We’ve just completed our eighth trip with Idyll—two a year for the last four years. The two weeks from September 6-20, 2000 were particularly significant for me, as well as most beautiful and enjoyable. I spent the war years in my native England, and when the time arrived for me to travel the world, from 1947 on, it really never occurred to me to think of a two-week visit to Germany.

At first, of course, it was not practical, and in later years I suspect that I had some hidden reluctance about going there as a visitor. Old attitudes dies hard, I guess, and a couple of quick trips to Berchtesgarten en route from Salzburg to Innsbruck served to “convince” me that I had visited Germany. However, reading Untourists’ descriptions of the Mittelrhein finally led me to St. Goarshausen, to Frau Moritz, and to a wonderful two weeks on trains and boats—and on foot among some of the most beautiful scenery I’ve found in Europe.

Margaret Werr met us in Frankfurt and set us right for our first train trip. St. Goarshausen is on the East bank of the Rhine midway along the stretch from Rudesheim to Koblenz, and exactly across the river from St. Goar. The two St. G’s are ‘joined’ by a ferry-boat called the Loreley (her statue and the famous cliffs from which she lured sailors to their doom are nearby) which plies to and fro from dawn to dusk, carrying cars, trucks, bikes, buses and lots of pedestrians for a small fare. About every twenty minutes it makes the trip. We came and went on it many times, enjoying the changing light on the castles and vineyards as we sat for a few minutes on deck, or in the little room below on the odd rainy day.

Frau Urtrude Moritz, our hostess/landlady, met us at the station and whisked us off to our third-floor apartment in her house right on the river. What a superb view met our eyes when we arrived, climbed up all those stairs and walked into the big living room with its window looking right down onto the water and across to the beautiful Rheinfels Castle, keeping watch over both the towns below.

We also found two large bedrooms, a kitchen with eat-in space and a bathroom with twin sinks and bathtub. We really had lots of space—and the ceilings were about fourteen feet high to boot! Let me say here that Frau Moritz is a tall woman of 71 years, a recent widow, who speaks fluent English—idioms and all—and is equally at home in Spanish, as she and her husband had a second home there for many years. She has a forthright manner and a great sense of humor. We enjoyed all our meetings with her and especially an evening in her own apartment, with a glass of Rhine wine and good talk and laughter. We’d love to welcome her here in Connecticut.

We soon settled in and ate lunch, aided by Frau Moritz’s provisions in our fridge, and we explored the main street, shops and nearby grocery store (a typical small town version of a supermarket). Food is very reasonable in price and abundant, and we ate breakfast and our light evening meal at home every day.

Orientation was across the river the next morning, and was conducted by Ute Beckman-Schillin, a tall, beautiful girl with excellent English and all kinds of information about trips and trains and sights and sounds which would occupy us for the next two weeks. We couldn’t wait to get the boat and go upriver for about two hours, to the little town of Assmanshausen, with its half-timbered houses and a wonderful cable car up the mountain to the Niederwald national park.

It is beautiful up there, above the Rhine, and we walked across the moorland and through the woods until we came to a big monument and park. Here we watched a man with a kestrel on his fist—there is in fact an eagle breeding and training center nearby. Then we stepped into a gondola car and were wafted down the mountain and over miles and miles of vineyards, with grapes ripening in the sun, to popular Rudesheim. This town has many half-timbered houses, and wine restaurants abound, as do gift shops. Many of these have good-quality things, especially handmade wooden items, as well as more typical souvenirs. We ate delicious schnitzel outdoors here one day. Like Ruth Reichl (of the New York Times and Gourmet magazine), we stashed at least half our cutlets in our plastic bags and enjoyed delicious pork sandwiches the next night for supper!

Over the next twelve days, we traveled daily by train, and quite often by boat as well. Many of the towns on both sides of the river have castles dating from earlier centuries, and in varying stages of repair. Many can be visited, and involve steep climbs and stairs. The Marksburg in Braubach dates from the twelfth century and is the only local castle that has never been besieged. Its ramparts give a wonderful vista of the bend in the river far below. Another we visited was the Rheinfels, across the river from us, whose golden floodlights dominated our evening views.

The fortress at Eltville, the oldest town in the Rheingau, has the most lovely gardens—they seem to have been created where there was once a moat. They are well kept and clearly well-used by the townsfolk, whose Baroque and half-timbered houses speak of the bygone wealth of the Archbishops and Electors of Mainz who lived there in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.

However, we didn’t spend all our time on just one river, as two of its tributaries called to us! We visited the Mosel river valley, which flows from the West into the great Rhine at Koblenz and is also famous for its wines, which are somewhat lighter than the Rhine valley’s Rieslings. At Winningen, we were guests of Idyll and a most charming vintner, Rosemarie. The little town of white houses is festooned with grapevines across every street, growing like garlands wherever you look. A group of Untourists met Ute there and we were given a very informative talk about the three main qualities of wine produced here, with generous and delicious samples. We sat in Rosemarie’s courtyard, surrounded by a display of the “tools of the trade” of vine cultivating and wine making, and we went to the old wine cellar below the house, where she keeps all the implements her grandfather used a hundred years ago. Then she served us a delicious lunch, with three kinds of sausages, several salads and a very good dessert—and of course, more wine!

The Lahn river runs into the Rhine on its East bank, flowing into it just a little south of the Mosel. This too is a smaller river, with towns and villages along either side. We passed Bad Ems, a spa that attracted wealthy Britons in Victorian times. Our goal was the little town of Limburg, which proved to be a charmer! It had the narrowest streets and alleyways, and the fanciest windows and house facades of all!

Limburg is famous for its gingerbread, shop windows full of it, made into all kinds of complicated figures and structures—like architectural models. We enjoyed the shops, including a good clothing department store, and a beautiful pastry shop where we bought a heart-shaped fruitcake for Frau Moritz to share with her grandchildren. At lunch, we asked the waitress about an item on the menu, which she described by lifting up one foot, rubbing her thigh—to the rear—and saying “leg of pig” with a radiant smile!

Having the Rhine on one’s doorstep provides unending interest. From early morning to the last ray of light, the river is a thoroughfare thronged with barges, boats and ships of all descriptions. Most of these glide by almost silently, carrying all manner of goods. I saw boatloads of coal, various kinds of stone for roads and buildings; I saw rubbish, squashed-up cars, new cars, huge containers stacked up like children’s blocks; there were some carrying tanks of liquid and some with their holds covered so that their contents were a secret! They fly the flags of different nations, as do the pleasure boats and cruise ships which ply up and down, from other parts of Germany, from Switzerland, France and Italy, and from the Low Countries. Many of the barge-type vessels have living quarters above deck aft, often with one or two cars parked on deck, ready to be used in port! I had never seen a river so fully and continuously in use as I did here. It was fascinating and I grew to love its gentle but relentless motion.

Of course, the river was at its busiest on the night known as “Rhein in Flammen”, or the Rhine on Fire. By early evening, the pleasure boats and cruise ships began to throng the river, riding at anchor or moving a little to and fro, and making a complete carpet from bank to bank. Strings of red lights festooned the vessels and the houses along the river walk. Frau Moritz brought up a set for our front window, to keep the tradition going. It had been a somewhat rainy day and the showers came and went as night fell, but it was warm and people took their brollies and sallied forth. It was a bit like an Italian ‘passeggiata’.

Around 7:30 p.m., the show began. Fireworks and flares such as you have never seen lit up the sky! First from over the Rheinfels castle, then from beyond Burg Katz on our side of the river, then from a barge down towards the Loreley statue, they came, turn and turn about. It went on and on, each set lasting about 10 to 15 minutes, and each set more gorgeous than the one before. People clapped, they cheered, they drank their beloved Rhine wine from the bottles they carried and they just had the best time. So did we as we watched the activity. There were big bangs and little pop-pop-pops and rockets that changed color as they burst and some that looked like spacecraft in orbit. It was really amazing, and very hard to photograph! No wonder people who know about it come from far and wide, by land and water, to see the Rhine in Flames!

If I had some hidden resistance to visiting this fascinating country before I went there, it has surely been dispelled by my two-week Untour on the Rhine, and I am eager to plan the next excursion—perhaps to Berlin, Munich, Dresden… who knows?