We woke up about 8:00 am. I heard someone in the shower and assumed it was Liz. As I let myself out of the room I saw Holli coming out of the bathroom. He wanted it to be known that he was actually awake before either Liz or me. He got a pat on the back.
We had breakfast around the kitchen table and discussed the day’s plan. We thought about taking a train south along the Rhine River and hiking to some castles but wondered if the rain would ruin our plans. In his optimistic nature Holli said the rain will just make the Autumn colors more vibrant. We all agreed and decided to go get wet. Holli pulled out a small photo album and told us of the story of this Bachelor party. There is a German tradition were the friends of the groom would dress the groom up in silly clothes and make his do embarrassing things in exchange for money, like singing in a train station. Holli’s friends thought it would be fun for him to selling kisses for money. They made a t-shirt stating kisses for sale, blindfolded him and took him to a biker bar. It sounds like he actually enjoyed himself as we was being kissed by everyone in the bar, making over $100, I believe. The money always goes to buying beer for the friends.
As we stood at the train station I started wondering if I stood out as a tourist. Both Liz and Holli thought for a moment and then said, “Not at the moment.” But it wasn’t long before I brought out the digital and video cameras and stood out like a sore thumb. I asked this because in Korea it was always very obvious that I was a foreigner. But I thought in countries where I basically looked like everyone else that it wouldn’t be so obvious. There were several times where people looked at me and automatically spoke in English. So it must have been more obvious that I thought. Maybe it was the huge question mark blinking above my head.
We sat on the train and had some great conversation and finally pulled out the Solo cards. Solo is much like Uno so it wasn’t difficult to get into the game. It was pretty cool laughing and talking among friends while the Rhine River blurred by. I would glance out the window periodically and see the landscape of hillsides of wine grapes or small little villages built along the river with their stones churches.
Linz was the first stop. It was somewhat of a tourist town but we were there in the off season so it felt like we had the town pretty much to ourselves. We visited the big stone tower that was a bunker of sorts for black powder in many of the wars that plagued the area. Holli chipped off a couple pieces of the soft mortar. I stuck my piece in my bag hoping it would make it home without turning to sand (it made it).
We headed into the main town. It felt like a scene out of a Swiss movie or something with all the gingerbread looking shops and bakeries. I always thought of this style being in the Alps. But Holli told me this was also a typical German style.
As we passed one of the many bakeries in town I kept fighting off the temptation but I finally said I need to stop. I chose a gigantic piece of Apple crumb cake. It tasted as good as it looked. Both Holli and Liz ate a piece as well.
We then found a glass shop with a real life glass maker. He was in the process of building a vase of some kind, sticking the long pole into the huge oven. We could feel the heat from the fire 20 feet away. I can’t imagine how hot it was that close to the oven. The glass maker made the task look so easily making a glob of melting glass into a beautiful, detailed vase…all without a matter of a few minutes. We went inside the shop and picked out a couple items from the very reasonably priced shop. I picked out a Christmas ornament for Joni.
We checked out a dungeon like torture chamber that showed that various instruments and devices used for torture throughout history. We commented that these people had some wild imaginations. Gruesome!
In the local tourist shop there was a big mechanic windup clock that took up an entire wall. It must have been hundreds of years old but seemed to still work great. It also seemed to be all original. It used three large rectangle stones as the weights pulling all sorts of hand-made mechanics, eventually reaching the small clock. It was amazing to see how it all worked.
We got back on the train and headed further down south to a town called Koblenz, famous for the huge stone fortress that stood on top of the hill overlooking the Rhine and a places called The German corner.
We walked up to the fortress on a path on the Rhine side of the hill. There were great views all the way to the top. Every now and then you could catch glimpses of the actual fortress. The stone wall that bordered the path had little cutout areas just large enough to stick a rifle through. Or arrow? This place had a perfect vantage point of the entire area, overlooking where the Rhine and Mosel rivers met.
We toured the fortress for a couple of hours. It was breathtaking. We tried to imagine ourselves actually living in the time of King Arthur and could visualize how many thousands of people must have lived there throughout the years. It was a small city in itself. A history display told us that this old fortress was built on top of an older fortress on top of even and older fortress. We could see a couple spots where there was some archeology being done, assuming they were looking at the relics of the fortresses from the past.
We walked down from the fortress from the opposite side, winding ourselves down through a heavy forest. The leaves were just beginning to fall. Once in a while we would shuffle our feet through the piles of leaves laughing like children. We made it to the bottom ending up in another part of Koblenz. We were hungry so Holli ran into a store and bought us a package of cold meatballs. They tasted great.
It was beginning to get dark but Holli really wanted to visit the German Corner. Our feet were already killing us but we decided to go. There was a small bus system in the town but we thought it would be funner to walk along the river to the bridge, cross it, and make our way back toward the German Corner. It ended up being a long way and I could tell Liz was not real happy about using our feet rather than a bus. But she stayed patient and once we were past the point of exhaustion all was well again.
Holli and I climbed to the top of the memorial at the German Corner. It was pretty much dark by then so we didn’t have a great view but it was still very impressive. Liz stayed at the bottom to take our picture once we reached the top. This memorial represented the victory of a war and stood for unity for all of Germany. I was never good in History, even with a rather short history of that of the United States. Germany’s history goes back thousands of years. It was hard to imagine how many different things took place at these sites.
We had breakfast around the kitchen table and discussed the day’s plan. We thought about taking a train south along the Rhine River and hiking to some castles but wondered if the rain would ruin our plans. In his optimistic nature Holli said the rain will just make the Autumn colors more vibrant. We all agreed and decided to go get wet. Holli pulled out a small photo album and told us of the story of this Bachelor party. There is a German tradition were the friends of the groom would dress the groom up in silly clothes and make his do embarrassing things in exchange for money, like singing in a train station. Holli’s friends thought it would be fun for him to selling kisses for money. They made a t-shirt stating kisses for sale, blindfolded him and took him to a biker bar. It sounds like he actually enjoyed himself as we was being kissed by everyone in the bar, making over $100, I believe. The money always goes to buying beer for the friends.
As we stood at the train station I started wondering if I stood out as a tourist. Both Liz and Holli thought for a moment and then said, “Not at the moment.” But it wasn’t long before I brought out the digital and video cameras and stood out like a sore thumb. I asked this because in Korea it was always very obvious that I was a foreigner. But I thought in countries where I basically looked like everyone else that it wouldn’t be so obvious. There were several times where people looked at me and automatically spoke in English. So it must have been more obvious that I thought. Maybe it was the huge question mark blinking above my head.
We sat on the train and had some great conversation and finally pulled out the Solo cards. Solo is much like Uno so it wasn’t difficult to get into the game. It was pretty cool laughing and talking among friends while the Rhine River blurred by. I would glance out the window periodically and see the landscape of hillsides of wine grapes or small little villages built along the river with their stones churches.
Linz was the first stop. It was somewhat of a tourist town but we were there in the off season so it felt like we had the town pretty much to ourselves. We visited the big stone tower that was a bunker of sorts for black powder in many of the wars that plagued the area. Holli chipped off a couple pieces of the soft mortar. I stuck my piece in my bag hoping it would make it home without turning to sand (it made it).
We headed into the main town. It felt like a scene out of a Swiss movie or something with all the gingerbread looking shops and bakeries. I always thought of this style being in the Alps. But Holli told me this was also a typical German style.
As we passed one of the many bakeries in town I kept fighting off the temptation but I finally said I need to stop. I chose a gigantic piece of Apple crumb cake. It tasted as good as it looked. Both Holli and Liz ate a piece as well.
We then found a glass shop with a real life glass maker. He was in the process of building a vase of some kind, sticking the long pole into the huge oven. We could feel the heat from the fire 20 feet away. I can’t imagine how hot it was that close to the oven. The glass maker made the task look so easily making a glob of melting glass into a beautiful, detailed vase…all without a matter of a few minutes. We went inside the shop and picked out a couple items from the very reasonably priced shop. I picked out a Christmas ornament for Joni.
We checked out a dungeon like torture chamber that showed that various instruments and devices used for torture throughout history. We commented that these people had some wild imaginations. Gruesome!
In the local tourist shop there was a big mechanic windup clock that took up an entire wall. It must have been hundreds of years old but seemed to still work great. It also seemed to be all original. It used three large rectangle stones as the weights pulling all sorts of hand-made mechanics, eventually reaching the small clock. It was amazing to see how it all worked.
We got back on the train and headed further down south to a town called Koblenz, famous for the huge stone fortress that stood on top of the hill overlooking the Rhine and a places called The German corner.
We walked up to the fortress on a path on the Rhine side of the hill. There were great views all the way to the top. Every now and then you could catch glimpses of the actual fortress. The stone wall that bordered the path had little cutout areas just large enough to stick a rifle through. Or arrow? This place had a perfect vantage point of the entire area, overlooking where the Rhine and Mosel rivers met.
We toured the fortress for a couple of hours. It was breathtaking. We tried to imagine ourselves actually living in the time of King Arthur and could visualize how many thousands of people must have lived there throughout the years. It was a small city in itself. A history display told us that this old fortress was built on top of an older fortress on top of even and older fortress. We could see a couple spots where there was some archeology being done, assuming they were looking at the relics of the fortresses from the past.
We walked down from the fortress from the opposite side, winding ourselves down through a heavy forest. The leaves were just beginning to fall. Once in a while we would shuffle our feet through the piles of leaves laughing like children. We made it to the bottom ending up in another part of Koblenz. We were hungry so Holli ran into a store and bought us a package of cold meatballs. They tasted great.
It was beginning to get dark but Holli really wanted to visit the German Corner. Our feet were already killing us but we decided to go. There was a small bus system in the town but we thought it would be funner to walk along the river to the bridge, cross it, and make our way back toward the German Corner. It ended up being a long way and I could tell Liz was not real happy about using our feet rather than a bus. But she stayed patient and once we were past the point of exhaustion all was well again.
Holli and I climbed to the top of the memorial at the German Corner. It was pretty much dark by then so we didn’t have a great view but it was still very impressive. Liz stayed at the bottom to take our picture once we reached the top. This memorial represented the victory of a war and stood for unity for all of Germany. I was never good in History, even with a rather short history of that of the United States. Germany’s history goes back thousands of years. It was hard to imagine how many different things took place at these sites.
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