20/09/25 Not On A Boat (Again).

When we booked our ferry tickets the ticket booker was flummoxed to find that the ferry wasn't running from Bacharach to Mainz on the one day and time that we wanted to catch it.  Turns out that the Flames on the Rhine events had been happening town by town on the river and Bingen, one stop up from Bacharach, had a veritable storm of fireworks planned and thus the river was closed to traffic right at the time that we wanted to use it.

Okee doke then.  Trains it was.  But before that I had a robust German breakfast at the Hostel, and for a mere 6 euros walked away carrying a robust German lunch packet with a surfeit of bread and cheese and an apple to make it healthy.

We spent the day catching trains to little towns along the river, just for a look, but before that there was the small matter of walking down the hill. We took an alternate route back down the steep little valley with houses tucked down the bottom and on the valley wall opposite the remains of the Bacharach town wall marched across a patchwork quilt of vineyards, guarded by the old Postenturm (formerly a watch tower, now a lookout point).

Just above the town I walked past the ruins of the Wernerkapelle,

and once down in the town itself I lost a happy couple of hours wandering around taking photos and generally being a tourist and trying not to kill myself by looking the wrong way when crossing the road.

Our turret: trust me, the walk up was way steeper than it looks.  And I've learned how to label my photos so I don't forget what's in them.

The little town of St Goar looked so interesting yesterday that we had to go back to have a closer look.  This was a Very Good Idea as it turned out, because St Goar was in full festival mode what with the Flames on the Rhine happening along with today being the official start of Oktoberfest.  Vendors were busy setting up market stalls on the cobbled streets of St Goar, several stages were up around town for future entertainement, and brass bands were rostered throughout the day to provide waterfront enjoyment.

Waiting for the band.

People poured into St Goar by train and bicycle, towing children and dogs behind them.  It was all quite entertaining, even if most of the entertanment wasn't due to start until 18:00 by which time we would be long gone.

I'm partial to a good  bicycle myself, and it made my heart happy to see everyone riding their bicycles to the festival and all the bicycles hanging out under the tree while their riders went of doing festival things.

Another train took us up the river from St Goar to Bingen, where the Nahe River flowed into the Rhine.  Bingen had a castle, Burg Klopp, which wasn't particularly gripping.  There was a wide boulevard along the river with views across to the vineyards, a chairlift to a monument on a faraway hill, and a not particularly exciting town square.  

But they do have Hildegard.  Hildegard was a German Benedictine nun born in 1098, who was among other things a leading figure in monastic medicine not to mention also being an Abbess, composer, poet, and preacher.  She died in 1179 and now her likeness graces a fountain in Bingen's square and pigeons sit on her head which just goes to show that pigeons really don't care about historical figures.

Visible down the river from the Rhine-Nahe Ecke (which was just German for the point at which the two rivers meet) at Bingen was the Mauseturm Bingen, and the Burgruine Ehrenfels guarded the hillside at the bend in the river. 

The Mauseturn (Mouse Tower) had one of those grisley but unlikey to be true stories attached to it, all about greedy Bishop Hatto II burning villagers and eventually being eaten by rats.  In reality the inhabitants of the tower were there to collect legitimate tolls and often took the opportunity to extort extra fees and occasionally steal whole ships as well.  They were not popular.  

Burgruine Ehrenfels, on the other hand, was just a bog standard fortress with no grisley tales other than the humdrum grisliness associated with the middle ages.

There was none of the festival energy of St Goar at Bingen and it was getting to the end of a long day, so we were soon back at the station waiting for the train to Mainz.  Lots of people waited with us because the train was running some 50 minutes late (where was German efficiency when you needed it?)  Twenty-five people with bikes turned up.  A man with a full size kayak and a dog arrived.  Several unsupervised suitcases made a bid for freedom, trying to roll down the sloping platform and onto the tracks while their owners were otherwise engaged trying to find out when the train was coming. 

We chatted with another Australian who was in Germany visiting her penpal of over 50 years and here I was flat out sending birthday cards, let alone writing letters to someone for over 50 years!

We caught the train along with the bicycles and the kayak and (as far as I could tell) at least two dogs, not to mention a very happy crowd who had clearly been practising for Oktoberfest, and we all went to Mainz together, crammed cosily into our very crowded train, and everyone lived happily ever after.

Or at least until tomorrow anyway.

Mainz greeted us with bells, ringing in the end of the day as we settled into our hotel which, I'm overjoyed to report, came complete with kettle, tea bags, and decent sized cups.

All was good with the world.

Door of the day: from the Kirche St Peter in Bacharach.