This was the first time where we got to experience for ourselves what everybody says about German trains. "Everybody" is right. We want to move to Germany for the trains alone.

But I am getting ahead of myself. Before we set foot on a train, we got up (at 3am like I said before), took showers and, uh, other stuff, to waste time until a reasonable traveling hour. We left at 6:00[10], took the subway to the train station[11] and took a crash course in orienting ourselves to a new train system. It was actually much easier than I expected. I was warned that sometimes one car on a train might go to Cologne while the other ends in Russia or something like that, but that was never the case. You simply looked on the yellow Abfahrt schedules, which first list the time of departure, then the major stops, and then the Gleis (track). Or you could be even lazier and just go to the train information booths and ask them to print out your route for you.

We had to do that anyway, because we needed to validate our Europass. We learned from that point that, when somebody answers "a little" to "Sprechen Sie Englisch?", it's more than enough to get by. And it's also funny to see them be physical when they can't express themselves verbally. This information attendant did so by beating up his poor microphone rather than simply explain to us that it was not in perfect working order. Gee, I wonder how it got that way.

It was also at that point that I was getting braver with my broken (shattered?) German. I could actually ask simple things like "Bitte, wo is Gleis zehn?" and follow their pointing finger. So we followed our print out copy, picked up a 3,95 DM ($2.50) liter of orange juice[12] and went on the train. Even with a train transfer, we were in Bacharach by about 9:30. I could get used to this getting up early stuff.

Though we had eaten a couple of chocolate croissants[13] back in Frankfurt, we dropped in a little bakery in Bacharach because the TI didn't open until 10. I think I was able to order exclusively in German...YAY! As we sipped our $4 hot chocolate (typical), we were amused at the shy bakery worker girl who liked to hang around us, listening to us talk as she dusted the same areas over and over again. We saw this kind of thing a lot.

When the TI opened, we went there to ask about the big ominous castle on the hill overlooking the town, which was rumored to be a youth hostel. Though we weren't planning on doing any hosteling on this trip (and probably, never again in our lives), we figured, if it was going to be ever, it would be in a big ominous castle on a hill overlooking the town. The TI couldn't really help us, though at least they were friendly enough to allow us to relax a little, so we called the hostel ourselves. Bacharach is such a small town, though, that they didn't even have phone card telephones...only had the outdated coin-op ones. This ended up being a problem.

We finally reached the hostel[14] and found that they DID have a double room, and it was open, and that is was reasonable, and...click. No warning, just click. The time was used up (a local call has a time limit?), and the phone just hung up without any notice. When we tried calling again, and got busy signal after busy signal, we decided just to go up there. So we asked those nice Germans that directed us to the phone to direct us to the hostel. I think they were about to drag us up the path when we almost went the wrong way. Boy we sure were a little slow on the uptake at first!

Our new German friends took our picture in front of the historic Rhine!

So we took Rick Steves' first listed choice and went to the Hotel Kraneturm, so named because it was a converted crane tower on the Rhein, where its towers are now round rooms. Though we didn't get one of the round ones, we sure loved our room! A cute little suite with lots of charm, a shower, a view of the castle we just went to (yep, that's high up there), and even a blowdrier, plus half-board (breakfast and dinner) for the same price as the dump in Frankfurt. Now THIS is a vacation!

After we settled in, we took the 12:30 cruise down the Rhein, free with our Europass train day. And the weather cleared up for us--though it was foggy and cold all morning, suddenly the clouds parted (thanks, Moses) and the sun appeared, just for us to watch all the "toll-castles" and vineyards float by. While the European next to us rolled her own cigarettes and corrected our pronunciation of the German towns, we cruised the best hour of the river up to St. Goar[17], where we would get lunch and go up to Rheinfels castle. But, being typical Americans who think we can get anything we want at anytime, blew it and, by the time we got there, all the delis were closed. We instead found a supermarket, which we then discovered was THE best way to eat in Europe. I know for a fact that I ordered all in German this time. We got two of the greatest sandwiches of our trip for about $2.75, orange juice boxes, and a bottle of white wine (Rhine wine). Too bad we forgot the Swiss army knife, and thus the corkscrew, at the hotel. But we still had a beautiful picnic on the top of the hill, overlooking the gorgeous Rhein river. Doug snobbed, "I wonder what the poor people are doing now?"

When we got to the Rheinfels castle, we were awestruck. Pictures and videos don't do it justice, because the place just emanates ghosts from its long history! It is a Romanesque (late 12th century!) castle with tiny windows, crossbow holes in the 12 foot thick walls, and creepy, twisty catacombs under the castle where lost, trapped enemy troops were burned or starved to death. You can't venture into most of these without a guide or you will become a permanent addition to this archeological find[18]! We were bummed to find a tour of German kids carting flashlights coming out just as we were looking in, knowing that we could have mooched off of their tour like the "Steve Perry"[19] couple did. But we braved one small section of them on our own with use of a map[20], with our trusty, tiny pen-flashlight and a great deal of courage. Imagine COMPLETE darkness, immense coldness, and total lack of direction...even when just going straight. You can do nothing but pray that you will reach an end soon. I think you can hear your own heartbeat echo in those halls.

Doug contemplates the long history of Rheinfels Castle

Somehow, though, the castle wasn't a scary place. We were totally enthralled to see how they lived, enjoy the incredible view from the tower, or to try to make sense of the grammatically-slaughtered-English brochure. In fact, we spent a great deal of our time in one room, the wine cellar, singing our two part songs and reveling in the unearthly 5-second delay. I think we went back there to sing at least three more times; we probably would have stayed there all night if we could have.

Sometimes, though, it was hard to believe we were actually in Europe. Though there was very few people wandering around the castle, almost all of the ones we bumped into were American, many sporting a Rick Steves' book (how embarrassing!). And speaking of embarrassing, I feel for the guy who spotted me in the bathroom and waved, then a second later backtracked and looked confusingly at me, "You're not my wife Barbara!". Not often a stranger waves to me while I'm in the bathroom.

But then it definitely didn't feel like the US when the woman at the gift shop/museum started talking to us about her wartime experiences. We had noticed a "one billion mark" bill in the museum, and she said that was during 1923, where World War I left Germany devastated and the money totally worthless. She talked of her mother, who received a bar of soap from a soldier so she could wash his clothes for him--every night she would take that bar of soap out and simply stroke it, savoring its delicate softness, since she had not felt real soap in years. She talked of the cold coffee made of wheat or rye instead of coffee beans, of how workers would run to the bakery after work to find that the money had devaluated so much that their days work might not buy one loaf of bread. And bread was so hard to find in the first place that the bakeries that opened at 7am might have people waiting in line at 3am to have a chance at getting what little they had to sell. One cigarette on the black market would cost 14 DM (ten 1930s dollars!) Sounded like Russia on a really bad day.

And then her W.W.II experiences were enough to give you nightmares. She told us of her trauma in a bomb shelter in Cologne; it was designed for 300 people, and 1500 frightened civilians were crammed into it. When the bomb[21] came, she could feel the ground shake like an earthquake, but not for the 5-10 seconds typical of a quake, but for 11 straight minutes. She said it felt like hours. When it was done, they all ran out of the shelter and straight out of town without looking back, for 26 straight km (more than 16 miles). When they got far enough away, they finally looked back to their beloved city, and saw nothing but one large smoke cloud. Makes your everyday problems seem rather petty, doesn't it?

I think that day might have been one of the best of our whole trip, not only because we got to see a really cool castle and "roam around history," but because we started to realize that people in another country found us fascinating, and that, just maybe, we really would make it for the whole month. In the gift shop, there were some stunning, original mensural notation manuscripts[22], and, for my own curiosity, I quietly tried to sing the Agnus Dei chant--next thing we knew there was an American family with a German exchange student beaming at us and talking with us about...all kinds of things[23]. Also, later on the train, we sat across somebody who looked like a Louis Lee impersonator (with mannerisms and everything) who originally spoke German to us but, after realizing we were American, switched to English--especially amazing when you consider that his first language was Chinese[24]. Very Friendly people were abounding in Europe!

After traipsing around every fascinating inch of that castle[25], we were about as exhausted as we could be. We went back to our cute little room, discovered that we did indeed leave the corkscrew in the room, and cracked open the bottle of wine before our dinner (half-board, remember?). I don't know when I've ever had such great (and STRONG) wine! To think it cost about $3.50! Amazing. We drank the entire bottle in about 45 minutes.

Doug contemplates the long history of Rhein wine!

After dinner (pretty good, but Americanized) we went back upstairs and Doug immediately conked out. I tried my best to get tired by writing in my notebook, lulled by the European sounds of tower bells and the occasional hum of a passing train. I think I laid down at about 21:00, aware of each additional clang and roar. I got up, completely unable to sleep anymore, at 23:00!!!