030 - tue 30/05/2006 - cologne/the rhine

we got up early. the plan for today was to take the ferry down the rhine, stopping at towns along the way. so thats what we did.

we started at koblenz, getting there via train, on which we ate 50c croissants. we were running late, so we had to catch a taxi from the koblenz train station to where the ferry left from. i tell you, this was our amazing race moment. i think we were both hearing the theme music, and when we got to the ferry, i half-expected a german man in lederhausen to say 'welcome to germany!' and for phil to tell me i was the first team to arrive. alas, no. but we did make the ferry.

the steamboat, named goethe, was filled with old people and bad traditional german music, but it was cool to peek in on the insides of the steam engine. and obviously the scenery was great. whenever we passed a castle a voiceover would pipe up to tell us about it, but there was never much time to say much because it needed to be repeated in several different languages. yesterday had been cloudy and so was this morning, but blue sky began to make cracks between in the gray gloom.

we stopped at two towns along the rhine, both old style cobblestone medieval tourist towns. in boppard we tasted wine and saw the ruins of an old roman fort. in st goar, we headed up to burg rhinefeld, the ruins of an old castle. we guided ourselves around with a little self-guided pamphlet. this was my first castle ever. i soon decided both that castles were the most awesome places to play tigi, and that also i wanted one. at one point we found ourselves atop a tower and saw a really weird and cool thing - the clouds had come back, and as we looked down the rhine towards where we had come from, with steep hills flanking the river, we could see the rain coming. our view of the hills gradually obscured, and we could even see the line on the surface of the river where the rain was hitting, and where it wasn't. soon enough it got to us, and it was a really creepy experience to have actually seen the rain coming from so far away. we took shelter with some canadians who entertained us with a story of how they once stayed with an old woman in a town called bacharach in the 70s, and this old woman just could not stop giving wine away.

we were indeed headed for bacharach ourselves. we stood in line to get back on the ferry with an enormous tour group of indians. when we boarded, a similarly enormous group of indians came ashore. the boat was trading indian tour groups. it was weird, but not as weird as this big burly black american dude who was on the boat with us, who was wearing what i can only describe as the kind of lounge suit that george hamilton might wear to his country club (again you may have to google george hamilton, if i'm even remembering the right guy). anyway he stared at the scenery a lot, and said 'thank you lord!' a lot and 'bless you lord' and things like that, but not in a quiet understated way.

bacharach was again a striking town. it was still surrounded by the city walls that originally surrounded it when it was founded. in a way it now feels like the walls have somehow kept the outside world from getting too much of a foothold inside. that said, there were still tourist shops a-plenty, and when we ate dinner we had no problems ordering in english. so the rhine was of course funny like that, like many places on our trip, inauthentic and authentic at the same time. what is authenticity anyway? discuss in 2000 words or less.

we climbed the side of a hill to our hostel, which was actually a castle. the walk was arduous. the castle was pretty on the outside, and was a school camp on the inside. seriously. i was shell-shocked, i hadn't seen that amount of kids all in the one place for a while. and they were all completely off their heads running around. i remember what school camp was like. so that was that. suz and i soon headed back into town to eat dinner. frankfurters with potato salad and more riesling. the walk back up was easier having had a couple of glasses of wine.

click here for photos