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Published: June 12th 2008
Heidelberg
Reayy pretty townBack on the party bus and we head north from Switzerland to the Wine Valley of St Goar in Germany.
21/5/08 - Lauterbrunnen to St Goar
Today was a big day on the coach. I had a 6am wake up for my last morning of cookies/dishies, and it was an 8am departure from the picturesque Lauterbrunnen back into Deutschland. We had a 3hr drive to an Autogrill, back into Germany where the Burger King burgers are the size of an average football field. We hit the road for another 2 hours and arrived at a pleasant little German town called Heidelberg. Heidelberg is known as the German University Town and 1 in 5 residents are students. The town was really quiet and it's alleyways full of cafes, souvenir shops and markets of all sorts. In the distance above the town stood the massive Heidelberg Castle, but we didn't have time to go to the top.
A further 2 hours down the banks of the Rhine got us to St Goar, a sleepy little German village famous for it's wine production. We had a tour through a shop with the largest selection of German Steins available under one roof.
A guy that was about as big as a townhouse and had obviously had his fair share of German Lagers in his time makes all of his Steins by hand and some of them contained a chunk of the Berlin Wall on the top. I ended up buying a couple of Steins, really nice designs and a decent price, plus a great souvenir. Over the road there was the largest cookoo clock in the world and a shop with about 10,000 clocks hanging up making a racket at the turning of the hour. There was also a Birkenstock shop, which I had learned is a popular design of thong that I am lead to believe is the worlds most comfortable shoe. I highly doubt it beats the Adiluxe. We had dinner at a pub in town which was great - a huge meal full of veggies and about 4 courses in total. We had some free time before the coach left so we headed back down towards the river where we met some local German brats that were about 10 years old on skateboards who thought they were top stuff. They kept us entertained for a good half an hour
before we walked back to the coach for our departure to our accommodation, the little buggers followed us all the way too.
It was about a half hour drive to our hotel in the hills above the Rhine Valley, a great set of rooms with only 2 per room - bonus. We had a wine tasting session with a local grower, sorry I should say Germany's finest wine maker, an 80 year old guy very proudly wearing his gold medal from the German Wine Society for his involvement in the local wine industry. The bloke was really funny and really loved his job, who wouldn't drinking wine for a living. His wines were amazing, we bought a bottle of red, white and some Eisswein, a sweet almost muscat type liqueur.
After stumbling back to our hotel from a night of generous sized wine tastes, we surprisingly found a pub on the way, and what better night to celebrate than with the locals watching Manchester United defeat Chelsea in the Soccer Champions League. If there's one thing Europeans take seriously thats not alcohol, it's soccer. Amazing night, and if it wasn't for the smoke filled environment of the pub
Rhine Valley
out of le bus window we were in and my lungs being coughed up all over the old musty convict-brick walls, I would have stayed until morning.
Germany was interesting, a place I'd definitely go back to visit. Nice people and really awesome looking villages.
LOOK OUT! Next up: Amsterdam.
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