Aachen

Day 8, cont.

Despite our first train being late, it was fine: our second train in Cologne was late too. We only had a few minutes in Cologne, though, not enough time to visit the Cathedral again (which I had previously visited in 2012), but enough time that I could walk to the end of the platform and get some new pictures. Though we got off the first train precipitously enough that Tharash forgot his waterbottle. : ( But he resolved not to worry about it (probably seeing how upset I get whenever I lose things : P).

The landscape grew increasingly pretty as we went up the Rhine, especially after we passed Koblenz and turned west onto the Moselle River. This region is a huge producer of white wine, and every scrap of ground that wasn’t absolutely vertical was turned into vineyards. The terraces built to facilitate this (where there were terraces, a lot of the time it just goes up real steep) looked ancient, with arches and tiny narrow stairs. Sadly it’s hard to get a shot of that from the close side of the river, so I took like a hundred pictures that turned out to be garbage.

On top of some of the hills were already little castles and towers, not too frequent but definitely more than I’m used to seeing. It was exciting to come around the last bend and see Cochem’s castle in the distance. Cochem’s train station is small and historic, and the walk to the old part of town was pleasant. The old town is really cute; Tharash likes the vibe of small medieval towns better than medieval cities.

Our B&B was right on the road up to the castle, Schlossstrasse, and there are several others in the same area. Then began our period of enforced Internet semi-deprivation, because I could barely connect to the Internet even on the house wi-fi, and nearly not at all on my mobile data. Tharash did a little better, but it was still really slow for him. We tried to look up where to go for dinner, but nearly every restaurant in the heart of the old town was either closed after 6 (!!?!???) or at ‘reservations only’, none of which was accurately recorded online. After walking around for like half an hour trying to find a place that would fit us in, we eventually tried one last time and scored a table at a lovely little restaurant with amazing food, called Alte Thorschenke. I had one of the specials which I don’t remember what it’s called but it was the most delicious creamy mushroom sauce on chicken and crispy fries (I made mushroom sauce at home this week, inspired by that experience); Tharash had potato dumplings. He also had a wheat beer; I tried it and decided that wheat beers aren’t so bad. We decided to get some dessert, so I had Bailey’s ice cream with sliced almonds, and he had warm hot chocolate with rum. He was kind of hoping for chocolate ice cream with rum on top, the menu was a bit misleading. They were cash only so I spent the last of my cash there.

After dinner we took an exploratory walk, up a stair to a Cappucin monastery, which is largely modern buildings but they have a nice old cemetery (I tried to take pictures of the swallows above the cemetery and failed completely), and then almost to the western side of town. Back at our apartment, we cracked open Tharash’s newest Terry Pratchett book, Feet of Clay. (spoilers: we managed to finish it while in Tübingen)

Day 9

This day was all cloudy and a tiny bit rainy. Tharash went out early to get groceries. I slept okay here, but I was still very tired from all the trains the day previously, and I had an emotional moment at breakfast (which was great, by the way, the B&B had a breakfast room where the host put out a great breakfast buffet for all his guests). But he asked me a question in German and even though my German is currently non-existent, I felt like a dumb mono-lingual tourist. Which I am but I was embarrassed by how I answered anyway. But anyway there were great buns with butter, jam, cheese, sandwich meats, paté, boiled eggs, cereal, tea, coffee, and orange juice. I didn’t have ALL of that, I had two sandwiches, some coffee, and some orange juice.

Then we went to the train, and remember how my month-long ticket was late, so we used a BOGO deal to go from Antwerp to Bruges? Well, we used the spare day created by that substitution to go to Moselkern (and back after), a tiny village about 17 minutes back on the train. We walked through the village and along a stream called the Elzbach, following it into the forest north of town and through its steep-sided valley for about an hour. Then we saw the castle.

We crossed the stream and found a bench under a tree to make some sandwiches. The new cheese Tharash had bought did not appeal to me at all. It seems my taste in cheeses is very narrow. But he also bought a cherry pastry for dessert. As we ate, we saw a family of ducklings with their mother, it was very cute.

Burg Eltz is in to me a strange spot. I have to wonder how it was built, since it seems very much to be in the middle of nowhere. We went in, and our ticket allowed us to do two things in the castle besides walk around: visit the treasury, and go on the guided tour. We went to the treasury first, and it had some nice things, some boring things, and some weird things. It had historic artefacts and portraits, it had an ornate weapons collection. It had a lot of dish sets, apparently the family invested in a tableware company that never really took off and paid out their investors in product. The weird things included a couple of gun-axes (hybrid weapons consisting of putting axe-blades on gun barrels) and a silver sculpture of a monster made out of a coconut shell. Also I heard a lady coughing repeatedly so I made Tharash put on a mask (I’d been wearing mine whenever inside this whole time, except for restaurants of course : P ).

The guided tour was, for once, offered in both German and English; there was a bit of confusion in the courtyard where the lines were, with both the German and English queues accidentally merging together. The guide’s accent was strong, but his words were still clear. I could hear (after my six months of practice) that among the tourists with us was a Dutch family; the two boys were a bit too young to have learned much English, so their parents were trying to quietly translate and keep the boys interested and not disruptive. They did a good job, I think. But we learned about how the Eltz family had three sons at one point, and they each decided to stay living in the castle so they each built their own house in the inner keep. Eventually, one of the branches died out, and the other sold their share to the third, so the castle is owned and maintained by only one family now, and their house is not on the tour because maybe they come live there sometimes (I bet they don’t much though). The interior of the tour part was delightfully windy and twisty, up and down little stairways and through interlinking corridors; some of the connecting doors were only made in the 19th and 20th centuries. The interior was decorated in the 19th century with how they thought medieval castles should be painted.

The gift shop was full of random medieval junk like dragon statues and knight action figures, but I found some interesting postcards, including some of drawings of the castle in past centuries. We decided not to go up to Balduin’s mini-castle (for one thing we weren’t sure how to get there) so we walked back along the trail the way we came (it’s reliable). I saw a big brown slug on the trail under the stairs that go up to the castle, so I moved it off the trail because I was worried someone would step on it. The slime it covered itself with is very sticky! It didn’t wash off even in the stream, I had to use hand sanitizer and even that didn’t get it all off until I could use soap and water and a towel. I commend that slug for clearly having had evolution work for it.

We decided to rate the castles we came across (Antwerp’s castle doesn’t count, it’s barely a castle anymore), so here’s the first rating:

Burg Eltz:
– Aesthetic: 8/10
– Fortifications: 5/10 – the single narrow bridge is great, the cliffs/walls are great, but there’s no real gatehouse and not a lot of actual defensive structures, feels kind of lazy actually.
– Historicity: 8/10 – even with the interior being reconstructed in the 19th century, it still feels right
– Location: 8/10 – great immediate surroundings, a rock jutting out from a winding streambed, but isolated (good for defence, bad for accessibility to friendlies)
Total castle rating: 7/10

When we got back, we tried to make a reservation at one of the places we’d wanted to go to on the previous night, for about 7:00, but the lady running the place said (I think) “just come back at 7, there will be room”. But when we went back at 7, the guy running the place then said there was no room. So we don’t know what happened there. We went to find another restaurant, and found one that was not as nice (much lower rating on Google); a bit cheaper; they had interesting decor, and good service when they were speaking to us directly, but the staff were yelling at each other to get things done sometimes and it kind of put the vibe of the place off. Like, their body language when they weren’t directly interacting with customers looked like they didn’t really care. Also I kind of forgot about it since I haven’t been surrounded by it since I got back, but a lot of people smoke in Germany, more than North America it seems like, and they don’t have much in the way of “designated smoking areas” like in North America. So in many places, including this restaurant, if there’s someone around who smokes you just have to put up with it. (Eventually those people left before we did, so we enjoyed the second half of our meal better.)

Buuuuut despite all the drawbacks, this was the first place I had flammkuchen, and it was delicious flammkuchen. They don’t appear to have a website so I can’t remember exactly what kind I had, but it wasn’t the standard “onions and pig fat” variety, there were more vegetables involved. Tharash had a pan of baked potatoes in quark (a kind of yogurt-y stuff, it was four potatoes in a LOT of quark), and we split a half-litre of local white wine (and a large bottle of water which cost as much as the wine : P ). I had two glasses and became quite inebriated. When we had eaten, we considered hitting up a bar just to see how far I’d get, but eventually decided just to walk up the hill far enough to see the castle and then went back to our place.

Day 10

The first real rest day we took. We were the only guests at the B&B this morning, so the breakfast spread was all for us omnomnom. The host remembered that Tharash liked tea and not coffee, so got him a pot of hot water for tea. After that, I went back to the room and did basically nothing for about two hours, while Tharash went on a hike above the town and took pictures of the castle from different vantage points.

When he came back, we walked at a leisurely pace through the south end of the old town before going to the supermarket to get fresh buns, and new cheese since I disliked the other cheese so much. We got a havarti, but it tasted weird to me. I’m so used to fake North American havarti, I guess. But I could eat it. We witnessed a lady buying like 16 packs of cigarettes, but it was kind of neat that the cashier had a big rack over the cash register like a balloon which had all the cigarettes in it, they could just reach up and grab whatever the customer was asking for. I also haven’t seen cigarette vending machines before like they have in Germany. …I think they have to make some reforms to get people to smoke less.

Back at our place we were lazy and did some reading, a little Asterix Dutch study, some Pratchett, until it was time to go to another castle. We walked up to Cochem castle about an hour early, hoping to see the courtyard on our own time before it closed, but we spent so long looking at souvenirs in the gift shop that we missed it. But we could hang around in the outer courtyard until it was time for the tour.

The tour was, unfortunately, all in German; I’m glad they at least provided a handout in English and that I can read fast. This castle was rebuilt from ruins in the 19th century, and so a lot of the interior has a more 19th century aesthetic. Though I will give them bonus points for the secret passages behind hidden doors. There was also a door with a ‘funnel lock’, where even if you were colossally drunk, your key would be guided into the correct spot.

The guided tour was part of a package that included a medieval dinner (which lasted four hours). It was in a space like a bunker, a long smooth vaulted room with kind of a minimum of set dressing; it had rather bothersome acoustics since things would reflect to the exact other side of the vault, so when the person at the table across from me facing the wall laughed, it would echo right into my ears. This became a slight problem when the table across from us (largely Germans) became very drunk as fast as possible. At one point during the first hour I had to go outside for a little bit because I was getting overstimulated with noise.

The host dressed up as “Lord Balduin”, the same guy who wanted to take over Burg Eltz. It’s a bit weird, I ruminated the next day in Trier, where there was a statue of him, that I got the impression of him as an antagonist at Burg Eltz and yet Cochem and Trier thought he was great. But it’s a matter of perspective, Tharash suggested; he could be seen as someone trying to unite the region, rather than conquer it. Anyway, the host spoke in German, but the full text of the events was on the table in English, which I really appreciated. The couple sitting beside us were chosen to be the guests of honour, and were given costumes to dress up in, and invited to sit at the head table with the host. This was fine for us because on the other side of them was a family from LA (the mom kind of looked like Yllamse, actually). They had just gotten off their plane that day and were headed to Luxembourg and Belgium by car. I can’t imagine driving with jet lag in a strange country, sounds awful.

There was a cup of local white wine provided for everyone, with the option to have more (for just €3 a cup!) or something else. …I had two more cups over the course of the meal and so did Tharash. >.> So my memories of it all are a bit jumbled, even with having pictures of the script to help me (they didn’t necessarily do the script in the same order). But they started by offering everyone a chance to wash their hands, in a bucket carried milkmaid-style by a young man who wore a towel as an apron for the drying of the hands. It was a bit awkward in the limited space.

The appetizer was vegetables and dip, but the official meal start was with bread and salted schmaltz (rendered animal fat). This was changed to hummus for vegetarians. No utensils were provided, which bothers me a little on the basis of historicity – wasn’t it that only forks were not invented yet? I was sure everyone had knives and spoons. Not to mention I had heard that food was served on round breads baked hard to act as plates before plates were commonplace, but here they had smooth-polished slabs of tree rounds. Anyway, they had a pair of minstrels with lutes, who sang several times during the evening, both from in the middle of the hall and off in the musician’s corner.

A bit later, there’s a line in the script about “do not starve your sweetheart but rather stuff her mouth” during the section on table manners. Tharash picked up a cabbage stick and jokingly tried to feed it to me; I batted it away (I stuff my own mouth, k) and accidentally hit it so hard it went flying on the floor. I felt bad cuz that’s a waste of food, but it was hilarious too. There was a very savoury broth soup with tiny beef cubes and peas (tomato soup for veg people), and the main course was a turkey leg (mixed salad with baked potatoes for veg people – and they got utensils for that, too). Dessert was sour cherry cake bars, very nice, and cheese and green grapes. And then they brought around the water washing buckets again, this time with a bit more soap in them.

At some point the lord went around offering snuff to everyone. I declined, but Tharash tried it. I don’t think it was the most pleasant experience.

Then followed Lord Balduin dancing with the special-guest woman, despite the lack of room in the hall, and then he held out his hand to me, since I was closest, and invited everyone to dance if they wanted to. I was very drunk by this point, but I managed to get up, and then dance with the special-guest man, and then someone told Tharash to dance with me, and then I sat down and he danced with the special-guest lady.

After that, I think, they offered to sell us little bottles of schnapps or peach liqueur (€3.50 each). Tharash got a bottle of schnapps, and I got a bottle of peach liqueur. I still haven’t drunk it actually. It’s sitting on my shelf, waiting for a special occasion. We were also allowed to take our cups home.

Then they had a ‘tournament’, where they picked two random middle-aged men, and had them do tests. The first was to saw a piece of tree trunk. The second was to sing a song. The third was to drink a beer as fast as possible. Though one of them was judged a winner, they both got ‘knighted’.

At length everything was over, and we all stumbled out. Tharash had to help me home, and we had a very good time walking down the hill very slowly and wobbly. Everything was hysterically funny. We calculated later that I’d drunk most of an entire bottle of wine on my own, which is more than I’ve ever had at one time in my life before.

Reichsburg Cochem:
– Aesthetic: 9/10 – it’s beautiful, really feels castle-y
– Fortifications: 9/10 – lots of layers to get into the inner keep (though some details could be improved?)
– Historicity: 7/10 – the reconstruction is pretty good, but the interior has been updated since its origins
– Location: 10/10 – on top of a perfect little hill right on the edge of the old town
Total castle rating: 9/10

Day 11

No hangover, despite probably not drinking as much water as I should have. After breakfast, we went up to the castle one more time (ahhhhh my legs) to take pictures in the morning light. There was a Korean family coming up when we went back down, and the kids were marching like little soldiers which was cute. We finished double checking our luggage in time to hand the keys directly to the host since it was check-out time, and headed out. We arrived two minutes before the train did!

Trier