Travel Blog: A Short Trip Down the Mosel

The Mosel River is probably the second most known in Germany after the Rhine, due more to the huge wine production in the area than anything else. Monica's Dad and some of his friends used to drive into the Mosel Valley after trade shows and spend a few days sampling the local wines and beers, but they somehow never got to describing just how many vineyards there are in the region and how steeply the Mosel Valley is sloped. It was a truly spectacular sight.

One of the very low bridges. The ship's bridge can be raised
and lowered, as well as the forward, aft and bridge masts. It
is quite the operation to see.

We arrived in Cochem after a morning's sail along the Mosel Valley. As you can see from the photos, there doesn't seem to be a single square inch of usable land that isn't planted with grapes. Most of these are Riesling, with a few growers also planting varieties such as Elbling, which we discovered is the oldest grape variety in the Mosel region, perhaps dating back as far as Roman times.

Arrival in Cochem, with Reichsburg dominating the background

Our afternoon in Cochem included both a walking tour and a tour of Reichsburg Castle. Reichsburg is actually the Imperial Castle of Cochem. It was established as an Imperial Castle in the 1100s. In 1688 it was taken over by Louis XIV's troops and destroyed in the following year. In 1868 it was bought by Louis Ravené and rebuilt in the Gothic Revival style we see today. Since 1978 it has been owned and maintained by the city. Our walking tour guide also works as a guide in the castle, and when we went to do our tour, she did a quick change into her period costume.

Those vineyards stretched even up to the castle walls

We happened to run into a couple of friends of Barb's from
their visit in October

Larry and his new buddy

Yes, he may look sort of like a frog, but apparently
this guy is a lion in armour

One thing that happens a lot in river cruising is rafting,
where one boat has to tie to another because there isn't enough
wharf or shore space for all of them. This boat was
tied to us for the afternoon. To get off their boat the
people boarded ours, crossed our upper deck and came back
down to Deck 2 to take the gangway ashore.

As if we didn't have enough to do on a short stay, the afternoon was rounded out with a visit to a winery in the nearby town of Senheim. The Schlagkamp-Desoye Winery is one of the oldest family-run in the Mosel Valley, since 1602, now on its 11th generation with Andreas, a very witty and personable guy who hosted the tasting and explained the history of the winery and wines from the region. Especially funny were two stories; the first about his family's reaction when he finally decided he did want to work in the family business and later take it over (which surprisingly also included mention of opening an Eiswein, which hasn't been produced in the valley since that particular vintage in 1978, the year Andreas was born), and the second about his creating his own cuveé, or blend, to be presented as part of his winemaker's course at school.

The cuveé story tells of how Andreas tried to go behind his father's back to create the blend, because good German winemakers stick to one grape and, quite often, one particular patch of vineyard, and there was no way his dad was going to help him with this. So Andreas started experimenting late one night, playing with combinations here and there, and, of course also having to taste them as he went along. By the time he came upon the cuveé he really liked, he realized that he had mixed about 500 litres of it! That's quite a few bottles, so he was really nervous when Dad tested each barrel as they started bottling the year's regular vintage. They came across Andreas's mix and after a few tastes, his father finally said it wasn't too bad, and that they should bottle it as long as Andreas could actually sell the stuff. He didn't believe anybody would like it, but apparently they did. It is called Cuveé Andreas and is part of the regular offering, as well as part of our wine tasting. It was so good that we bought a bottle and will take it with us when we see Dad's cousin Hildegard in Bremen.

One of the other specialty items that is produced in the Mosel Valley is made from what are called Weinberg Peaches. These are peach trees that grow on the steep slopes in the valley along with the grapes. These peaches are actually grey on the outside and red on the inside. Not at all good for eating, but great for making a likör, sort of a liqueur but not as syrupy. It has a wonderful peach aroma and taste and a nice reddish-peach colour. Quite often people will either pour a bit over ice cream or make a sort of Bellini Kir by pouring a little in the bottom of a champagne glass and filling the rest with bubbly. Monica wanted to try some of that so we're bringing a bottle home with us.

In the evening we started our sail toward Bernkastel. The good thing about this time of year is that it is light until about 10:30 or so at night, so we had a really beautiful trip without losing it all to darkness.

Bernkastel, or Bernkastel-Kues as it is called since being formally connected with the town across the river, is as far along the Mosel as we would go, but we stayed here for two nights so that we could visit two other places - Luxembourg City and Trier.

The trip to Luxembourg was about 1 1/2 hours, so Monica spent it working on the blog - after all, it seemed to be the only time available since we were quite busy touring and socializing and watching the scenery go by as we sailed.

Luxembourg is the only Grand Duchy left in Europe, and even though during its history it has been held as a French, German and Dutch colony, it is now neutral and has become the banking capital of Europe. In fact, in 2011 it was ranked with the highest Gross Domestic Product per capita in the world; considering its population is just over 100,000 that's not too shabby. There are many global banks and investment houses represented in Luxembourg City - even TD Direct Investing, whose office we passed on the bus - and this seems to be the largest employment sector in the country.

Luxembourg has often been called the 'Gibraltar of the North' since it has been almost impossible for a conquering force to get into the city, but once they did get there, it was very easy to defend. The walls around the city were constructed between the 10th and 12th centuries, and even now you can go into the casements within the fortifications. We didn't have time to do so - we had to get lunch and, more importantly, visit the Chocolate House. Barb had been there in October and brought Monica a chocolate spoon - that you melt into a cup of boiled milk to make true 'chocolate milk' - so we had to return the favour.

The Cathedral of Our Lady

A monument to the beloved Grand Duchess Charlotte,
grandmother to the current Grand Duke Henri

The valley between the old city on the left and the expanded city
all around it

One of the churches below the old ramparts

The Royal Palace. The Chocolate House is right
across the street. We wonder which one is
more important...?

The only problem we found with touring Luxembourg City was that they seem to be constructing or reconstructing just about everything there, so our most prevalent memory will be of jackhammers and road barriers. Larry also described the city as 'overridingly beige', meaning that there really isn't a lot of colour. Buildings were either old, therefore grey or greyish, or...beige. Take another look at the pictures and you'll see.

After the city tour, we also made a stop at the American Cemetery outside of Luxembourg City. This is where all of the American soldiers who died at the Battle of the Bulge are buried. The most famous grave is that of George Patton, who, although he didn't die in battle did pass away in Luxembourg and wanted to be buried alongside his men.

We returned to Bernkastel in the middle of the afternoon and had an informal walk into town with Kurt, one of our tour directors. He pointed out a few places of interest and then let us all go. Unfortunately, it was Wednesday and many of the small restaurants had Ruhetag, or their day of rest. On top of that, the following day was the Feast of Corpus Christi which is a national holiday in much of Germany, especially the Catholic part which extends up into this region from the south.

The Marktplatz in Bernkastel

The Rathaus, or Town Hall

This mural describes, in verse, the story of Doctor Wein...
as it goes, a Prince Elector was taken seriously ill
when visiting Bernkastel and thought he was about to die.
The doctors couldn't help him but when he drank
some of the local wine, he was suddenly cured...
hence the legend of Bernkastel wine

We did, however, manage to find a little place with a few tables out front. Monica had a nice glass of wine in the warm afternoon sunshine.

As she got to the bottom of her glass of wine, Monica noticed that there was Weinstein, or little sugar sediments, left in the bottom of her glass, and before she could finish it, a small bug landed in the wine as well. We hoped that between the two, it would foretell a change in the weather. Up until now we had had cool, damp, cloudy mornings and clearing in the afternoons. We still had some nice sailing time ahead of us and were hoping for warmer, clearer days ahead.

In the evening we had another guest performance on board from the Sandy Trio. We had been expecting some more oom-pah style music but were pleasantly surprised to find that they were performing a wide variety, interspersing the German songs with well-known American ones. They were very entertaining, and at one point got both of us near tears with a German seaman's song that we had always identified with Bremen and Monica's family.

The next morning did, in fact, dawn a lot nicer and we hopped on our buses to go to Trier, the oldest town in Germany. It was established by the Romans around 50 BC, and the Porta Nigra, or Black Gate, was built in 160-180 AD. This city also has Roman baths and an amphitheatre, the remains of which have been excavated by archaeologists. The amphitheatre is used today, but instead of rows of seats, it is surrounded mainly by a grassy slope for people to sit on as they see or hear whatever is being presented.

One of the really impressive buildings, although it was closed because of Corpus Christi, is the Constantine Basilica, named after the Roman Emperor Constantine who allowed Christianity to be practiced openly within the Empire. It isn't evident from the outside, but on the inside this was considered a marvel of engineering technology of its time, around 314 AD, in that it was built without any interior columns or vaults to help hold up the almost 100 metre high roof. Our tour guide said that Constantine had wanted something so spectacular to be built that it would awe anyone coming for an audience with him. Apparently it worked...and it still works today if you can get inside the building!

Around the corner from this amazing building is the residence of the Kurfürsts, or Prince Electors. We may not have explained this properly yet, but during the Holy Roman Empire, a number of important men from the various areas of what is now Germany and Austria were named as Prince Electors. They were basically the people who voted on who would be the King of the Romans, or, from the 13th Century on, the Roman Emperor. They are also many of the men who owned those big castles on the Rhine. The elected Emperor only formally took office when crowned by the Pope. For the most part the emperors were a direct line of succession in the Hapsburg family (hence the Hapsburg Empire) but ultimately the Empire was dissolved in 1806.

The view from the top of the hill beyond town. The vineyards
are planted with Riesling and in some areas also Elbling
grapes, believed to have been cultivated here since Roman times

The remains of one of the baths

The Holy Mary Church

On the Feast of Corpus Christi there is an open-air
mass celebrated by the local bishop. This was the
altar set up in the town square

The famous Porta Nigra, dating back to 160 AD. It
only survived in this good condition because
somebody built a church over top of it and it was
only discovered when the church was torn down.

Once back from Trier, early in the afternoon, we headed back down the Mosel toward the Rhine River to continue our northward journey to the Netherlands.