The Rhine & Mainz

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Friday, June 10

We got up as early as we could in Cologne/Köln and had our usual checkout argument — they wanted to charge us an extra 14DM for our breakfast which we hadn't reserved, they said we had, and which we didn't have time for and didn't want. Their response was, "Who cares, you reserved it!" Kate got fierce with them, we had especially reserved this hotel without the breakfast, and they finally backed down but not without some concerted effort on Kate's part. This is not the land where "the customer is always right".

 
We got the city tram and made it down to the hydrofoil at the Rhine with lots of time for the 9:00am sailing. However, the hydrofoil wasn't quite what we had expected. It's not a gentle leisurely cruise up the river, it's a fast mad dash which was very bumpy. To top it off the weather was quite dull and rainy. From the picture above you can see that it's windy and cool outside; nevertheless Kate seems to be having at least some fun. We saw lots of scenery, many small villages, castles, vineyards in the terraced hillsides, but everything really zipped by. Think of it this way — it's over 2 hours by train so there is some distance to cover (200km) in a fairly short time and this is the same boat that returns at 2:00pm. The schedule has it arriving in Mainz at 13:10 so we're averaging 50km/hr which is pretty fast for a boat. Despite the dull windows and the rainy weather, Reg and Kate managed to shoot lots of film ... as usual!

The trip up the river passes through several important cities. From Köln, through Bonn (which was the capitol when there was an East vs West German) to Koblenz it's mostly flat plains with farmlands and industry. Koblenz is where the Mossell river enters from the west — that's another important wine region. From there on up to the Mainz/Frankfurt area you're in the Rhine Gorge where the hillsides are very steep and terraced for Riesling vineyards tended largely by hand. You'll see pretty castles on the hillside and small quaint towns along the shore. There are no bridges across the Rhine between Koblenz and Mainz; instead there are several commuter ferrys which cross the swift flowing river. Around Mainz/Frankfurt the gorge is no more. Here there's a mountain range to the west of the river and a bit of a basin with lots of vineyards around the more gently sloping hillsides, e.g., especially around Nierstein where Martin lives. Across the river the land flattens out around the industrial city of Frankfurt.

On the hydrofoil we're told about the movie "A Bridge Too Far" (1977, Sean Connery & Michael Caine) that's based on an historical WWII event. There were several strategic bridge on the Rhine between Koblenz and Köln required by the Allies as they advanced to reclaim Europe and Germany after D-Day. Apparently the fellow in the story we're told, a German we believe, who was supposed to blow up one of the bridges, to impede the Allied advance, either didn't or couldn't or wouldn't. In any case, as a result, he was executed. Another one of those casualties of war.

Kate got pretty car sick during the trip and generally felt quite beat up by the time we arrived in Mainz. We also ended up spending a small fortune to retrieve our luggage from our locker at the train station in Mainz. You will recall we had dropped off our luggage there the day before  so that we could travel light today. It cost us 2DM to cover the penalty, 2DM that we screwed up and then another 2DM for no apparent reason at all.

From there we walked through the old town and had a nice Italian lunch. It's a fancy white table cloth restaurant that we've found for lunch and we ordered a nice bottle of Italian Chianti Classico to share with our meal. The wine server arrives with the bottle, shows it to us, "Yes, that's the one", he uncorks the wine, pours a glass, sniffs it briefly, pours another glass for Reg to sniff and taste, after doing so Reg replies, "Yep, that's fine" and then he buggers off with the first glass of wine! This shocked Cindy and Reg — "Hey, we didn't buy that wine for you!". But Kate said she'd not drink anything that someone else had stuck their nose into and sniffed. Why does the server sniff the wine at all? Gosh, you wouldn't want to discover for yourself if the wine was corky or off. If we did it that way then the server could stick his nose into the glass that I reject couldn't he? Of course it turned out to be a fine wine anyways. And when in Europe there are their rituals around serving wine.

For dessert we bought some sweets that we took to an outdoor café/bar and ate with coffee we purchased there. Cindy picked up another yard decoration to give to Pat. Their backyard is so bare! 

Mainz is the home of a large Cathedral with an outdoor market everyday. It's very scenic with these old buildings in post and beam construction. It's also the home of Gutenberg and the Gutenberg Bible — he figured out that if you can press grapes then you can also press type onto paper. There are several Gutenberg Bibles are in the Gutenberg museum but we didn't go in. We had walked by the museum and were having a drink quite a while later before all of this dawned on me. Dope that I am.

That afternoon we went to a church with Chagall stained glass windows — the church of Saint Stephan. It had been bombed in 1942 during the war and they've been busy ever since trying to put it back together. The roof is back up but it's been a quick and dirty fix. Only some of the vaulted ceilings are restored. Many are just flat ceilings where you can see that the arches that form the vaulting have not been restored. The original stained glass windows were lost to the bombing and have been replaced by Chagall windows. Cindy and Kate are duly impressed by the church and the Chagall windows; Reg says it's not the Cologne Cathedral. These modern windows were were installed sometime around 1980. Marc Chagall (1887-1985), a Jewish French artist born in Belarus, was 91 when he designed these windows as an expression of peace between Christians and Jews.

In Hamburg, by the Reeperbahn, there's the old Jewish cemetery. We asked Martin about the Jewish population locally — he said there is one but it's not too visible. He tells us the big nearby Jewish cemetery in Mainz has to be kept locked because of the Neo-Nazis in Germany. There's a very nasty history here that cannot be forgotten and seems to be repeating. C.f., my conversation with the elderly Austrian lady on D-day.

We discover that it's only one train stop from Mainz to the Flughaf (i.e., the airport in Frankfurt). This is interesting, we have booked a hotel to stay in Frankfurt Saturday night but perhaps it would be better to stay here in Mainz. Our hotel is in the suburbs, but it's modern and very nice. Martin comes over to meet us at the hotel around 8:00pm. He's being in England today working and insists on taking us out of our suburban hotel to see some "real" Germany. We crossed the river to Wiesbaden. Again Reg is confused about directions — is Wiesbaden on the east or west side of the Rhine? Likewise is Mainz on the east or west side? He is having a hard time getting his bearing.

The Rhine runs from Switzerland to the north and runs to the south through the Netherlands to empty into the North Sea. Along the way it wanders. At Mainz the river makes a big bend; down stream it's basically east/west for a quite a bit; above Mainz it's running north/south. So there's good reason for the confusion. You could correctly say that Mainz is on the south shore and Wiesbaden is on the north side.

We are curious and have Martin to help us. What does Wiesbaden mean? Apparently is something to do with the Roman baths — there are hot sulfur springs there. And what does Nierstein mean? Apparently it's something to do with red stones.

We do the 10-minute tour of the old city Wiesbaden. It's a big city of 600,000 souls while Mainz is only 200,000 and Nierstein, where Martin lives, is a small town of just 6,000. Frankfurt we're told is multi-million and best avoided — more on that in a moment. We have dinner at a wine bar kind of place and have Martin help us with the menus. What would have taken us an hour or so is translated in a few minutes: Kartoffeln is potatoes, Rosti is roasted potatoes, Spargel is asparagus, Rindfleisch is beef, Schweinefleisch is pork (that one actually makes sense), and so on. The menu is very easy as it was really limited. Reg had great steak. Kate had one of those "dog's breakfast" salads with lettuce, tomatoes, etc. plus ham, sausage, etc. plus hard boiled eggs, etc. plus coleslaw, etc. plus even more! "Ich bin kein Seemann", but that seems a little much.

We make arrangements to meet up with and spend the day with Martin tomorrow. And we decide to say here at our motel in Mainz rather than transfer the next day to Frankfurt. We like our hotel, we know the airport can be reached without hassle and Martin has even offered to drive us. We're led to believe that Frankfurt is a real hell hole, something like Hamburg, and we've seen quite enough of the German street people. So the decision is made: tomorrow we will cancel our hotel in Frankfurt.

Slides scanned and notes composed during the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, March 2022 — as if living through the OMIGOD! COVID variant wasn't bad enough! The diary entries were made by Cindy, Kate and Reg at the time.