Weinberge (vineyards) in Southern Germany

The Mosel is a river that flows through France, Belgium, and Germany.  It enters the old country near the town of Trier, which is the oldest city in Germany, dating back to the Roman times.  We were visiting some relatives in the town of Mülheim an der Ruhr, which is smack in the middle of the industrial/coal capitol of the European country.  We had decided to take a trip with the Wiegel family, to where they had a small travel trailer parked on a tributary of the Mosel.  From Mülheim, we drove roughly along the Rhein (Rhine) River.  It was a drive of several hours.  Being used to the distances in America, this trip was pretty short, but every drive through Germany is a vista paradise.

View of the Mosel River and villages

As we entered the Mosel area, it was pretty clear this area was going to be very nice.  The first thing we noticed were the many vineyards that carpeted the surrounding hills.  Both sides of the river were lush green with the many thousands of vines that paralleled the contours of the hills.  One has the choice of driving along the river, experiencing the villages and views at one's leisure, riding on a train that parallels the river, or taking the slow scenic route on an enclosed boat with dining facilities.  No matter how you do it, you will not cease to be impressed by both, the evidence of antiquity (castles and houses up to 800 years old) and the enormous varieties of vineyards.  We chose to take the car route.  We were not disappointed.  All along the way there were restaurants that offered great German cooking and wine tasting from the local wine cellars.

We were pleasantly surprised on a tour of a wine cellar we visited.  These cellars are mostly constructed of concrete, granite, and limestone.  They are also constructed underground, making them dark and very cool.  In the middle of our tour of this particular cellar, the proprietor opened up in a operatic baritone voice enchanted us with a song that reverberated throughout the cellar.  It was an experience we felt very blessed with.  It is even more of a blessing, because I believe this gentleman is not longer with us.  It was, therefore, an immeasurable blessing.

An impossibly steep slope for a vineyard.

Some of the vineyards we saw actually seemed to defy gravity.  It was obviously a huge feat to have planted these vines on mountain goat terrain.  It was even more impressive to imagine people negotiating these unbelievable slopes to harvest the grapes.  I can't help picturing people bent with arthritis caused by standing on these steep slopes and carrying heavy baskets of grapes.  Human ingenuity never ceases to amaze me.

Burg-Eltz by foot.

Equally impressive were the numerous castles we encountered as we drove the scenic highway.  It seemed there was either a castle ruins or a restored and functional castle on almost every hilltop we passed.  Some of them were used as museums and offered tours.  Others were actually still used as residences and were not available for tours.  We heard of a very nice castle that still belonged to a family that had owned it for hundreds of years.  Although they didn't live there, any more, there were still private areas of the castle that were not open for viewing.  We parked in a designated parking lot and had to walk about two kilometers to get to the castle.  The castle, Burg-Eltz, was constructed in a very defensible location on top a hill.  It was, at least for tourists, only accessible by foot.  The weather was perfect, on our walk to the castle.  We were presented with a detailed way of life, as it was hundreds of years ago.  On our way back to the parking lot, it started to rain.  A nice gentle rain would have been pleasant, since it was warm and the trail was not all level.  It was a cloud burst.  We all ran, fast as we could and for as long as we could--stopping to rest under large trees to catch our breath--but we were fully drenched by the time we reached the car.  We immediately drove to the small hotel Evelyn and I were staying in, which was in the same campground that her relatives kept their travel trailer in and got into a dry change of clothes.

One of the interesting folk lore stories we heard was at the junction of the Mosel river and the Rheine river.  The Rhine Gorge mainly played an important role in german folklore and art, most noteworthy the Loreley Rock."  Heinrich Heine named one poem after this rock, blaming a beautiful maid (instead of strong currents) for a lot of shipwrecks in the turbulent waters.  The legend was that a female spirit, beautiful maiden, probably a mermaid of the Rhein, would lure ships into the treacherous waters with her mysterious singing (or murmerring), causing shipwrecks.  The Lorelei Rock looks over that stiff current from 120 meters above the river.

I look forward to the day when we might be able to revisit the area and perhaps see it from one of the large glass enclosed boats that traverse the length of the river from Koblenz to Trier.