And so onward from Cologne, but first a couple of anecdotes.
As you might know, I was working off a kind of painful knee injury the entire trip. My doc suggested ibuprofen, so I wandered into what looked like a drugstore — the kind of place that sells vitamins, toothpaste, hair stuff — and asked for some. But in Germany you have to get it in an actual pharmacy. The kind of place that has a green cross on the sign. But it was Sunday, so most of them were closed.
Google Maps pointed me towards one that was supposedly open, and after we tracked it down it looked dark. We walked around the block and looked again, and there was a guy standing outside the door waiting. A pharmacy employee cracked the door, asked him a question, closed the door and disappeared for a minute; then came back with a small shopping bag. Without opening the door any further, she asked me what I wanted. I said, “ibuprofen,” and she disappeared for a minute, came back with a small box of pills, handed it over and took my money. And that’s how it works.
Food, Anyone?
Still in Cologne, we were looking for a Kaffe and a bite to eat. We saw an appealing pastry shop on a corner so we went in and ordered some strudel and coffee. We watched a young mother and her daughter come in and ask if they could use the ladies room. The little girl was obviously desperate, but the attendant rather brusquely, to the point of rudeness, refused. Mom pleaded, the attendant only dug in her heels. Only for customers, she insisted.
As it happened I needed to use the men’s room, and sheepishly asked if I could get the key. “Of course,” she blandly replied, and passed it over the counter.
Rules are rules. If I was a little more on the ball I would have pretended to know them, bought a couple of strudels, and so turned them into paying customers. But I think of these things too late.
A Funny Coincidence
When I was back at work the next week I was in a conversation with a colleague from the library, telling her about our trip. She said she loved Cologne and that there was a pastry shop right near the cathedral where they had the best strudel in Germany (and it seemed like she would know).
I pressed her for details, and she told me it was right in sight of the cathedral. On a main shopping strip. On a corner. It had to be the same place we stumbled across!
Braubach
We had signed up for a run-out tour the next day, but after the moderate disappointment of Cologne we decided to just head out on our own and take the free morning to explore. It’s something that always works for us, no matter where we are. We were docked at the tiny burg of Braubach.
Nestled under the famous Marksburg castle, this is a charming medieval village with houses dating back to the 15th century. There’s a lovely rose garden, and a striking war memorial honoring the dead of all the 20th century wars. I was a little surprised, but on the other hand these were friends, neighbors and relatives who may well have been drafted. And I should know that the Germans have never swept their history under the rug.
That’s the castle up there.
Castles of the Middle Rhine
And the rest of the day was spent cruising upstream looking at the ancient castles on hilltops along the river.
The map helpfully given out by Viking listed 20 castles, dating as far back as the 12th century. Some of them have stories that are, well, interesting. There’s a Maus Castle and a Katz Castle. There’s a Mouse Tower where, according to legend, mice ate an archbishop who was imprisoned there. Some are ruins, some are museums, at least one was a hotel.
Rudesheim am Rhein
By evening we had docked in Rudesheim. Dinner on the boat, then we had a little daylight left to explore. The city was really buttoned up by that time — nothing was open at all. And unfortunately we were docked way over to the east, near the end of the park pictured here.
There is a street, the Drosselgasse, that came highly recommended. Supposedly one of the top bar-crawl streets in Germany. We thought, well something will be open there!
There wasn’t. And it was only quarter to 11! Maybe because it was a Monday?