Barb and Baden’s Excellent Return to Germany – Part 1

After travelling 9 time zones it’s more than natural that the first day would be pretty rough. We flew into Frankfurt with a stop in Montreal and I’m now more than convinced that doing a non-stop flight from Vancouver to Frankfurt is less preferable. While the travelling time is longer by making the stop, your body is much more appreciative with the stop in the middle getting off the plane in Montreal. Sitting on a plane for that 10 hour flight direct from Vancouver to Frankfurt really takes its toll on you.

But no matter how you end up getting to Germany from Vancouver, you’re body is going to be constantly reminding you that it thinks that it’s 9 hours in the past and it does a pretty good job of that on the first day that you’re here. We arrived in Frankfurt around 10:00 in the morning so we pretty much had a full first day ahead of us. We were staying with my friend Frank (just outside of Frankfurt) and over the previous few weeks had discussed that for this first day we might want to just walk around some of the nearby towns on our first day in Germany.

Actually, the thing most important thing that we wanted to do first was to buy a cell phone. As we were going to be driving for several days in the "middle" part of our German vacation we wanted to have a cell phone so we could call ahead to make reservations. For about 7 days of our trip we had made no reservations and we intended to just wing it and decide where we would stay each night on a day by day basis. When I told Frank about this approach he was quite surprised as he knew that this was very unlike us as virtually ever other trip we had made extensive, detailed day by day plans and winging it was not really in our vocabulary.

In previous years when we have travelled we had usually just bought phone calling cards and used phone booths to make any calls but my research for this trip had found that very inexpensive cell phones could be purchased in Europe along with a prepaid (rechargeable) card to give you a fixed limited amount of calling time. As far as I know this kind of option is virtually impossible in Canada as most cell phones purchases are forces the buyer to have a contract of at least one year. With the help of Frank’s research in advance of us arriving here, we were able to buy a cheap cell phone and prepaid minutes with no contract that we can use again on all of our future trips. Especially when driving, having a cell phone on hand can’t be beat.

Running out of steam

Despite our best intentions, we knew by the early afternoon of the first day here that it was going to be difficult to continue without getting some rest. By early afternoon, both Barb and Ruth were of the same opinion that any plans for that evening would have to be postponed and we spent an quiet evening at home.

We had both gotten a good night’s sleep and awoke on Friday morning full of energy. Well, Barb and I did anyway – Ruth stated that she had gotten perhaps 1-2 hours of sleep the previous night. Unfortunately, this pattern would continue for a few more nights.

For all of Friday morning, we spent spent the day with Frank and his family exploring the town of Weisbaden. Weisbaden was a town that I was introduced to on my last trip to Germany in 2006 and while I had only seen it for a few hours had immediately been taken by the beauty of the city. With a population of about 250,000, Weisbaden is a "city" by any measure but it has a history and look about it that is easy to fall in love with. As it was relatively untouched by any bombing from WW2, there is a lot of 1800’s-era (and earlier) architecture that is part of the town’s look that I love so much. My only regret is that we only had hours to spend in Weisbaden and not days . My next trip to Germany will definitely address this shortcoming.

We spent the rest of the day driving along a few towns along the Rhein river like Eltville and Rüdesheim which were all wine growing towns. Most of the wine grown in Germany seems to be of a white variety and in this area of the country by the river there are kilometer after kilometer of vineyards. In Rüdesheim where I took the above picture, we were on a gondola about 10 metres above the vineyard going up a small hill. The two person open air gondola offered great views of the surrounding area.

Rhine river cruise

Sadly, we only had two days with Frank and his family and on Saturday morning boarded a small ship at the port in Mainz and headed north along the Rhein to our next destination of Köln (Cologne).

We had heard from several sources that a cruise along the Rhein was not to be missed and we had made arrangements in advanced to do this 12 hour one day cruise. The cruise makes about 30 stops along the Rhein as we made our way to Köln and for the first half of the way up to the town of Koblenz was dotted with hilltop castles every few minutes. With the sunny weather in the low 20’s that we were enjoying, it was a perfect environment to enjoy the landscape from the top of the ship.

In hind sight we probably should have cut short the cruise at Koblenz (at about the half-way mark) as the last 6 hours were less scenic and taking a train from Koblenz to Köln would have been a better idea and gotten into Köln much earlier than our 8PM arrival time.

Nonetheless, we are in Köln and as I write this have one full day here before we pickup our car tomorrow morning (Monday) and head south for the next week. The weather continues to be great and if I can shake this cold that I feel coming on will doubtlessly enjoy the full day that we have here in Köln.

Stay tuned for Part 2 as we explore the Black Forest and parts of Bavaria …

Baden