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Published: March 23rd 2012
Vineyard-covered slopes
Classic Rhine River sceneryMy tenth week in Europe (tuesday 29th July) started with a bus across the border into Germany, from Maastricht to Aachen - which despite being only a thirty kilometre trip somehow took an hour-and-a-quarter!?! Following my Lonely Planet to the letter, I set out on an entertaining little walk around the town centre which took me past half-a-dozen amusing little fountains, all of which portrayed a particular message - ranging in theme from a chicken thief about to be brought undone by a crowing rooster; to a motley assortment of townsfolk each trying to horde their money in different ways; to an ogre devouring misbehaving children!
From Aachen I took a train to Essen, followed by another train onto Gelsenkirchen, where a friend of mine named Tobie (who used to work in the kitchen at the Courthouse Hotel in Cairns) lives, in the middle of the most densely populated area in Germany, in the broad valley of the Ruhr River - colloquially known (somewhat disparagingly) as the Ruhr-pott.
I hung out in Gelsenkirchen with Tobie for three days enjoying the free accommodation, free internet access, and almost-free beer (3.19 euros for a six-pack of the local Schloss Gold lager
Looking out over Gelsenkirchen
View from the top of 'the hill' - plus a 25 cent refund for each empty bottle you return!), but most of all just enjoying the good company. I even managed to score a free haircut from Tobie, since unfortunately his Irish hairdresser girlfriend Elaine (who worked in the bar at the Courthouse Hotel) was back in Dublin preparing to move to Dubai... unfortunately though the results were somewhat dubious - despite Tobie's protestations - but I guess that merely proves that you get what you pay for!
Of course Tobie wasn't complaining though - after three days of the two of us drinking together every night his kitchen floor was covered in empty (plastic) bottles of Schloss Gold, which he (only half-jokingly, I suspect) claimed would earn him enough of a refund from the supermarket to be able to buy his first flight to Dubai - to visit Elaine - with the proceeds!
On friday I said goodbye to Tobie and took a train from Gelsenkirchen to Köln (Cologne). It´s quite a sight to step out of the Hauptbahnhof (central train station) and find the massive Kölner Dom (Cathedral) staring down at you, with it´s twin spires rising almost a hundred-and-sixty metres into the
air. Having said that, with an exterior that has been blackened with age, and presumably pollution, the behemoth of a church is certainly more beast than beauty! After crossing the Hohenzollenbrücke - a rail-and-pedestrian bridge over the Rhine River adjacent to the Cathedral - I checked into my downtown hostel, before heading back across the bridge to tackle the five hundred step climb up the southern tower of the Dom for an awesome view of the city and along the river.
On saturday I was up at half-past-seven in the morning to get a train from Köln to Koblenz - where the Rhine and Moselle Rivers meet - before embarking on an eight-hour cruise up the Rhine River from Koblenz to Mainz. For one hundred kilometres the river is flanked by vineyards clinging to the slopes, and punctuated by remains of centuries-old castles perched high atop ridges overlooking the river. Whilst onboard the boat I got talking to a Canadian girl named Karen, who it seemed may have been the only non-German speaking passenger beside myself! Eventually though, Karen decided to leave the boat to take a look around one of the picturesque little towns along the way -
Symbols of Cologne
The Hohenzollenbrücke, Rhine River and Kölner Dom leaving me to forge on ahead solo.
After arriving in Mainz I ended up going for a scenic walk around town, although this wasn´t actually my intention - I was simply trying to find the train station! In fact it took me so long to find the train station that by the time I got there Karen had already arrived - having spent an hour in the little town that she had disembarked from the boat in, before hopping back aboard the next passing boat and continuing her journey downstream - at which point we discovered that we were not only heading to the same town (Frankfurt) but the same hostel as well; which thankfully was directly across from the Hauptbahnhof, since both of us were pretty well exhausted by the time we got there.
Having been advised earlier in the week by Tobie not to bother with Frankfurt at all, since in his words it was 'a typical modern city with plenty of tall buildings and not much of anything else', and having thoroughly enjoyed my brief encounter with nature in the Mullerthal after spending the previous three weeks travelling almost relentlessly from one big city to
Cruising the Rhine
View from the Koblenz-Mainz ferry the next (Copenhagen, Hamburg, Berlin, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Brussels etc.) I had decided to cancel my second night in Frankfurt - as well as the following night that I had already booked in Stuttgart - and instead take the opportunity to once again get closer to nature by spending a couple of days in the Schwarzwald (Black Forest) in the south-western corner of Germany, near the French border.
And so it was that on sunday morning - after once again bidding farewell to my new Canadian friend Karen, who like me had seen absoutely nothing of Frankfurt other than the hostel and train station - I took a two-hour high-speed train from Frankfurt to Freiburg, on the outskirts of the Schwarzwald. Not wanting to waste a single moment with the call of nature beckoning me, I had no sooner checked into my hostel than I found myself on a bus headed out to the base of a nearby mountian named Schuainsland, from where I took a cable car to the summit (1280m) for an awesome view of the surrounding countryside, and even my first glimpse of the Alps! From there I walked the fifteen kilometres back downhill to Freiburg; although
From valley floor to mountain top
View of Feldberg from Schuainsland apart from endless amounts of trees and the occasional panoramic view, there wasn´t really a great deal to see.
The next day I hoped to get a better taste of the Schwarzwald by taking a train to Titisee in the heart of the forest. Unfortunately things started to go wrong as soon as I stepped off the train - and then realized once I left the station that I had left my shoes under the seat! Naturally before long it had started raining as well; leaving me to ponder the wisdom of my decision to get out of bed at eight o´clock in the morning. Thankfully though, by the time I set out on my twenty-kilometre bushwalk an hour-and-a-half (and two buses) later, the rain had ceased and the walking trail was more flip-flop-friendly than I had expected.
The next five hours were spent walking through the Wutuchschlucht (Wutuch Gorge) alongside a small river, which turned out to be much more scenic than my previous day´s effort. After having limited myself almost exclusively to urban experiences ever since leaving Scandinavia, I couldn't help but feel energized by my interaction with nature, absorbing as much as possible the sounds,
Worth walking twenty kilometres for
Enjoying my favourite spot in the Schwarzwald sights and smells of the forest as I made my way along. Of course I also happened to be completely exhausted by the time I hopped on a train at the other end of the gorge five hours later, so after stopping on my way back to the hostel to fill up on Thai food - and finally satisfying my hunger for some authentic Schwarzwaldertorte (black forest cake) it was definately time to call it a night.
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