The Final Lap: Germany

Town walls at Nordlingen, within the meteorite crater

Western Germany had good memories for Tracey from a previous trip eighteen years ago, so our final few days were spent in Bavaria, Franconia and the Rhineland. Here we found places that confounded preconceptions and wooed us so much that it's a definite "return to". So (as the Germans would say): what was so good and so notable?

• Our four night stay at Burg Colmberg, which is a 1000 year old castle replete with stuffed critters staring down at you, medieval equipment and weapons.
• Rothenburg. Foodivore-prizewinning charming medieval village with elaborate gilded merchant signs, well-laid cobblestones, an old woman regaling us with a stop-by-stop description of her cycling tour honeymoon of Tassie back in 1947 and Christmas shops that smell of cinnamon with room after room of colourful ornaments , Christmas lights and nativity sets, with none of the tack that we find at home.
• Dinkelsbuhl - another charming Franconian/Bavarian village, this time with a great name
• Nordlingen - medieval village with an intact encircling wall, built within the Ries (a meteorite crater)
• Fabulous names such as Pfaffenwinkel and Gute Fahrt (primary school humour never goes out of style)
• Piloting Pierre, the Flying Squirrel, down the autobahns at up to 200km/hour...we would have gone faster if it wasn't for the war wound one of Pierre's tyres suffered in Barcelona.
• Beers - marvellous amber glasses full of sweet malt, dunkel (dark) tankards with more hops, Andrew's very manly shandy (radler) and the 100ml "aperitif" beer in Miltenberg
• Beautiful churches and bell towers with lacquered roofs, simplistic beauty without the fussiness found in France and Italy.
• Miltenberg - a gorgeous town streets hidden from the main road that passes it, but worth the stop. Because the traffic is off to the side the main street, which is quite long for such towns, retains loads of its historic feel and charm.
  
  

  

  Nordlingen: they'll build a house
  anywhere, apparently 

• The bewildering maul of costumed folks that constitutes Oktoberfest. Being new to the experience, it's with some embarrassment that we confess to having wandered, dazed, through several "tents" containing literally thousands of revelers being serenaded by brass oompah bands until the penny (pfennig?) dropped that there's no bar...you get served. We wangled a seat at a reserved table and sampled a beer. A new moral was learned: you can lead Andrew to Oktoberfest, but you can't make him drink.

Some of the memorable food:

• Deer goulash with red currents and pear
• Sword skewer of beef and pork with Cognac sauce
• Ridiculous amounts of potato and stodgy dumplings, spetzl (a doughy short noodle)
• Venison steaks with pink and green peppercorn sauce
• Crispy skin suckling pig
• Beef broths with liver dumplings and/or strips of pancake (odd, yes, but quite pleasing regardless)



Grapes, paddlesteamer, pretty village....the Rhine is beautiful



Sample Rhine castle - dozens as beautiful as this



Another fabulous Rhine castle



Pork: the emblem of central Europe?



Random local at Oktoberfest

• Pork and cabbage everywhere

The final night of our six month journey was in the wonderfully-named and equally sumptuously-appointed Suite of Seven Maidens at Schonburg (near Oberwesel).  We did slum it with our 5 rooms, private balcony, four poster bed, beautiful views overlooking the Rhine River, robe & slippers, not to mention the silver service breakfast the was delivered to our room the next morning (while we watched round 2 of the Grand Final).  We also had a lovely seven course degustation (less pretentious than some we've encountered) which included Brussel Sprout soup, smoked duck slices and French cheeses (as if we hadn't had enough already...but they were good).

Typical Rhine river scenery

Burg (castle) Rhine-style

Tracey at Schonburg, Oberwesel

Adieu Pierre, notre copain (farewell Pierre, our mate)

Czeching out Prague

Botel Matylda - fabulous location to stay

We had been told that Cesky Krumlov was a smaller less touristy version of Prague, next stop Prague (Praha to the local, which we were not) to confirm if this is the case.  We arrived at our accommodation, our fourth boat-home of the trip: barge on the Mayenne River, stationary barge on canal in Amsterdam and overnight ferry with bunk beds traveling back from Scotland (not the highlight).  This one was an old beautifully renovated boat moored near the centre of Prague.  We had an amazing view over an old bridge and weir, with ducks & swans floating past our balcony type doors.

Tracey with Botel Matylda behind at right

Prague has a reputation for beauty and although constrained somewhat by early autumnal rain, we managed to see a few highlights after braving throngs of tourists (there are a lot of tourists in Prague - we reckon maybe more even than in Venezia):

• The Charles Bridge - thick with crowds ambling across towards Prague castle, which we skipped based on our acquired knowledge that castles are generally best seen from afar rather than from within. Vendors peddling a variety of art (some OK, some "your caricature in five minutes"), jewelery (some very cool and unique pieces - maybe you'll see some), touching religious statues and icons including a very unusual statue of the crucifixion with Hebrew script overlaid.
• A marionette performance of Mozart's Don Giovanni. Some almost slapstick humour, featuring traditional marionettes, finger puppets and a big surprise appearance of a human in costume to grandly portray the overwhelmingness of the gods.
• The Astronomical Clock (Prague Orloj) which was surrounded by swarms of dangerous umbrella-wielding tourists. From Wikipedia: "A legend, recounted by Alois Jirásek, has it that the clockmaker Hanuš was blinded on the order of the Prague Councillors so that he could not repeat his work; in turn, he broke down the clock, and no one was able to repair it for the next hundred years." At times we felt like the blinded clockmaker, as the crowds were so thick that our view was often obscured. We did, however, see the saints parade at the chiming of the hour...it must have seemed the highest of tech back in the 16th century and still looks cool today.
• Trams that hurtle along like Italian drivers on the motorway. These things are seriously fast and, being quite quiet, dangerous!



Don Giovanni, by marionettes

• Pork. It seems like everything in the Czech republic is pork, or pork with potatoes, or pork with cabbage.....oh for a piece of lamb. Still there was some excellent pork, it can't be denied.

Of course there were other notable food moments:

• Artisan, where we enjoyed scallops on a greenpea puree, raspberry pork ribs, jerk chicken (for the sake of Jamaican nostalgia), a risotto of dried tomato and basil with Italian sausage, a chocolate "lava cake", and a reprise of a wine we learned about in Italy, Nero d'avola (from Sicily). Andrew couldn't resist trying out the local delicacy, slivovice. Smells better than it tastes, and packs a wallop. One is more than enough :)
• Matylda, where we revisited Italy with great simple spicy pastas with roasted garlic and tuna tartare, carpaccio of octopus, a terrific Osso Buco with saffron rice (points to the Czechs here, as this was far more our style than the one we tried in Arezzo). Nostalgia was also on the menu as we found a bottle of Chilean merlot from Santa Rita, where we stayed at the end of our honeymoon.



Astronomical clock (tourists omitted)

• Mlejnice - liver dumplings in beef broth, a humongous plate of pork ribs, chicken livers with bacon, garlic, onion and rosemary. Hot wine, definitely welcome on such a chilly and wet day!.