Bacharach

So, work has provided me with many business trips over the years, but this one is likely to the most interesting locale - we are in Germany! As this is my first time in Europe, I figured it was worth a few blog posts (that and my family has been begging for some pictures). Naturally, I had to bring Tanja and Snoopy along. After all, Tanja is much more experienced as a world traveler, and Snoopy... well, he's part of the family so we can't leave him behind. But mostly, I realized that once we have the baby (who apparently is now the size of an apple), trips like this are probably not going to be possible.

Anyway, after a long overnight flight where we slept a little and managed to avoid any major jet lag, we piled into our rental car for a few days of seeing sights before I had to report for work. We have both decided that we are most interested in seeing cultural and historic things - particularly castles and churches. First up on our itinerary was the town of Bacharach on the Rhine River.


It is interesting to think that when we were in Santa Fe, NM, we saw the oldest house in the US (from 1646). The houses here date to the 1300s! And honestly, as you can see, they are really well cared-for. It was so picturesque, I felt like I had stepped into a gingerbread house village or something!


Originally, we were thinking that we would miss the Fall colors here, but we were pleasantly surprised. The colors are beautiful! Not as many reds and oranges as back in MD, but golds, a few oranges, and browns definitely demand attention. We climbed a tower on a vineyard (the region is famous for wine, and the town's name relates to being an altar to the wine god Bachhus) to get this view of St. Peter's Cathedral, the town, and the Rhine in the distance.


The Wernerkappelle (the cathedral ruins to the left in the above picture) supposedly were a pilgrimage site during the Middle Ages. As the story goes, there was a skeleton discovered at the site of a little boy who was named by the townspeople Werner. Somehow, the story was concocted that he was murdered by Jews and his blood was used by them for some of their rituals. Werner got sainthood (which was later stripped because of the false stories of his origin), and the cathedral was destroyed when the French sacked the castle seen on the hill in the right of the picture. This castle, the Stahleck Castle is now a youth hostel. When we were there, however, the place seemed overrun by kids that didn't look much older than 10 - likely there on some kind of field trip. I guess youth is a relative concept.