After our fast two days in Berlin, on Thursday morning of the first week of our travels we made our way back out to the Berlin airport to pick up a rental car for the next leg of our journey: a roadtrip through Germany. Now, I don't have any photos of my dad driving on the famed Autobahn, but suffice it to say he had fun weaving in and out of traffic and putting the pedal to the metal on that superb and well-maintained highway. (The highest speed we reached: 180 km/hr, and he would surely have gone faster if we'd been driving something fancier like a BMW. I think it was one of the highlights of his trip.)
Our first stop, after getting out of Berlin and admiring the rolling hills and fields and iconic towns of the German countryside, was in Wittenberg, the location of one of the world's oldest universities and also of the church where Martin Luther famously nailed his 95 theses to the door on All Hallow's Eve, 1517, launching the Protestant Reformation. Wittenberg was along our way out of Berlin, and (being the nerd I am) I'd had spinning visions of not only Luther but "For your intent / In going back to school in Wittenberg, / It is most retrograde to our desire," etc., etc., and thought it would be a fun place to make a quick stop. The cathedral was closed for restorations when we passed through, in preparation for the apparent upcoming celebrations in Wittenberg in 2017 (for the 500th anniversary of the Reformation), but it was still a charming medieval town with a bustling market square and some beautiful streets.
We grabbed lunch and proceeded onward to our first destination, Rothenburg ob der Tauber, a truly stunning original medieval town that "time forgot" for many centuries, which has been restored with its original city walls still intact. Rothenburg, we'd learned before, is very touristy these days, an icon of romanticized medieval Germany, but is still real -- it remains much as it was several centuries ago, when it was one of the most prosperous cities in Germany, especially along some major trade routes that used to crisscross the area en route to other areas in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. History notwithstanding, it was a thoroughly charming place, even if packed with more American tourists than I think we saw anywhere else in Germany. We spent two nights in Rothenburg and loved exploring the colorful facades of the shops and hotels and restaurants along the streets, as well as architectural details like the fountains, and of course the medieval city walls and view down to the agricultural valley and river below.
The majority of our wall-scampering took place on the full day we spent there, when we walked along the roofs and ramparts of the old medieval city, some of which are original and other parts of which have been restored/reconstructed since part of Rothenburg was bombed by the Allies toward the end of the Second World War in 1945. (Destroying the entire city, as once seemed likely, would have been such a shame if not for the intervention of some level-headed American officials.)
The entire city seemed to allude back to a very different medieval past, a past that is now easy to simplify and romanticize (we forget the squalor of medieval cities, and the uncertainty of those times, and so on and so forth), and I was conscious of my own elicited response to this tourist restoration of history. But, hey, it was still fun and still romantic and a great family destination. As my mom said several times, visiting Rothenburg was like stepping back into a storybook or a fairy tale. Except for the medieval criminal torture museum (which I found fascinating), a good reminder of the very different conceptions of justice in another time.
But, I mean, look -- how beautiful! Having a picnic dinner in the park and watching the evening glow shine over the medieval walls and towers and roofs of Rothenburg was one of my favorite parts of the trip.
On Saturday of that first week of traveling (I know, I'm losing track of the dates too) we left Rothenburg in the morning, then drove an hour and a half through more charming countryside to reach Heidelberg. Our time in Heidelberg was short, just an afternoon and a portion of the next morning, but I'd heard about the city from other friends who had visited and was keen to explore it for myself. Plus I was very glad to have the opportunity to catch up with an old high school friend of mine from New Mexico who now lives in Germany, not far from Heidelberg. We've talked a lot, when catching up in person in Albuquerque over the last few years, about our experiences living abroad, so it was such a treat to get to see her at last in her new home, and to hear about German culture and the local foods and drinks and pastimes through her eyes. Now, Martha, just come visit me in the UK!
Sunday morning, we had a few hours left in Heidelberg before moving on to our next stop in Germany -- the Rhine Valley -- so we packed up at the hotel, drove the car up the hill overlooking the city, and visited Heidelberg Castle for a few hours. Much of the castle is now a ruin, although some halls are still intact and it has an apothecary museum and an impossibly large, 52,000-gallon wine barrel in a storage cellar, and the place provided some nice view over the city and the river.
Next up: several more hours of driving. My dad was in fine form on the Autobahn, I finished reading another book, and in the evening on Sunday we arrived in the breathtaking Rhine Valley, where we'd arranged to stay in an apartment in the cute medieval town of Bacharach. The Rhine is lined with many small towns that, like Rothenburg, are impossibly charming. It is also lined with miles of vineyards, all of which cover the steep hills by the water with row after row of grapevines and wineries. We took a respite from our German beer-drinking habit while visiting the Rhine and started sampling the local wines, mainly the Rieslings. So good!
And, as we found out in our first full day of exploring the area, the Rhine Valley is also home to many, many castles. So many, in fact, that we'd see them more or less every mile while driving down the highway. There's a stretch of 40-ish kilometers along the Rhine that has -- if I remember correctly -- something like 43 castles. A ridiculous number, but so romantic and reminiscent of, yes, 19th century romanticism and fascination with castles and ruins and landscapes and everything medieval.
We visited the Burg Rheinstein (above), considered to be one of the most iconic and romantic castles of the entire Rhine Valley, one morning. It was originally built in medieval times atop a huge hill overlooking the valley, then refurbished several centuries later by Prussian royalty as a private residence. Casual, and I could really go for some of the private bedrooms and studies/libraries inside -- what a view. Later that afternoon, we found we couldn't get enough of looking at the river, so took a chairlift to the top of a hill to see a huge loop in the Rhine and some of the towns down below.
Driving up and down the river, this was a pretty ordinary sight:
Our second day in the Rhine Valley, we decided to take a boat cruise down the river from Bacharach, which gave us many more views of (you guessed it) vineyards and castles. We got off the boat two or three towns down, stopped for lunch (and a radler for me, or a typical German summer drink that mixes beer and lemonade and is very refreshing), and then made our way up the hill to visit, yes, another castle.
This castle, Rheinfels, was built as a medieval fortress, then later destroyed and left atop its original hill as a ruin. (The entire journey, I couldn't help but think of all these medieval fiefdoms jealously defending their territory and their castles.) Part of it has been restored into a hotel, but tourists can visit the other remaining ruins. I've always loved visiting the ruins of centuries-old buildings, and Rheinfels was no exception. There was even a network of underground mining tunnels used for battles and defense that really roused the little-kid explorer in me.
We climbed the crumbled walls, tried to evoke images of what this place might once have looked like, tramped through the underground tunnels (thank you, trusty iPhone, for giving me light in the dank pitch-blackness), and I got placed in the stocks for one of many times on this trip. Those photo ops are always irresistible.
Our time as castle explorers finished, we got back on the boat to venture upriver to Bacharach and were treated to some lovely views of castles in the evening light along the way. From old stone castles up among the vineyards, to castle fortresses built right in the middle of the fast-flowing river, the Rhine Valley has it all.
And this one from above Bacharach. Castle country, I'm telling you.
Castles and wine and cute towns composed a nice escape from reality, and again I wish I could have stayed longer, but after our two full days in the Rhine Valley we got back in the car and wrapped up our time in Germany by proceeding to Cologne, where we caught a train up to Amsterdam. More on that soon -- but, at long last, the Kolb family succeeded in retracing its German roots, something we'd been wanting to do for a while. Score!
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