Week 44: Time for More Castles!

As the weather improves, we are getting more excited about getting out and about. With all the castles we have seen in the past year, one may think that we are running low on options--you would be wrong! We decided to take a drive out to the Rhine, and check out some of the castles in the vicinity. 

One of the great things about driving on the back roads here in Germany is that we'll be driving along and one of us will go "Woh! Look at that castle!" And on this trip out, we had just such an experience in Kastellaun. Jason, who was driving, was the one who noticed the ruined castle up on the hillside. We stopped, parked and then walked up the hill to the castle. 

As with many of the castles in Germany, this one was a ruin and had only a couple walls and a turret remaining. While we were up on the hill admiring the castle remains, we ran into a wedding that was happening in the restaurant near the castle. We even got to see a Champagne cork fly and shared a smile with the opener of the bottle. Unfortunately, we were not invited to the festivities (nor were we really dressed for them), so we walked back into town and enjoyed some Kaffee und Kuechen (coffee and cake) before heading back out on the road.

Kastellaun Castle Ruin

Wedding Party

Our ultimate destination was St. Goar and Burg Rheinfels, the largest castle overlooking the Rhine. The castle was also a ruin, but still had many of its walls and a substantial number of buildings left. It was very cool, with lots of rooms and areas to walk through and even some tunnels that we got to explore with a candle. It would be a great place to go back to in the summer with a picnic.

Jason and Burg Rheinfels

Instead of heading straight home from Burg Rheinfels, we drove up to Koblenz. I have spent a lot of time at the Koblenz Hauptbahnhof (main train station), as the train line I take to get to other parts of Germany for work generally requires that I change there. But, I have not seen anything else of Koblenz. Jason suggested the stop, thinking there would be a park/monument or something else interesting at the intersection of the Rhein and Mosel rivers in Koblenz. And boy, was he right.

The intersection of these rivers is known as the Deutsches Eck (German corner). Located there is an enormous statue. ENORMOUS. The statue is of German Emperor William I. I highly recommend reading the Wikipedia page I linked to above, as it gives the history of the statue and the monument. The statue that is there now is a replacement of the version that was destroyed during WWII and the Wikipedia page includes some photos of the statue that was there before and what it looked like after being destroyed.

Statue of William I at the Deutsches Eck

To give you some idea of scale, the picture below shows Jason standing next to a carved eagle which takes up only the lower half of the lower wall between the stairs in the picture above. The only other thing I can think of that impressed me so much by its size might be the Lincoln Memorial, but this monument may be a bit more impressive, as there is nothing else even close to its size anywhere nearby.

Jason, providing scale

We walked around the park by the monument a bit before working our way back home along the Mosel. We stopped in Cochem (star of at least one previous blog post) for dinner, enjoyed a good German meal and went on our way.