Then it goes up to another garden and we were able to climb up to the high tower via a rather old-looking metal staircase. The views over the Rhine was amazing. The rest of the house was the ladies bedrooms and then the gentlemens rooms. One room is still how it was when the family purchased it in 1975 to show how much they had to do to restore it.

We could see Burg Reichenstein from this castle but decided it didn’t look interesting enough so kept on going.

We stopped briefly in Bingen. The main attraction there is Burg Klopp which has views over the town and has a tower that is free to climb and has great views. From Bingen we went on a whirlwind cathedral tour. We started in Mainz, with its large cathedral that the guidebook highly recommended. It is a reddy colour with an octagonal tower on top. Mass was on when we arrived and we visited the cloister area first, which was nice. Inside was a big disappointing. It had a large use of space with paintings up between the arches but was otherwise quite bare.

We kept going to the famed city of Worms. We were fortunate to get a great parking place only a couple of hundred metres from the church. Very impressive, we had seen it from quite a distance. It is most famous for its four towers, two at each end. Unfortunately one of them was completely covered up by scaffolding and some plastic looking stuff. There was also some function thing with tents obstructing the view at one end. Inside was rather incredible with the high alter covered in lots of gold. We went down into the crypt which has some old stone coffins in there. While we were in town we drove over the bridge over the Rhine which has a huge gate from the old wall over it that the cars can drive through.

Our last main destination was the town of Speyer to visit their world heritage Romanesque Cathedral. The outside is very interesting with red and yellow sandstone dominating the front and a variety of brickwork on the other parts. Inside is very vast but not particularly exciting (in my opinion anyway). The best this about this cathedral is the crypt underneath. It is quite colourful with the same red and yellow sandstone used for the archways (very similar to Cordoba’s mosque in fact but this one is supposed to be Roman built). There is also a set of old tombs here dating back to around the second century. They had been covered up for centuries and only recently has that area been excavated, which explains their amazing state with the original carvings on the stone.

The main pedestrianised street outside leads down to the Altportel, which is the city’s western gate and all that remains of the wall. It has a large clock in it and a smaller thing below, which I think is supposed to be the minutes but we couldn’t see how that worked. We also discovered two other interesting churches. One with minaret-style towers and another with an awesome gothic tower and red and green tiled roof.

We couldn’t find anywhere to camp near Speyer and ended up driving all the way back to Bingen and just made it to a site before they closed up for the night at 10 pm. Very much looking forward to a rest tomorrow!