Trier and the Rhein River

Wow, this past weekend has been a much-needed weekend for me. God is so good.

James and I went to the town of Trier (maybe I should call it a city 'cause it's a good size) this past Friday, it's about an hour away from where we live, and it's also only 30 minutes from France. He had a three-day weekend so we got up early and spent most of the day in Trier. We took our video camera with us so if I can figure out how to get video on here I'll share it with you but for now I gots nothing. Anyways, supposedly Trier is the oldest city in Germany. Although there are a few other cities that claim that as well (not sure which ones they are) so who knows how true that statement is, but it was cool. We parked right outside the Basilica, which I think was a church of some sort. The only thing that was really neat about it though was that it didn't have any columns for support on the inside; it was just a big open space. Oh I forgot to mention that Trier was once a Roman city and that's who built (if I remember correctly) most of the structures that are still standing. Anyways right behind the Basilica is the Palace. We didn't go inside 'cause it was that interesting to us but outside the Palace was this really pretty garden that had a fountain in the very back of it and there were statues all over the place too. In fact there was this one of a lady who appeared to be laying on her stomach, leaning on her elbows with her paws, yes paws, stretched in front of her. Then if you went around to her side view, she had the back end of a lion, why? Well, why not? Yea, it was kinda weird but still cool.

So from there we wandered around and found ourselves in the Pedestrian Zone, which in Europe is basically marked place(s) where people can walk around and shop freely without having to be bothered by cars (most of the time). Right, so we found ourselves in this Pedestrian Zone and wandered some more and finally came across what we had been looking for, The Porta Nigra or The Black Gate. One of the "must see" sights of Trier. It was pretty spectacular and going up inside it was even more exciting. The Porta Nigra is located right next to the Tourist Information place or the other way around I guess would be more accurate. Anyways, before we went up into the Porta Nigra we went on a bus tour of Trier and found out some more information (that I of course don't remember but found interesting at the time) on the city's history. They have an Amphitheater (which we saw only from afar), a Roman bath which is only 30% or something like that uncovered, the rest is covered up by houses. They also have an Imperial Bath (Constantine’s I believe), which was pretty cool. You could actually go down into the underground portion of it. It was so huge you could probably get lost if you weren't careful. It was really neat, we took lots of pictures. That's really about it; we mainly wandered around the whole time and took in whatever we saw that was cool or interesting to us. There is some big festival that is coming to Trier so there was a lot of construction type stuff all around which took away from some of the sights but it was still a good trip. It was great to just be able to spend that time with James.

Saturday was a mellow day until about 8pm. One of James' soldiers asked him to come to his show (he's in a metal band) that evening and so we did. There were two other bands that played before this guy's band and so we hung out listening to the noise while James kept getting greeted by tons soldiers from 5th Maintenance (that's the company James is with) and I just felt out of place the whole time. Then this guy's band started playing, they put on a good show and the little that I ended up actually being able to hear wasn't bad for metal music. We had fun.

Then yesterday was our Rhein River Cruise trip. It was our first USO tour and it was a great time. Our guide was probably about out age or so and was a lot of fun, really nice and informative. The first stop of the tour was to the castle Burg Rheinstein. We had about an hour and a half to explore the castle inside and out. I thought for sure by now I would get tired of seeing and exploring castles, but no, it's still a very exciting time for me. Although I will say, they are always smaller than I imagined them to be, even looking at them from the outside some of them look really big but once you get inside it's a different story. Still very cool though, as was this castle. This one had it's own little chapel that you couldn't go into but was still nice to look at and underneath it was a crypt, an open one that you also couldn't go into (thankfully!). I saw at least 5 coffins and, using James' words, it smelled of death. Interesting but kinda creepy. The rest of the castle was nice. The first floor you go in is the Knights hall. There were all sorts of knights armor and weapons and lots of sculls from animals that I guess the knights killed? Anyways, the hall lead to the kitchen with its stone oven and everything. It was pretty small for a kitchen but pretty neat. There was a winding staircase in the hall that lead to the Princess Floor (I think, I may have the layout all wrong but anyways). Yes, she had her own floor as did the Prince and according to the owners of the castle so did everyone that lived in the castle, aside from the servants I assume. Anyways, the princess had her own bedroom and two other rooms, the Red Room, which was used as a music/sitting room for when she had guests, and the Blue Room, which was used as a drawing room and also as a sitting room for when she had guests. Adjourning the Blue room was another really tiny room, which the princess used for her personal business, reading, writing, or just wanting to be alone. It has a great view of the Rhein River apparently. Sounds like my kinda room! The next floor was the Prince's Floor. He also had his own bedroom, a drawing room and a tower room. Upon reaching the top of the stairs to this floor, immediately on your right is a toilet room or as James and I like to call it, the poopery room. Obviously it's nothing like what we have today but it looked like it was much nicer than going in a pot or designated hole in the ground or what have you. The Princes floor wasn't that exciting for me, it was just okay cool but okay. Continuing up the stairs of the Princes' floor leads you to the Tower Room. I believe the prince used this much like the princess used her tiny room that I spoke of before, it also has a great view of the Rhein and I can confirm that 'cause we were actually able to go into this room. There were a few other rooms inside this castle (a couple dining rooms and such) but I've lingered too long on this part of the tour, so moving on...

Our next stop was St. Goar. This is where we got on our boat to cruise down river. Starting from there we saw something like 17 castles along the Rhein. Some of which are in ruins and some of which have been rebuilt a few times and are used as restaurant hotels. The crazy part about seeing all those castles from afar is that what we saw was about half of the castles that line the river! Most of the castles can be toured, I think there may be like two that can't be, and as I said before you can stay in some of them. Also on our cruise we found out that if we wanted to we could purchase a castle, prices ranging from 400,000 Euro to 2 million Euro, and that's just for the castle, no electricity, bathrooms or anything like that included! I figure it's doable. ;-) I'd love to own a castle on the Rhein. Maybe as a birthday present...

Right, so the cruise was about two hours and we got off the boat at Assmannshausen and got back on our bus to head to the town of Rudesheim (the u is supposed to have umlauts but I can't make it work) for lunch. Lunch was typical German food, schnitzel, pommes (French fries), salad and desert. This was my second time having schnitzel, the first one I had was pretty good but generally I don't like schnitzel. I think it's simple 'cause it's made with pork. Anyways, so I kinda picked at my food, filled up on fries, salad and desert mostly.

From there was our wine tasting, yum! And indeed they were yummy! We tasted 4 different wines, all different quality as well and they were all delicious! The guy that gave us the tasting owned the restaurant we had lunch in. He was a goofy guy but very entertaining. He told us about the three steps to tasting wine: First step, tasting with your eyes. You hold the glass up to the light, look at the color, then tilt the glass a little to see how much residue from the wine is left on the side of the glass when you straighten it back up and also to see how fast it slides back down into the glass (this is how you tell how much alcohol is in the wine). Second step, tasting with your nose. You hold the glass up to your nose or even stick your nose inside the glass and take a big whiff! Third step, tasting with your mouth (my favorite step). You take a large sip of wine, swish it all around your mouth, suck in more air while the wine is still in your mouth, and roll it under your tongue then swallow. MMMmmm! The only part I couldn't manage to do was sucking in more air with the wine still in my mouth, I just know I would have dribbled the wine out if I'd tried.

After he showed us how to drink it (by this time we'd all had our sample glasses filled with wine by his helpers) he asked for a "volunteer" to come on the stage and help him show us how to do it. That was pretty entertaining! He called this lady up there and asked her to show him what she'd learned by doing the three steps. Well she got the first two down but the tasting part was a bit tricky for her, she'd take a big swig of it, swish it around and instead of sucking in air through her mouth she'd swallow it, the wine that is, so the guy would fill her glass up again and after her third try he made her sit down. It was funny. Our first wine was a red wine, Rheingau (that's the region it's from) QBA (Qualita tswein b. A. also umlauts over the second a in the first word), 2005er Rotwein (2005 red wine). Now, I don't know much about wines so don't quote me on this, but to me red wines have a fuller taste than white and rose wines and up until yesterday I thought I liked red wine better than white but now I'm not sure. Anyways the red wine had this burst of flavor when it hit your mouth, it was a little dry with a hint of sweetness to it, very yummy! Next came the same type of wine only it was a rose wine. The guy (Hans, I think was his name) again asked for a volunteer and another woman did volunteer, and the same thing happened only this lady got it the second time around. The rose wine was good too, something that I think my mother-in-law would like. I have to say that of the very few wines I tasted stateside I thought I liked rose wines the best, particularly white zinfandel. When I went back for Jared and Heather's wedding a had a glass of white zinfandel and didn't really enjoy it simply because I'd had better wines since being here. Anyways, the rose wine was pretty good though probably my least favorite of the 4 we tried. Here's a bit of interesting information on rose wines, they aren't made from red grapes and they aren't made from white grapes, they are made from blue grapes! Blue grapes have a white juice much like white (or green) grapes and what gives the wine its color is the skin from the blue grapes. I thought that was kinda neat. Next up was the Riesling, Rheingau 2003er Hallgartener Mehrholzchen (umlauts over the o) Riesling Spatlese (umlauts over the a), a very yummy white wine. James and I have had about 4 different types of Riesling (one of James' and my favorite types of wines so far) since we've been here and all have them have been very good but this one, right now, is the best one in my opinion. Hans again called for a volunteer and this time he chose a dude, same thing as before, instead of doing it like he should have he chugged it (I guess he wasn't smart enough to realize he was drinking wine and not beer!) and about the second maybe third time he did what Hans requested/required of his victims before you could leave the stage. Fourth and last up was another white wine, Rheingau 2003er Oestricher Klosterberg Ehrenfelser Auslese. This one was even better than the Riesling and I think my favorite of the day! According to the quality level of wine in Germany, this one was, I think, second highest. The highest is called Eiswein. Eiswein is very expensive, here in the land where wine, good wine at that, is cheap, say $5 bucks a pop, Eiswein is like $20 and higher! And believe it or not it's totally worth it! Unless of course you don't like sweet, I mean really sweet wine, in which case I don't recommend it. Anyways, James and I had never tried Eiswein but always heard lots of good things about it until yesterday when, Hans, our wine host let us all try a very small sip of it. Very yummy! Oh, I forgot the victims of Hans on our last tasting; he pulled up two people, a man and a woman up stage. The guy was a big guy; I don't mean fat, just really tall and broad. The lady was about my size maybe a littler shorter, and she was lit! She had trouble getting up on the stage and she had to hold on to the table that was up there to keep her balance. She was also slurring her words and giggling a lot, it was pretty entertaining. The glasses that our wine was served in were not very big at all; they were about the size of two shot glasses put together, if even that big! She must have had a very low tolerance or maybe I just have a high tolerance in any case it was fun! We ended up buying 3 bottles of wine to take home with us, the red, the Riesling and the Auslese, I look forward to cracking those babies open! Yum yum yum!

Okay so after the wine tasting we hopped back on our bus and went deeper into the town of Rudesheim for shopping. The only thing that sucked about this part of the tour was as soon as we stepped off the bus the bottom fell out of the sky and dumped on us for the whole 1 1/2 of our shopping time. It wasn't that bad though, I didn't mind getting a little wet as we walked around all the tourist trap shops that were there. We ended up buying this little wooden figure thing, it's like this piece of wood that has a little face carved into it, kinda looks like a gnome face, it's neat looking. After shopping it was time to head back to K-town and that was the end of our trip. Fun times! I'll get pictures and stuff posted as soon as I can so you can enjoy our festivities! Peace out for now!