Rhein Spotting

After a hard days work in Mainz, I returned home. The fairly recently built (okay, less than a decade ago) ICE route from Cologne to Frankfurt was built at a considerable distance from the River Rhein (or Rhine for the English) as no track inside the river valley would have allowed the high speed required for this service. It reduces travel time to Frankfurt considerably but at the cost of not being able to see the River between Bingen and Koblenz, a trip I always used to enjoy.

Returning from Mainz, I had the choice between the two trains and since it didn't make any difference as far as catching my connection in Cologne, I chose to take a slower EC train and maybe even get some photographs this time.

Of course it rained for the first 15 minutes or so, which means that taking pictures was not easy. Though I tried...

Castle Pfalzgrafenstein in Kaub

Somewhere after a couple of bends, the rain stopped and the sky slowly started to clear up.


There are castles on just about every peak and promontory along the valley. Best way to protect yourself, of course, against marauding forces throughout history. At least before people were able to take to the skies...

The other thing the River Rhein is known for is, of course, its wine. The vinyards are steep and made of slate which stores the sunshine in the daytime and keeps passing its warmth on to the roots of the vines.
Another reason why the wines from these areas are very special is the steepness of the hills which basically prohibits the use of any kind of machinery. I'm trying to remember what I learned during the wine tastings I interpreted in the Eighties, I think they said that you had to walk around each vine 17 times in a year - and that sounds like a lot of hard work in these hills.


Only one thing is missing in the above picture, i.e. a campground right on the river banks. They get flooded every other year or so, sometimes more than once in a year, but people still like to park their caravans there. Which is understandable, with that view!


At places like this, high water sometimes not only covers the road, but in cases of really bad spring floods, even the rail tracks...

Boppard

By the way, it was the Romans who brought the wine to the area, and quite a few of the towns there can trace their roots back to that era.

Earliest traces of human settlement in the Boppard area, however, date back to about 11,000 BC. The Romans later founded Vicus Baudobriga (Bodobriga, Bontobrica). Since the name seems to be of Celtic origin, an (earlier) Celtic settlement is assumed. Under the Merovingians it became a royal residence, and over time moved back and forth between counts, bishops or electors (Kurfürsten) of the German Emperor.

Father Rhine

The river gets wider and wider south of Koblenz. Approaching the city is quite impressive too - too bad the view is so obscured by trees and houses that taking pictures from the train didn't work this time.

Only 2.5 hrs to go until the European Cup semi-finals

It was the day of the semi-final match between Germany and Turkey, and people were getting ready to go to the public viewing areas in some of Germany's bigger cities. No viewing area on the train, however...

After Koblenz, the tracks did no longer follow the river and the trip became somewhat prosaic.


Then about 10 to 15 minutes before Cologne, I saw this mountain of an apartment building rising out of the middle of nowhere. What a sight - though the people living there won't mind, probably, since noone will be able to block their view...

Cologne Cathedral - well, its towers anyway

In Cologne, I changed trains. Nothing much to report about that, other than that I was sharing a table with a German who was going to the Netherlands for a conference the next day. And was an avid football fan. And I was curious, too, how the match went. Modern as the trains are, there are no live football games...

To make a long story short, ICE trains offer in some carriages local radio programs to be accessed by headphones, and as I started to listen, I saw the longing in the eyes of the guy at my table.
First time I interpreted a football match commentary! It wasn't that difficult though as the Dutch commentators were not really experts in what they were doing unlike the Germans or the British - and so I was able to leave out most of their innate chatter and focus on the main parts.

By the time I got home, the match was over, of course. The last three goals were made when I was standing at a tram stop opposite a pub - I guess there were a lot of Turkish people in there...