Day 358 – Burgen and the Mosel River Valley, Germany (by Lindsey)
Posted by Lindsey Taylor on Thursday, June 23, 2011
The Events of Saturday, June 18, 2011
This house is both a blessing … and a nuisance. The three spacious stories are a blessing; the stairs by which they connect is an extreme nuisance. I happen to be sleeping on the top story with Caitlin and Abby. So, upon waking, I had to make my way (blind without my contacts) down three flights of narrow, slippery, wooden stairs without killing myself. Not an easy thing to do. You see, Lindsey and stairs don’t go well together. Sometimes, I’ll forget to hold on to the banister, or my mind is in la-la land, and I miss a step.
There is a certain section of these stairs, however, that I dread. The person who made these stairs, decided to make them all different sizes, shapes, and textures. This certain area is especially skinny and slippery. I have slipped only once on them so far, even though I was holding on for dear life. Thankfully, today, I made it down to the bottom floor alive.
Mom, Daddy, and Ben had switched on the small TV in the dining room to see if they could find the weather prediction for today. Instead, they found a somewhat urgent weather report that a small tornado had briefly touched down in southern Germany. Thankfully, it only downed some trees and no lives were lost. Of course, the report was in German and Mom could only translate a few words, but we got the message.
The sky looked heavy and grey, so with our rain jackets and umbrellas in hand, we headed out. We left our little flowery village and were once again driving along the Mosel River, since today’s focus was the Mosel River Valley area. Soon we took a turn and immersed ourselves in the thickly forested hills. The dark shade of the trees made it quite dark in our car, so we opened the sun roof on our car and watched the green branches whiz past.
“Eltz means “stream” in German. The first Burg on the Eltz (castle on a stream) was built in the 12th century to protect a trade route (the stream, which was at that time more of a river). By 1472, the castle looked the way it does today, with the homes of three noble families gathered around a small courtyard within one formidable fortification.” Ben, as tour guide in Germany, read the description of Eltz Castle (or Burg Eltz) from Rick Steves’ Germany and Austria book, aloud. But, before we could see this famous castle we had to hike down to its sheltered location.
The moist dirt path took us through a dense, dark, and delightful forest. We thought about how odd it was that we were going down to a castle, but as we rounded the bend we saw why this location was chosen. Even though it sat in a valley, Burg Eltz sat upon a mound of earth, its turrets reaching high into the sky. The stream skirted around the indestructible fortress on both sides. (The castle survived a five-year siege). Velvety green trees framed the fairytale castle. We entered a fairytale picture book and were now peasants visiting the royalty in the castle.
We arrived at the castle just in time for the next English tour. Our guide was a young man that I believe had one too many cups of coffee this morning. He bounced around the castle with an unending energy and in halting English he told the stories of this castle. His trouble with English forced us to hang on his every word. But, I think it helped me pay better attention. Our guide led us through the well-decorated and furnished interior of the castle.
The first room we saw was what I would call the “knights’ assembly room”. As we have learned in previous castles, they made the doors inside the castle extra small, so that a fully-armored knight could not barge in on innocent sleeping people. But, the disadvantage of this was that they had to wait to dress themselves in their armor (a complicated process), until they were out of the main living spaces. It was kind of like a mudroom. (I think another reason for the small doorways was so that the knights didn’t track mud into the houses). The walls were lined with different swords and weapons. One of these looked kind of like a saw. Mom inquired and the guide explained that it had been taken from a swordfish and was mostly a weapon of décor.
The next room of importance was the bedroom of the baron and baroness. The bed was solid wood and was so high they needed three wooden steps to get up to it! Connected to the bedroom were a toilet, a study, a dressing room, and a chapel. This toilet was one of the 25 toilets in the castle. The toilets were rather well-furnished; the wood was sanded down so there was no need to worry about splinters. We even learned that they were flushed out with rainwater, which was unheard of in that time. All the other castles’ toilets consisted of nothing but a room with a hole in a room, hanging outside the main walls of the castle. The waste would drop into the garden.
The connected chapel was also a distinctive feature. The chapel room was built as an extension into the courtyard. The people of medieval times were very God-fearing. They thought that nothing should be above God, and so they built this side chapel out of the building so that it would not disrupt the rest of the construction process. They couldn’t put a person’s bedroom above a place of worship and prayer. That would be putting one’s self above God. Also in this room was a large fireplace, one of forty in the palace. Sheets of slate stood on their ends and lined up next to each other, forming the base of the fireplace. This was a medieval version of a grate. The slate kept the heat in, so they didn’t lose the warmth of the fire as the ashes fell.
Subsequently, there was another significant room, the conference room. The largest room in the palace, this space was used for working out common problems and discussion among the three families. A carved jester and rose decorated the walls, reminding those who gathered that they were free to discuss anything (“fool’s freedom” – jesters could say anything to the king without getting in trouble for it), but that none of the conversations could leave the room (the “rose of silence”). We also enjoyed seeing a violin with a carving of the castle into the wood on the rear side of the instrument. Sometime in the seventeenth century, the family moved to Croatia and flourished there as well. After the Second World War, they moved back to Germany and the castle is still in their ownership. In fact, the current Countess of the estate visits weekly bringing flowers she arranged personally to decorate the castle.
Our visit ended in the kitchen, where we learned how they protected the food from rats and how they cooked hearty meals for the large crowd. We moved back out into the courtyard where we began to look through the Treasury. The highlights of our tour through these four floors of sparkling riches were the drinking goblets (I don’t see how they drank out of those things) and the Countess’ jewelry. Then we visited the free WCs, a rarity in Germany, and headed back across the stone bridge to the nearby hill where the trail was.
When we purchased our tickets, they gave us cookies and souvenir coins to thank us for understanding the current state of the castle, which was under renovation. Now we munched on the cookies as we began our trek back to the parking lot through the dark and mysterious forest. Caitlin and I were at the head of the group and Daddy and Ben were talking and walking at a distance from us. I realized how long it had been since I had been able to have a private conversation without the rest of my family listening in. Only one month and ten days until we fly home!
We drove back out of the forest and found ourselves on a plateau. The flat land, which was everywhere we looked, was quite a contrast to the hills and mountains where we had just been. The landscape spread around us like a soft yellow and green patterned quilt. The soft grain swayed in the wind. The rain splattered on our sun roof as we moseyed along the Mosel River. The rain let up, however, when we stopped for a picnic lunch along the Mosel by the town of Cochem and watched the barges, swans, cruise boats, and little boats slowly pass.
The sun came out and the Mosel sparkled as we climbed back into the car and entered Cinderella land. Beilstein is the quaintest little village I have ever seen and by far my favorite in Germany. It is home to about 180 residents that run the hotels and cafés that make up the majority of the little village.
The Mosel that hugged the village’s edge was strangely calm and tranquil. Swans elegantly glided across the still waters. The Mosel locks that were installed in 1963 are the reason for this welcome peace. Before there was a road here, the only access to the town was by ferry. The ferry is still running and we watched as it slid along the water, tethered to a cable and powered only by the current.
As we were about to enter the village, there was a loud cry of pain behind us and we turned to look. One of the ferry attendants had smashed his hand between the boat and the dock. Caitlin and I looked away as we are prone to fainting at the sight of blood. Another employee quickly drove him out of the village and we think to a hospital. After that temporary excitement, we turned back to the peace of Beilstein.
We passed a hotel and café draped with grape vines and window boxes of drooping red flowers. On another hotel’s wall, blue signs indicated the water levels of previous floods. Some of them even Ben couldn’t touch, though he was standing on his tiptoes and reaching with his ape arms high above his 6-foot-2-inch-tall head.
We wandered the village, the adorable Tudor-styled houses framed with grape vines and flaming red flowers below open windows with lacy curtains billowing in the soft breeze. The village’s church and monastery looked almost too large and ostentatious for the little gathering of houses. It is now the home of one monk. Besides that, the only really large building was the town hall, which we did not see.
We did explore a little courtyard, however. It was smaller than my room at home, but yet, it was filled with fifteen or so Germans, chatting quietly and drinking from tall glasses of wine. Flowers and grape vines were everywhere we looked. The water trough at one side of the courtyard had a duck as its spout. We ducked into a dark, cool, cobblestone alleyway just to see what was there. It led to an entrance of a dark, wine cellar-like restaurant. So, we walked back out into the sun-filled courtyard, listening to the birds as we slowly meandered back to the car.
Cochem, the town, sat under the powerful presence of its foreboding castle, which stood proudly at the top of the hill. We pulled into a parking lot a little ways out of Cochem and prepared to hike up the mountain. As we hit the trail that wound through the town and up through the vineyards, it started to rain. The rain came down harder and more intensely as we went further up the mountain. The pouring rain made Reichesburg Castle seem much more dramatic. In the back of my mind, I thought about the tornado report earlier that day and decided that we were probably safest in a castle that had been here for 700-something years, if a tornado did come.
Even with our rain jackets on, we were soaked and dripping with rain and sweat by the time we reached the top of the mountain. Soon after we arrived, the skies cleared again and the sun came out. The whole reason we came to the castle was not the castle itself, but the falconry show that the castle hosts. However, the ticket office was closed and all entrance gates shut. Mom and Ben went up and talked near the gate. The falconer noticed them so he came up and started to talk to them in German. They asked, “English?” He apologized and said because of the weather there would be no show, but we could see the birds for free if we wanted to.
The different species of owls, hawks, falcons, vultures, and all other possible birds of prey turned their heads and blinked their large eyes as we took pictures and admired their strong and ferocious looks. There was a huge turkey vulture that flapped its wings, cooling me off with the breeze. I would say that he probably had a bigger wingspan than me!
There was also a little cage where two mischievous ferrets were looking curiously out at us. A German girl came up to the cage and scratched with her finger below their part of the cage, where they couldn’t see. Even though we didn’t speak the same language, we both laughed as the little ferrets raced back and forth across the cage, trying to figure out where the sound was coming from.
Our feet squished in our soaked shoes as we made our way down the mountain. This time however, Mom had seen another path that led down to Cochem, so we walked down a different way. This way led directly to our parking lot and we thankfully leaned our weary and soaked bodies back into our seats for a relaxing drive home.
It seemed that just as soon as we were all settled in our comfy clothes, curled up on our beds with our books, the skies opened up and it started to pour rain. Abby and I raised our noses out of our books and smiled at each other when the sound of pounding rain was drowned out by the powerful thunder.
Our noses were also tempted from our books when Mom began to cook dinner. From where we were on the third floor, it smelled like a classic American barbeque. But when Mom called us down to dinner we found it was not what we expected. Mom had prepared a truly German meal for us of ‘rostbratwurst’ (classic German sausages), ‘kartoffelsalat’ (potato salad), hot baguettes, ‘buttergemüse’ (veggies with herbs), and ‘spärzel’ (boiled white asparagus). For dessert, we had some combination of sugar, cardboard, and air called ‘waffelmixeimer’. I do dearly hope that this is not a German classic. I despised it so thoroughly I have refused to eat it since.
As the day came to a close and the sun that hadn’t shown its face all day disappeared, we headed to bed. But God decided that we needed one more adventure before finally letting us go to sleep. First, one of the supporting boards underneath my mattress dropped out of my bed, making me jump out of my bed quicker than lightning. Abby had gotten up to help me and as she sat back on her own bed to go to sleep, there was a very loud SNAP and she jumped off her bed, very surprised.
One of the supporting boards underneath her mattress had completely snapped in two. We summoned Daddy and, with the help of Abby and Mommy, put the bed back together, as I sat on my own bed and took pictures. Then, Abby settled back into bed and with a laugh at our late night adventure, we both quickly fell asleep.
This house is both a blessing … and a nuisance. The three spacious stories are a blessing; the stairs by which they connect is an extreme nuisance. I happen to be sleeping on the top story with Caitlin and Abby. So, upon waking, I had to make my way (blind without my contacts) down three flights of narrow, slippery, wooden stairs without killing myself. Not an easy thing to do. You see, Lindsey and stairs don’t go well together. Sometimes, I’ll forget to hold on to the banister, or my mind is in la-la land, and I miss a step.
There is a certain section of these stairs, however, that I dread. The person who made these stairs, decided to make them all different sizes, shapes, and textures. This certain area is especially skinny and slippery. I have slipped only once on them so far, even though I was holding on for dear life. Thankfully, today, I made it down to the bottom floor alive.
Mom, Daddy, and Ben had switched on the small TV in the dining room to see if they could find the weather prediction for today. Instead, they found a somewhat urgent weather report that a small tornado had briefly touched down in southern Germany. Thankfully, it only downed some trees and no lives were lost. Of course, the report was in German and Mom could only translate a few words, but we got the message.
The sky looked heavy and grey, so with our rain jackets and umbrellas in hand, we headed out. We left our little flowery village and were once again driving along the Mosel River, since today’s focus was the Mosel River Valley area. Soon we took a turn and immersed ourselves in the thickly forested hills. The dark shade of the trees made it quite dark in our car, so we opened the sun roof on our car and watched the green branches whiz past.
“Eltz means “stream” in German. The first Burg on the Eltz (castle on a stream) was built in the 12th century to protect a trade route (the stream, which was at that time more of a river). By 1472, the castle looked the way it does today, with the homes of three noble families gathered around a small courtyard within one formidable fortification.” Ben, as tour guide in Germany, read the description of Eltz Castle (or Burg Eltz) from Rick Steves’ Germany and Austria book, aloud. But, before we could see this famous castle we had to hike down to its sheltered location.
The moist dirt path took us through a dense, dark, and delightful forest. We thought about how odd it was that we were going down to a castle, but as we rounded the bend we saw why this location was chosen. Even though it sat in a valley, Burg Eltz sat upon a mound of earth, its turrets reaching high into the sky. The stream skirted around the indestructible fortress on both sides. (The castle survived a five-year siege). Velvety green trees framed the fairytale castle. We entered a fairytale picture book and were now peasants visiting the royalty in the castle.
We arrived at the castle just in time for the next English tour. Our guide was a young man that I believe had one too many cups of coffee this morning. He bounced around the castle with an unending energy and in halting English he told the stories of this castle. His trouble with English forced us to hang on his every word. But, I think it helped me pay better attention. Our guide led us through the well-decorated and furnished interior of the castle.
The first room we saw was what I would call the “knights’ assembly room”. As we have learned in previous castles, they made the doors inside the castle extra small, so that a fully-armored knight could not barge in on innocent sleeping people. But, the disadvantage of this was that they had to wait to dress themselves in their armor (a complicated process), until they were out of the main living spaces. It was kind of like a mudroom. (I think another reason for the small doorways was so that the knights didn’t track mud into the houses). The walls were lined with different swords and weapons. One of these looked kind of like a saw. Mom inquired and the guide explained that it had been taken from a swordfish and was mostly a weapon of décor.
The next room of importance was the bedroom of the baron and baroness. The bed was solid wood and was so high they needed three wooden steps to get up to it! Connected to the bedroom were a toilet, a study, a dressing room, and a chapel. This toilet was one of the 25 toilets in the castle. The toilets were rather well-furnished; the wood was sanded down so there was no need to worry about splinters. We even learned that they were flushed out with rainwater, which was unheard of in that time. All the other castles’ toilets consisted of nothing but a room with a hole in a room, hanging outside the main walls of the castle. The waste would drop into the garden.
The connected chapel was also a distinctive feature. The chapel room was built as an extension into the courtyard. The people of medieval times were very God-fearing. They thought that nothing should be above God, and so they built this side chapel out of the building so that it would not disrupt the rest of the construction process. They couldn’t put a person’s bedroom above a place of worship and prayer. That would be putting one’s self above God. Also in this room was a large fireplace, one of forty in the palace. Sheets of slate stood on their ends and lined up next to each other, forming the base of the fireplace. This was a medieval version of a grate. The slate kept the heat in, so they didn’t lose the warmth of the fire as the ashes fell.
Subsequently, there was another significant room, the conference room. The largest room in the palace, this space was used for working out common problems and discussion among the three families. A carved jester and rose decorated the walls, reminding those who gathered that they were free to discuss anything (“fool’s freedom” – jesters could say anything to the king without getting in trouble for it), but that none of the conversations could leave the room (the “rose of silence”). We also enjoyed seeing a violin with a carving of the castle into the wood on the rear side of the instrument. Sometime in the seventeenth century, the family moved to Croatia and flourished there as well. After the Second World War, they moved back to Germany and the castle is still in their ownership. In fact, the current Countess of the estate visits weekly bringing flowers she arranged personally to decorate the castle.
Our visit ended in the kitchen, where we learned how they protected the food from rats and how they cooked hearty meals for the large crowd. We moved back out into the courtyard where we began to look through the Treasury. The highlights of our tour through these four floors of sparkling riches were the drinking goblets (I don’t see how they drank out of those things) and the Countess’ jewelry. Then we visited the free WCs, a rarity in Germany, and headed back across the stone bridge to the nearby hill where the trail was.
When we purchased our tickets, they gave us cookies and souvenir coins to thank us for understanding the current state of the castle, which was under renovation. Now we munched on the cookies as we began our trek back to the parking lot through the dark and mysterious forest. Caitlin and I were at the head of the group and Daddy and Ben were talking and walking at a distance from us. I realized how long it had been since I had been able to have a private conversation without the rest of my family listening in. Only one month and ten days until we fly home!
We drove back out of the forest and found ourselves on a plateau. The flat land, which was everywhere we looked, was quite a contrast to the hills and mountains where we had just been. The landscape spread around us like a soft yellow and green patterned quilt. The soft grain swayed in the wind. The rain splattered on our sun roof as we moseyed along the Mosel River. The rain let up, however, when we stopped for a picnic lunch along the Mosel by the town of Cochem and watched the barges, swans, cruise boats, and little boats slowly pass.
The sun came out and the Mosel sparkled as we climbed back into the car and entered Cinderella land. Beilstein is the quaintest little village I have ever seen and by far my favorite in Germany. It is home to about 180 residents that run the hotels and cafés that make up the majority of the little village.
The Mosel that hugged the village’s edge was strangely calm and tranquil. Swans elegantly glided across the still waters. The Mosel locks that were installed in 1963 are the reason for this welcome peace. Before there was a road here, the only access to the town was by ferry. The ferry is still running and we watched as it slid along the water, tethered to a cable and powered only by the current.
As we were about to enter the village, there was a loud cry of pain behind us and we turned to look. One of the ferry attendants had smashed his hand between the boat and the dock. Caitlin and I looked away as we are prone to fainting at the sight of blood. Another employee quickly drove him out of the village and we think to a hospital. After that temporary excitement, we turned back to the peace of Beilstein.
We passed a hotel and café draped with grape vines and window boxes of drooping red flowers. On another hotel’s wall, blue signs indicated the water levels of previous floods. Some of them even Ben couldn’t touch, though he was standing on his tiptoes and reaching with his ape arms high above his 6-foot-2-inch-tall head.
We wandered the village, the adorable Tudor-styled houses framed with grape vines and flaming red flowers below open windows with lacy curtains billowing in the soft breeze. The village’s church and monastery looked almost too large and ostentatious for the little gathering of houses. It is now the home of one monk. Besides that, the only really large building was the town hall, which we did not see.
We did explore a little courtyard, however. It was smaller than my room at home, but yet, it was filled with fifteen or so Germans, chatting quietly and drinking from tall glasses of wine. Flowers and grape vines were everywhere we looked. The water trough at one side of the courtyard had a duck as its spout. We ducked into a dark, cool, cobblestone alleyway just to see what was there. It led to an entrance of a dark, wine cellar-like restaurant. So, we walked back out into the sun-filled courtyard, listening to the birds as we slowly meandered back to the car.
Cochem, the town, sat under the powerful presence of its foreboding castle, which stood proudly at the top of the hill. We pulled into a parking lot a little ways out of Cochem and prepared to hike up the mountain. As we hit the trail that wound through the town and up through the vineyards, it started to rain. The rain came down harder and more intensely as we went further up the mountain. The pouring rain made Reichesburg Castle seem much more dramatic. In the back of my mind, I thought about the tornado report earlier that day and decided that we were probably safest in a castle that had been here for 700-something years, if a tornado did come.
Even with our rain jackets on, we were soaked and dripping with rain and sweat by the time we reached the top of the mountain. Soon after we arrived, the skies cleared again and the sun came out. The whole reason we came to the castle was not the castle itself, but the falconry show that the castle hosts. However, the ticket office was closed and all entrance gates shut. Mom and Ben went up and talked near the gate. The falconer noticed them so he came up and started to talk to them in German. They asked, “English?” He apologized and said because of the weather there would be no show, but we could see the birds for free if we wanted to.
The different species of owls, hawks, falcons, vultures, and all other possible birds of prey turned their heads and blinked their large eyes as we took pictures and admired their strong and ferocious looks. There was a huge turkey vulture that flapped its wings, cooling me off with the breeze. I would say that he probably had a bigger wingspan than me!
There was also a little cage where two mischievous ferrets were looking curiously out at us. A German girl came up to the cage and scratched with her finger below their part of the cage, where they couldn’t see. Even though we didn’t speak the same language, we both laughed as the little ferrets raced back and forth across the cage, trying to figure out where the sound was coming from.
Our feet squished in our soaked shoes as we made our way down the mountain. This time however, Mom had seen another path that led down to Cochem, so we walked down a different way. This way led directly to our parking lot and we thankfully leaned our weary and soaked bodies back into our seats for a relaxing drive home.
It seemed that just as soon as we were all settled in our comfy clothes, curled up on our beds with our books, the skies opened up and it started to pour rain. Abby and I raised our noses out of our books and smiled at each other when the sound of pounding rain was drowned out by the powerful thunder.
Our noses were also tempted from our books when Mom began to cook dinner. From where we were on the third floor, it smelled like a classic American barbeque. But when Mom called us down to dinner we found it was not what we expected. Mom had prepared a truly German meal for us of ‘rostbratwurst’ (classic German sausages), ‘kartoffelsalat’ (potato salad), hot baguettes, ‘buttergemüse’ (veggies with herbs), and ‘spärzel’ (boiled white asparagus). For dessert, we had some combination of sugar, cardboard, and air called ‘waffelmixeimer’. I do dearly hope that this is not a German classic. I despised it so thoroughly I have refused to eat it since.
As the day came to a close and the sun that hadn’t shown its face all day disappeared, we headed to bed. But God decided that we needed one more adventure before finally letting us go to sleep. First, one of the supporting boards underneath my mattress dropped out of my bed, making me jump out of my bed quicker than lightning. Abby had gotten up to help me and as she sat back on her own bed to go to sleep, there was a very loud SNAP and she jumped off her bed, very surprised.
One of the supporting boards underneath her mattress had completely snapped in two. We summoned Daddy and, with the help of Abby and Mommy, put the bed back together, as I sat on my own bed and took pictures. Then, Abby settled back into bed and with a laugh at our late night adventure, we both quickly fell asleep.