The last two days have been stark contrasts. From downtown Gotham to the epitome of a German village. It is like being transported back in time, or expanding the German area of Disneyland. Our time in the Rhine Valley has been very enjoyable. The only problem has been with transportation.
Our morning started out well. We caught the 7:30 am train to Koblenz so we could start early in Cochem and our tour of Reinfelds Castle. At Koblenz we changed over from standard trains to what they call milk-run trains that stop at all the little towns. This is also where our time tables started slipping. Because the train to Koblez ran late, we missed the connection to Cochem and had to wait for the next one.
Once in Cochem, we had a great walk through town to Reinfelds Castle. The town was picturesque and we had a great time meandering.
One of our stops was to get some apple strudel. A far cry from the turnover style strudels I have had before and even better than the strudel I had in Deusseldorf about 10 years ago.
The castle was impressive. We took the tour so we could see inside, but didn't know the inside had been styled after the 19th century aristocrats who restored it. Apparently, though built around the year 1000, it had been empty for a few hundred years after the French destroyed it in the 1600s. But it was fascinating all the same.
Leaving Cochem for St. Goar (pronounced Sankt Guar), took some effort to avoid missing the next train, but proved futile because we missed the connecting train in Koblenz. After waiting a little more, we caught the train to St. Goar and bought passage on the Rhine cruise. Here again, the connecting times compounded and while we just missed a boat, the next one didn't leave for an hour and a half.
St. Goar was a great town. They had bakeries with things like rhubarb strudel and a cream strudel. But it was the coucou clock shop that held our interest. We couldn't afford any, but it was great to look at them all.
Alicia and I found a great German restaurant on the bank of the Rhine that served spätzle. Probably my biggest embarrassment came when I tried to say what I wanted to eat. I have been pronouncing spätzle as spatezel. I only received blank looks when I asked for it that way. Then I was informed that it is pronounced spetzla with the "e" like the e in Ted. Wow. I thought I had that one.
But it was delicious. I had the spätzle with goulash while Alicia had it with schweinschnitzel (pork schnitzel). By the way, Weinerschnitzel means Viennese schnitzel and in our experience here that means it is made of veal.
The cruise of the Rhine started just across the street from the restaurant. I liked the views it afforded us of the banks and some of the castles along the way. There were hundreds of little kingdoms set-up before Germany became a country. Each of these robber barons would build a castle, many along the Rhine and charge a tariff to go up or down their section. With the Rhine being a main transportation path for goods and 10 tariff kingdoms along the short ride we took from St. Goar to Bacharach, it was easy to see why merchants were in favor of nation states.
At Bacharach, our last delay happened. We had just missed the train to Mainz and our connection to Frankfurt and then on to Berlin. As we sat waiting for the next train, the ramifications started to hit me. We could be in trouble getting back tonight. We were far enough off plan that by the time we would get to Frankfurt it would be about 9:00 pm. With Berlin 4-5 hours from there and most trains stopping about 1:00 am, we would be catching the last train.
But as we got off the train in Frankfurt and read the departures, we saw that the day of delays had finally caught up to us. The last train for Berlin left about 10 minutes before we arrived. A check of the night trains that would get us there early morning showed that all the seats, bunks, and berths were sold out. We were stuck until 5:00 am.
It is some kind of lame justice that the only place outside of Berlin that we will have stayed for two nights is Frankfurt, the place I said we never wanted to go to again. Why couldn't we have been stranded in Munich or any of the storybook towns?
Frankfurt didn't disappoint on the second night. We found a hotel really close to the station that was reasonable in price, but still felt like we were staying in an inner city. Hot, cramped, stinky. Oh, and did I mention that the women's World Cup was playing tonight in Frankfurt and all the hotels in town are full and the only room at this hotel left was on the 5th floor - without an elevator.
We were full from dinner, so we went to bed right away so we could get up at 4:00 am and catch the first train out.
No comments:
Post a Comment