After preparing the night before, we got up early to head off to Remagen. Given that Corona restrictions are still in place we decided to take a train instead of flying over this time. After our visit to Föhr, both Manja and I had discovered that we actually prefer train travel. Usually, though, it’s more expensive and slower to travel by train, so we fly. Now it really is ideal.
As is the way with the vast majority of the trains, we traveled without any issues, using the time to write my blog, read and relax. We even had a home-made couscous salad which we brought along for a late brunch. By around noon we arrived in Remagen feeling quite fit, and Stefan was nice enough to pick us up. He’s got a guest room where we were welcome to spend a few days, which really is luxury while traveling!
On the move and blogging
At his place we had some lunch and got settled in before Alex, Angi and the family joined us for a bit. The kids seem to have a new game: Playing horsey, by either trotting the “horses” in a circle on the lawn, or, if the “horse” seems willing, riding them around. It wasn’t long before they took Stefan for a trot, and then tried to get some of the other adult horses to play along. As it turns out, we were more like mules. Resistance caused bursts of energy and an attempts to get the adults moving by force: Put the reins around the hand and pull, while the others pushed. Manja cleverly side-stepped and tied them to me, where they discovered I was more of a stubborn donkey than a horse. As things were getting a bit energetic, we decided to go for a walk to the shores of the Rhine. I continued to be led along on my reign/leash, and occasionally, accidentally of course, got kids tied to each other and around trees. At the shore we spent about an hour skipping stones, and teaching the kids how to identify good skipping stones and skip them directly too. This, of course, did not stop them from bringing us small boulders to “try and skip” too – where the failure to skip delighted just as much as the occasional unexpected success.
As we headed back for dinner, the reign/leash was almost forgotten and left behind, but we went back and collected it just in time. The girls decided that they would take me back home a different route and we spent some time chatting about school and Australia and how strange it must be to have different seasons and move to another land. We got back just after the other adults and the horsing around continued immediately. I helped Stefan prepare some pizza but as we waited for it to cook things got wild again. Manja escaped into the bathroom, and climbed out of the window while the girls waited for her to open the door. After that she was deemed to be too clever to be tamed, and the focus returned to me. Which went okay until the metal clip on the leash bent out of shape when there were two kids hanging on it while I was holding it up. A few tears, an ice-pack and a small band-aid later we were having a really nice pizza dinner and everyone was quite calm. After dinner Stefan even repaired the clip, so the leash could be used again in the future.
As evening set in Alex and Angi headed home and we settled in for a quiet night. Manja had brought a Rommé deck, Stefan and Manja explained the rules and we played for the evening. By around 11pm Manja managed to walk away with the victory, and were were in bed just early enough that I didn’t have to wish her a happy birthday.
Stefan is a freelancer, so he was able to work around our visit. So when we got up around 9 he was already up and about, making us breakfast. Manja got a small gift from me and an awesome electronic paper plane from Stefan and his family. I can’t wait to try it out when we get home! After breakfast we headed over to the castle Eltz.
We expected that we would park somewhere, tour the castle and drive home. Instead we parked, hiked 20 minutes to the idyllic castle and waited in line for a ticket. Due to Corona they can only admit 200 people at once, so the line progressed slowly as people left. We spent about 30 minutes in line, chatting the time away before we got in. The process was annoying but professional – you got a visitor pass, tickets to the two tours and an wristband identifying around when they expected you to leave again. The whole castle had been setup to have only one-way walking paths, so you had to go through everything in a pre-set order. This was okay, because you saw everything, but annoying because you had to wait in line at the tours again. The tour through the internals of the castle were really interesting – I learned a few new things.
The “Erker” (Bays) at the side of castles were added as a prayer space. It was added for two reasons: First, you could close the door, and with that the separation of church and private life. Second, you could not have anyone move above the altar – so no one could stand above god.
The lords beds were raised and boxed with logical purpose: Hot air rises, so between this and heavy curtains, one could sleep comfortably even in winter. You did, however, have to literally “climb into bed” which is where that turn of phrase comes from.
Candles and other fire-based lights were rare as the rooms were often flammable, and fire considered a real risk. Instead, benches were built into the windows, to allow for the use of as much day-light as possible.
Carpets were used to decorate walls to present an interesting and beautiful thing to look at, but even more importantly to insulate the rooms.
Kitchens often had parts of their walls turned into cupboards, essentially giving them an old-school fridge by utilising the cold of the thick castle walls.
Even the rich did not live long – their average age did not pass 50.
After our tour, we spent some more time in line waiting for the treasure chamber, where only 24 people could be at once, to have a spare slot. The chamber was nice, but not spectacular. Unfortunately it was forbidden to take photos of any of the internal areas 🙁
With the tour and the standing in line two hours had passed, and it was time for us to return to Stefan’s house. On our way there Stefan and I discussed the issues with multi-generational wealth and privilege until Manja got sick of us and changed to lighter topics of conversation. When we got back it was time for Stefan to spend some time with his daughter and Manja and I to head over to Alex and Angis place. We toured their house a bit, because they are doing a fantastic job at restoring a 1938 house bit-by bit. It’s a massive project, and the progress each time is amazing – this time additional walls had appeared in the top floor where there are now two rooms for the kids. The parents bedroom is now in progress, and I’m sure it’ll look just as fantastic when we come by again next time.
We had dinner together and Stefan and his family came and joined us. After dinner Manja got an awesome present from the whole group: She adopted an Orange-tree in Spain. I’d not heard of crowd farming before and was pretty amazed. Basically you help a farmer by supporting them financially and you get some sort of benefit for this – like Kickstarter for farms.
Eventually the kids headed to bed while we played a round of Level 8, which I accidentally won, before we headed back with Stefan for the night.
The next morning Stefan’s daughter woke us around 9, asking why we sleep so long. I explained that we were on holidays 😅
She had to stay home because she was a bit sniffly, and with the Corona rules even the slightest suspicion of sick meant a day at home. We spent the morning with her and Stefan before heading over to Angi for a day hiking a small part of the red-wine hiking trail in the region. When we arrived at her place we first got fed some nice chili sin carne before heading over to the train station. The train ride would have been uneventful, except that we were traveling at school-end time, meaning that all available seats filled two stations before we had to get off, and we got to observe the standard teenage shenanigans going on in the train. When we got off we headed straight for the top of the hills and to the hiking trail. It really was beautiful, and we had perfect weather for it. Not too hot, but not cold at all. We even walked slightly further than Angi had before, and found a few hills which made us sweat more than a bit. By the time we got back to town Angi and I wanted a coffee and Manja wasn’t super happy heading into a cafe all sweated through, but came along while complaining a little bit. The train ride back was a great way to relax after the day walking and we got back a bit after Alex had returned from work, just in time for dinner. One of the games which Angi and Alex had but had never played is Rummycub, so we set it up and I explained the rules to them. Their daughter and I proceeded to win a bunch of games as a team effort 🙂
Not long after we headed back to Stefan’s, and continued the night with a game of Rummy before dropping into bed near midnight again.
And just like that we were at the end of our stay in Remagen. Wednesday morning we slowly packed up and headed to the train station, taking a short detour to the shore of the Rhine again. As there was a bunch of issues with the train network, our trip from Remagen to Wiesbaden, which is usually around 2 hours, took 4 hours today. None the less, we arrived in good spirit to a very very happy Doris. We settle in for a bit, but had to head off again a short while later. Manjas Aunt Jana and her family were coming by to visit as they live only about 30 minutes away. Jana had night shift, so we all decided to have dinner a bit earlier around 17:00 at one of the local restaurants near Doris’ place. It was a super nice evening, but Jana had to head off to night shift, so we split our ways around 20:00. When we got back we spent a bit of time talking and making plans for the next few days, before having a reasonably early night.
On Thursday was Doris’ birthday, so we had arranged a boats tour. Before we headed off though, the whole family and all of her Friends had already called to wish her a happy birthday. When we got to the ship, the ticket-sales booth hadn’t opened yet, but there was a bunch of people waiting. We joined the line and they opened up just in time for us to get a ticket and head on board. We had breakfast as we watched the shoreline go by, traveling through the well-known wine region. We passed many interesting places, I never knew how many castles there were in the region. There were also a couple of places which inspired different legends. One of the places was the famous Mouse tower and another the famous Loreley – a pretty lady whose looks caused many a sailors demise. When we got to the end of the trip we jumped into the train to head back to Rüdesheim where we took a cable car to the Niederwalddenkmal which is a victory statue dedicated to the feeling of the German Rhine area from the French in 1871. (Colloquially, the statue to the only war Germany ever won). We wanted to have a small lunch and headed to a cafe in the wine hills at the foot of the statue, where there is a little hidden cafe with a great view. Manja ordered herself an ice-cream while Doris and I had what amounts to a BLT on a Panini. It wasn’t bad at all, but massive and not all that special either. Full of food we decided to take on the descent by foot, having seen nice sweeping paths on our way up from the cable car.
In google we trust, I said, as we headed off. It wasn’t long before we found ourselves heading down a wine-hill. Keep in mind that Doris is over 80, so I was impressed that she was okay going cross-country with us. Two more hills later the cross-country path we were traveling down ended in a massive cravice. Manja and I may have been able to jump across, but there was no way Doris would make such a jump. So back up the hill we went. Doris was not happy with this ascend at all – which was totally fair enough, it was STEEP. We got to the top and laughed about it in retrospect though, crossed the crevice at a small bridge and headed back to the main road. We missed the train we were aiming for, but another was only 30 minutes after and we made that one comfortably.
As we hoped to get a car share car for Friday, there was one more thing for us to do. While Manja already headed back Doris and I made use of her ability to travel the trains for free and headed to town to get the car-share card. Think of a hotel room key, but for unlocking car share cars. Just one problem: It was at the main train station “Bus stop A”.
Sounds easy enough, but all the bus stations had numbers not letters. Poor Doris had to do another lap of the train station with me before we found them: the local buses (as in, not the ones going to other cities) had the letter-based stations. And right next to stop A was a little glass house. We got the key card and I jumped onto my mobile to book one of the cars I had seen standing around…. only to notice that no available car was in the area. The concept of car-sharing was new to Doris, so I had to explain that it didn’t mean that we had a specific car. As there was no way for her to walk another 20 minutes to a car, we took a taxi to pick up our car-sharing car 😅
Once there, though the process was easy. We jumped in and drove back to Doris’s place, parked in the street and all was well. We had planned to go out for dinner, but we were not really that hungry, and we were definitely all tired. So we ordered some pizza instead and played Uno for the whole night.
It really was a fantastic day, full of adventure.
On Friday we decided to head out and check out some pretty cool history at the Roman Fort Saalburg, which was one of the forts guarding the so-called Limes. This was basically a border line of the Roman Empire; not so much in the sense of a defensible line but one which stopped people on either side driving stock or large good across. Individuals could cross without much of a problem, but larger groups would be seen by watchtowers – these were not well defended either, but were in turn the domain of the forts. Attack a tower and the fort would respond. As such, it was easy enough to get in and out of the Roman Empire, so long as you essentially used the doors they permitted.
We spent most of the day there, and even had an excellent lunch at the cafeteria. I do enjoy historic sites like this a lot, and this one also included some excellent exhibits on how tradesmen back in the roman days plied their trade. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who loves this type of history! In the afternoon we headed back to Doris’s place and had dinner at the local Greek restaurant once more before catching the train back the next morning.
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