Beneath the flower-fringed balcony of the hotel room, the Rhine River flowed fast and wide. Pleasure boats and cargo ships and barges with their tugs rode the current downstream or labored to make headway in the other direction. Across the river, the low hills were covered with green trees and, as an over-the-top touch, a 700-year-old castle sat in the middle of the scene, complete with battlements.
Despite the exhaustion of a trans-Atlantic flight followed by an excursion on the race course known as the German autobahn, I could hardly sleep that first night in the Rhineland. I got up and sat on the balcony for a while, staring at the black silhouette of the ruin and listening to the throaty grumbles from the tugs as they struggled upstream. The morning would bring a long-awaited trip down the most storied part of the river.
The Rhine ranks as one of the world’s great watercourses not because of its length–it runs only 820 miles from source to sea–or even principally because of its beauty, although much of it is scenic. Its importance comes from the fact that it is the national river of Germany, in the way that the Mississippi is the great American river.
If the Rhine is, practically speaking, important for commerce and transportation, it is much more than a river of tugs and barges. Father Rhine, as Germans call it, has exerted a powerful effect on the German imagination. To an extent that few rivers can equal, the Rhine is a river of legend and myth.
This is where the Lorelei, a fair-haired siren, drew sailors to their death with her entrancing songs. The legend has inspired many writers down the years, including Heinrich Heine, whose ballad about the temptress of the Rhine rocks is one of his best-known poems. Here is also where the mythical Nibelungs hid their treasure, the Rhine gold. That saga provided Richard Wagner with the material for four marathon-length music dramas. And those are just for starters. Almost every castle or pile of rocks figures in a tale or two.
And so it is a destination bound to appeal to anyone susceptible to legends and romance, as well as to students of German and history. Guilty on all counts, I was restless for dawn to arrive so I could at last see the places I had read and thought about for years.
The most impressive and scenic stretch of the Rhine lies between the cities of Mainz and Koblenz in west-central Germany. This area, called the Valley of the Rhine or the Valley of the Lorelei, is the romantic heart of the Rhineland, in all senses of that overused word. Hemmed in by slate mountains, the river races through a valley that is studded with castles and castle ruins. The hills and low mountains that flank the river are terraced with vineyards; the nearby Rheingau region produces what many regard as Germany’s best wine. In some of the narrow stretches of flat land between the hills and the river, villages of ancient lineage and artless charm thrive on the wine trade and tourism.
Roads and railways run near the river, but there is only one way to see this part of the Rhine, and that is on the water. The Koln-Dusseldorf steamship company operates a fleet of white steamers that stop at all of the villages, with on-and-off privileges. This is the ideal way to travel through the region. If a town strikes one’s fancy as the steamer pulls up to the dock, simply hop off and walk around. If it’s time for lunch or an afternoon pastry break, chances are another quaint town will soon hie into view. Another steamer will come along in due time, and the journey along the river can resume. Does this kind of day beat sitting in rush-hour traffic? Only all the time.
Rudesheim, a popular jumping-off point for tourists at the south end of the valley, is noted for its Drosselgasse, a tavern-lined alley, and its Late Gothic half-timbered houses, which were once home to the town’s merchant princes. A place long associated with the free-flowing ways of the Rhine wine trade, Rudesheim is the Big Easy of the Rhineland. If you want to feel as if you are on the water without leaving terra firma, this is the place where you can put some sway in your step.
Let’s assume, though, that you’ve made it onto the Rhine steamer. The sightings start almost immediately. One of the most colorful legends on the Rhine involves the Mauseturm–the Tower of the Mice–just downriver from Rudesheim. Built on an islet in the river, this Gothic tower dates from the 13th Century, although it was restored in the mid-19th Century to serve as an aid to navigation. Despite these dates, the story behind the tower’s colorful name comes from the 9th Century, when the cruel Archbishop Hatto of Mainz supposedly hoarded grain during a time of famine. The starving classes were nothing more than mice, he declared. He was promptly beleaguered by the rodents day and night until he took refuge on his island in the Rhine. The mice found him and devoured him.
As the steamer makes it way down the river, it is impossible not to be struck by how much commercial traffic this waterway carries. The Rhine runs north from Switzerland to the Netherlands, where it empties into the North Sea at Rotterdam. Since ancient times, when the Rhine formed one of the northern boundaries of the Roman Empire, it has been a natural conduit for agricultural and manufactured goods. In the Middle Ages, when river transportation was infinitely preferable to the primitive roads, the local potentates were quick to realize that they had an easy source of funds floating past their doorsteps. That accounts, in part, for the heavy concentration of castles here, where the Rhine is narrower than elsewhere. Many of the fortresses served as glorified toll booths.
A few miles down the river from the archbishop’s tower is the attractive village of Assmannshausen, where my wife and I decided to stay, based on the recommendation of friends who knew the area. Smaller and less rambunctious than Rudesheim, Assmannshausen is a good base of operations, with frequent steamship service, several good restaurants and wine bars for the evening hours, and, of course, a castle. Rheinstein, which is perched halfway up a rock across the river, traces its origins back to a fortress first mentioned in 1279, and in the 14th Century, it served as a residence of the archbishop of Trier. But it wasn’t until a Prussian prince hired the great 19th Century German architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel to restore the ruins of the old castle that it was dubbed Rheinstein. The prince and his pals liked to dress up in medieval garb and pretend they were back in the days when rulers could compare the lower classes to rodents and, Archbishop Hatto aside, get away with it.
Downstream from Assmannshausen, the villages and castles drift by in thick profusion, identified briefly by a squawky voice on the steamship’s loudspeaker. Burg Reichenstein was the stronghold of the 13th Century robber knight Philip von Hohenfels who “robbed the ladies, imprisoned the clergy, mistreated vassals and plundered merchants.” Along comes the pretty village of Bacharach, with its Romanesque church and the ruins of a Gothic chapel. Another castle-in-the-river, the Pfalzgrafenstein, dating from 1327, looks like a Gothic battleship with its pointed front and close-set turrets and towers. On New Year’s Eve in 1813, a force of 83,000 Prussian and Russian troops crossed the Rhine here in pursuit of Napoleon’s fleeing army.
It’s hard to believe the evidence of one’s eyes, but no sooner has one 800-year-old fortress or settlement retreated behind the stern than another one appears off the bow. Now the high point of the river trip looms dead ahead. Fellow tourists crowd to the front of the steamer, cameras poised. In a truly regrettable choice of man-made atmospherics, a tinny rendition of the song-setting of Heine’s “Die Lorelei” rasps from the loudspeaker: “I know not what this sorrow of mine may mean. . . .”
From her perch atop the rock that bears her name, the Lorelei supposedly lured men to their death with her siren songs. In another story at the heart of German literature, the gold of the Nibelungs was hidden in the Rhine at the base of the mountain. It is understandable that legends would make use of this dreaded spot. The Rhine narrows here and takes a sharp turn to the west around the 430-foot-high Lorelei. In earlier times, maneuvering around this obstacle in the swift current, with the additional hazard of rocks in the river, proved too daunting for many and fatal for others.
The bad music drowns out any song the Lorelei may be singing, but the sight lives up to expectations. True, it is not a particularly big rock, and a large, motorized passenger vessel has no trouble with the current. But this stretch of the river still feels wild, and on a chilly day, with a touch of fog, the former sense of danger and mystery hangs in the air at the base of the brooding crag.
Around the bend of the Lorelei, the senses settle down as the village of St. Goar comes into view. We left the steamship here for a stretch on land and a hike up to the ruins that keep watch over this storybook town, which dates from 570, when St. Goar, a missionary from the south of France, arrived here.
Almost 400 feet above St. Goar is Rheinfels castle, a relative youngster erected in 1245 by Count Diether III of Katzenelnbogen, the family responsible for many of the Rhine castles. My 1906 Baedeker confidently asserts that Rheinfels, which was built to enforce a new toll along the Rhine, is “the most imposing ruin on the river.” Now that part of the old pile has been rebuilt and put to use, that statement needs only a slight correction: Rheinfels is the most imposing hotel on the river. Although much of the castle is reserved for hotel guests, the fortress was so large that there are still several tumbled-down walls and battlements to see, and the view of the Rhine is impressive.
Back on the water, refreshments were in order after our descent from Rheinfels, and soon the cork was liberated from a bottle of local Riesling, the most popular German wine. Wine is not the first spirituous beverage that one thinks of when one thinks of Germany, but beer can wait for Munich or Berlin.
The Romans first showed the local German tribes how to turn the juice of their native grapes into something more interesting. German vintners, conscious that their white wines have fallen out of favor because of their typical sweetness, have adapted by making drier wines, which are listed on menus as trocken (dry). A more traditional German white is listed as halb-trocken (semi-dry). Fragrant and flavorful wines can be found in both varieties.
The great revelation for us was the red wine, usually identified on menus as Spatburgunder, which is the local name for the Pinot Noir grape. The climate and the vintning tradition produce a very light, fruity red wine that is sehr suffig (pleasant to drink). For the sake of rough comparison, it can be thought of as a more interesting rose.
The Rhinelanders know that not only is their wine superior to beer, it is also a moral beverage.
Hanging on a wall in our hotel was an old framed print that showed a merry burger who was lifting his distinctively shaped hock glass and tottering precariously on a stool.
“He who drinks well, sleeps well,” the German verse pronounced, with inarguable logic. “He who sleeps doesn’t sin. He who doesn’t sin goes to Heaven.”
Just down the river from Rheinfels are two famous, if unimposing, ruins from the 12th Century that are known as the Warring Brothers. These castles, which sit close together on neighboring rocks, got their nickname from the legend involving their onetime proprietors, the brothers Conrad and Heinrich of Boppard. The Boppard boys came to blows over–what else?–a woman, the fair Hildegarde.
The legend entails many comings and goings, but in the end, as often happens in stories of this sort, she shut herself up in a convent.
After so many ruins, we were due to see an intact castle. Throughout the centuries, one stronghold after another fell to superior forces and was blown up, especially in the 17th Century during the Thirty Years’ War and the French invasions of the late 17th and 18th Centuries. The lone exception was the Marksburg near the village of Braubach, the only castle never taken by force and the last stop on our river journey.
Dating back to 1283, the Marksburg was another project of the busy Katzenelnbogens, built to defend Braubach’s silver and lead mines. Simply reaching it, more than 480 feet above the river, must have stopped some attackers. In the courtyard stands the castle keep, a tall, narrow tower that was the defense of last resort. The only entrance to the keep, parts of which date back to an earlier fortress on the site, is an opening some 30 feet above the courtyard, which defenders reached by ladder.
The Marksburg’s collections include all the items a medievalist could hope for: armor, weapons, kitchen implements and an early version of handcuffs, a straight iron rod with hand restraints at each end. The tour guides let visitors try them on.
The Rhine is hardly undiscovered territory for travelers.
The first English-language Baedeker travel book, published in 1861, was a guide to the Rhineland. But the region’s appeal survives.
So does its magic.
We sat one night on the wisteria-covered terrace of a restaurant beside the river in Assmannshausen.
The wine was like youth in a glass, and as night fell, lights illuminated the castle across the river. And that sound–was it a faint train whistle? A distant boat horn? Or was it the song of the Lorelei?
DETAILS ON THE VALLEY OF THE RHINE
Getting there: The Valley of the Rhine makes a good first or last destination for those flying into or out of Frankfurt, the main entry point for international flights. The airport is less than 50 miles from Rudesheim, at the south end of the Rhine Valley.
United (800-241-6522), Lufthansa (800-645-3880) and American (800-433-7300) operate flights from Chicago to Frankfurt daily. Off-season, round-trip fares begin at about $400, summer fares at about $1,200.
Getting around: The Rhine region is easily accessible by train or car, but, once you are there, a car is not necessary.
Cruising the Rhine: Rhine steamers run every hour to 90 minutes during daylight hours. A trip from Rudesheim, at the south end of the Lorelei Valley, to Braubach, the village where the Marksburg castle is located, takes two hours and 45 minutes if you make the trip straight through.
The one-way fare runs about $24 a person. Tickets are available at the docks in each village. Schedules are posted on the ticket kiosks.
The ships, operated by the Koln-Dusseldorfer steamship company, have two or three decks (upper deck is open air), with glassed-in lower decks. Snacks and beverages are available.
For more information, contact JFO Cruise Service, K-D Rivercruises’ U.S. representative, at 800-346-6525.
Accommodations: All of the Rhine towns have at least one hotel. In Assmannshausen, the oldest–and one of the most famous places on this part of the river–is the Hotel Krone (about $200 to $300, depending on view), which has been in business since 1568. Less expensive (about $100) is the Hotel Schon, also located on the Rhine.
Word to the wise: If the local wine appeals to your palate, buy a few bottles on the spot. I made the mistake of not buying any Spatburgunder while I was there, not wanting to lug the bottles home. I assumed I could order some later, but an exchange of faxes with the proprietor of a Rhine vineyard revealed the dark side of the global economy. He didn’t have a license to export the wine to the United States.
General information: Contact the German National Tourist Office, 122 E. 42nd St., 52nd Floor, New York, N.Y. 10168; 212-661-7200). Information is also available on the Internet at www.germany-tourism.de or www.germany-info.org/business/travel.htm
