Deutschland, Deutschland, Ja Ja Ja!: St. Goar and the Rheinfels Castle (May 20th, 2012)

A long lost day trip with George and Barbara! It’s been months and months since we have done one of these! It was so nice! We met up with them in Koblenz (about smack in between Cologne and Trier) and took the train to St Goarshausen to check out a new castle.

We originally went there to see a couple castles Kate had told me about called Cat and Mouse, but they turned out to be closed. Luckily for us, this is a particularly “castle-rich” village so all we had to do was cross the river to check out the Rheinfels castle.

Before we crossed the river, we walked through the village of St Goarshausen. It was very cute, tiny and European, but not much was going on. No people were out and about, it just seemed a bit dead but that's probably because it was raining pretty hard. We did walk far enough through the village that we got to see the Loreley (pronounced Lor-i-lye), which is a rock that is 120 meters above the waterline. It marks the narrowest part of the Rhine. It is very difficult for ships to maneuver and many have crashed there because of the strong current and rocks. The most recent crash was in January 2011. There are two legends about a beautiful woman, named Loreley, who is said to be the reason for the ship wrecks. She even has a statue by the river!

The first legend is from 1801. Loreley was an enchanting woman who was betrayed by her sweetheart, and was then accused of bewitching men and causing there death. She was sentenced to a nunnery, and on their way she asked if she could climb to the top of the rock and have one last look at the Rhine. At the top of the rock, she fell to her death and now haunts the rock.

The second legend, which I like better, is from 1824 and was adapted from the original legend. Loreley would sit on the cliff combing her long golden hair and sing, and her beauty and charm would cause ship captains to be distracted and wreck the ship.

After we did everything we felt we could do on that side, we took a ferry to the village on the other side of the Rhine, St Goar, to explore it and see the Rheinfels Castle. We stopped in a cute tourist shop in search of a magnet but discovered that this shop in particular sold local liquors and wines. Fancy stuff like strawberry liquor, peach wine liquor (which I found in Cochem also, must be a Rhine thing), other fruit liquors, and many fancy wines including Eiswein! Eiswein (ice wine) is wine made with frozen grapes. It’s FANTASTIC! Our friend was telling us about it back in February and before that we had never heard of it. She told us it was very expensive but worth it. That it is! This small bottle was 80 euro! But the lady was soooo nice and kept letting us sample things. So we at least got to taste it! It was like candy, I couldn’t believe it! I do think it was worth 80 euro, but I don’t think I would ever spend that on a bottle of wine! We got to taste the strawberry and the peach wine liquor also. Both delicious! We were shocked at the attentive service this German woman was giving us, until she explained that an American owns the store and caters to the many Americans that visit the village. Gotta love that American service with a smile!

We continued on through the village which was buzzing with people and began going up the hill to the castle. The hike wasn’t bad, about 15 or 20 minutes with breath taking views! This castle was really cool but different than any of the others we have visited because it was just ruins and a self guided tour. It’s open air with grasses and weeds growing in, but it was cool to imagine what each part may have looked like. All the other castles we have visited have furniture (most original) and are decorated as it was thought to have been then. We took in the views, explored the castle and made our way back down to the train station.

When we got back down, we ended up having a lot of time to spare so we found a cute cafe and sat outside for a coffee. I got Eis Kaffee! I thought it would just be coffee with ice in it, but eis means both ice and ice cream! So it had a scoop of ice cream in it and it was amazing! A very pleasant surprise!

We caught our train and said goodbye to George and Barbara in Koblenz and headed back to Trier. It was a really nice day trip! I miss these little trips with G & B!