We left Köln and took the train back through Koblenz and up the
other side of the Rhine river. Fortunately we had seen the sights on
the way down the river, because this train was packed and we couldn't
see much. Sara was sitting on one of our bags on the floor of the
train, and I was leaned up against a bike rack. It wasn't a pleasant
ride. We were in a non-smoking car, but some people decided it would be
okay if they smoked as long as they were standing next to an open
window.
We stopped in St Goar, which is a town along the Rhine river. Its main
attraction is Rheinfels castle (Burg Rheinfels). Sara had planned our
trip carefully so we arrived here on Saturday because the castle is
only open on the weekends during the winter. We weren't staying the
night here -- just stopping over for a few hours. Most of the train
stations have lockers for luggage, so we planned to lock the luggage,
tour the castle, see the town, and move on.
Well, this train station had no luggage lockers. Our guide book
indicated that there were lockers in the tourist information place, so
we went there. They are only open on weekdays during the winter. The
castle was up on a hill, so lugging the luggage up there wasn't an
option. The guide book introduced one of the hotel/shop owners as
"helpful", so we decided to walk to that shop and see if they
could help. They let us keep our luggage in a back room in the shop.
They wouldn't take any money for it, and the main thing they sold was
beer steins which we had no interest in, so they didn't get much out of
the deal, but it was very nice of them.
It was a sunny day, so good for walking around. The castle was pretty
interesting. The outside is in fairly good condition. The inside is
mostly just grass, but you could see some of the different rooms and
things. You could also walk through tunnels in some of the walls where
the soldiers would have defended from -- not very good conditions for
them.
Once we were done with the castle we went back to the town. Most places
weren't open, and we decided to leave a couple hours earlier than we
had planned. So we took the train to Mainz. We hadn't originally planned
on stopping there, but we had reservations on the next train a couple
hours later (when we had originally planned on getting there). So we
decided to stop for lunch and see what there was to see.
We had pizza for lunch. The menu was in German, but most of the words
were close enough to either Swedish or English that we were able to
figure it out. I knew all but one of the ingredients on the one that I
chose -- but the one topping I didn't know turned out to be an egg. The
pizza came out and it had a fried egg right in the middle. Definitely
not what I expected. It tasted okay, but I don't think I'll bother
trying it again.
We wandered around Mainz some more. A lot of the stores were closed
since it was late Saturday afternoon. We saw some of the buildings and
things, but nothing real exciting. Then we went back to the train
station and headed to Mannheim. There were only 7 minutes between trains
in Mannheim, and our train was about 6-7 minutes late getting in. So we
had to run to the next one. Apparently it was running late too, or they
held it, because we still had a minute or two to spare.
We took the train to Munich (München in German), where we spent the
night. We kind of messed up the planning for the hotel here -- it turned
out to be about a 15 minute taxi ride to the other side of town. The
hotel was nice, but the location was rather inconvenient.
