We spent two nights and three days in Germany before flying to Egypt from Frankfurt. We decided to stay in Mainz, a bustling town about half an hour from Frankfurt. Mainz is on the Rhine River and we spent lots of time walking around the central area, appreciating the massive cathedral that looked like a castle. We were surprised by the commercial area in this town, we were actually routed through a mall to get to the Tourist Information Office! We had Eurorail passes and spent a lot of time on the trains and ferries, taking daytrips to different towns on the Rhine and Mosel Rivers.

Our first daytrip was Cochem, a charming little wine-making town in the Mosel River Valley. Cochem looked like a scene out of a storybook, with it’s medieval, winding, cobbled streets and castle overlooking the town. I love visiting castles so we climbed up to the castle and took a tour. Unfortunately the tour was in German but we had a printout in English to get the main points. The castle dated from the middle ages but had been revamped in the eighteenth century and was made into a comfortable home for the inhabitants. The castle also had impressive stone statues that overlooked the town, which I thought were frog-kings but were actually strange looking lions.

While in Cochem we enjoyed bratwurst for the price of 1.80 euros each, which was a real bargain compared to most of our meals. We also stumbled on a wine festival in the town square. Cochem and the Mosel Valley is a center for wine in Germany, and we spotted many tourists and locals enjoying the sunshine and the views of the Rhine while sipping their wine.

While in Germany we found it more difficult to communicate than we expected, as most people we met didn’t speak English and we know French and Spanish between us, but unfortunately no German. All the other tourists seemed to be German senior citizens. Aaron picked up a few German words pretty quickly and we were able to communicate in sign language, broken German, and occasionally English.

We spent the last day before our flight on the Rhine River, which was beautiful, with green cliffs and castles everywhere. It seemed every town had a castle and I lost count of all the castles we passed.

From the ferry we stopped in Koblentz, the spot where the Rhine and Mosel rivers converge, as well as the town of St. Goar, home of the famous Loreley statue. The Loreley was a sort of siren, found in German operas, poetry and stories, that lured sailors to their doom on the cliffs adjacent to the Rhine. St. Goar was also very charming and we enjoyed relaxing on the river before our flight to the Middle East.