Day 94 - Rhein Cruise

Today dawned bright and clear and - most of all - cold. That's right, the day that we were supposed to go sailing along the Rhein was the coldest day yet. The only saving grace was the fact that it didn't actually rain while we were outside. I woke up, said hello to my host mom and sister, then left to meet everyone on the bus. When we actually got on, we started on our ride to Bingen, a town on the Rhein River that is even further south than Frankfurt. It took about 2 hours to get there, most of which I spent sleeping. When we arrived, we got out of the bus and walked along the Rhein for a little bit before coming to the Hildegard Von Bingen museum in the town of Bingen. Our teacher gave us a little tour of the small museum and the life of Hildegard. She was one of the main people who started the shift to natural remedies being recorded for others to use. She also had visions that came from God in her late life that she recorded and had a monk transcribe into nice flowing Latin for others to read. It was cool to see her journey from a young maiden being handed over to a convent, to the abbess of the convent, to starting her own convent based on her visions from God. We were also able to see some of the pictures that were a part of her most famous book of visions that depicted the types of visions she might have had. It was actually pretty cool to see all this stuff.

They had a dress-up area where we had a lot of fun

That wasn't the only stuff in the museum, the entire building was dedicated to medical treasures that were uncovered in the area. There was also a complete set of medieval medical instruments that was buried with the physician who owned them. We were even able to walk around the garden that showed the medical plants that would have been used by the people back them and to learn how they were used to heal people. After that we had a nice lunch at a restaurant at the edge of the Rhein. At the end of the lunch, Dr. Wasser told us a tale of the castle that we could see down the river a little bit, about how the duke there was tired of hearing the peasants cry for food, so lured them into a barn before burning it. He went back to his castle, saying "listen how the corn mice squeak." When he sat at the table, his castle was suddenly overrun by mice trying to get to him. He fled to a nearby island, but the mice swam to get to him, eventually killing him. As a consequence, the castle is called "mouse castle" (but in German). Don't you just love the stories that come from the Middle Ages?

When story time was done, we boarded the boat that would take us North to where our next stop was (yes, the Rhein is weird and flows South to North). Did I mention that it was cold out? And we were going into the Wind? In the middle of a river? We huddled together for warmth for the entire hour and a half we were on the boat, enjoying the scenery as it flashed by. The reason we didn't go inside was because our teachers said that if we didn't stay outside, we wouldn't get ice cream or coffee for us when we got to our destination. Yes, we were bribed to stay in the cold, but what can you do? When we disembarked, we got back on the bus to take us to the next castle. I slept again. I've gotten used to napping in the middle of the day thanks to all the trips we're taking, especially in the sitting position.

 Don't we look so cold?

Just one of about 7 castles we passed

I woke up when we arrived at the foot of the castle and we had to hike up a little bit to get to the actual castle. We got our ice cream or coffee depending on our preference and walked a bit to where our guide would meet us. Our guide unlocked the huge front gates with a comically large key and started the tour of the castle. She told us that this castle (Marksburg Castle) was the only castle along the Rhein that was still completely original and that people still lived in it today. She took us to the place where cannons would be shot off in honor of the King that would be sailing below, to the garden where the herbs were grown, the kitchen as it would have looked long ago, even a bedroom that used to be used. Fun fact: the beds that were super small in the Middle Ages wasn't because the people were super short, in fact they were almost as tall as modern humans. They were super short because the people would sleep sitting up so that they wouldn't be mistaken as dead. They believed that an imp would come in the night ans sit on the sleeping person's chest. If they were laying down, the person would suffocate and never awaken, but if they sat up, the imp would fall down and not be able to suffocate the sleeper. We went to the torture chamber and spent a little bit of time talking about how the most popular methods would have worked before heading to the blacksmith's shop where the most common thing that would have been made were the horseshoes.

The knight in the ticket area

 Our first look at the castle

 Look at how pretty the Rhein is!

 A recreation of how the kitchen would have looked

 The armor of knights and defenders of the castle through the ages

Showing the shields from the various owners through the ages

Sadly, that was the last of the tour and we headed back to the bus for our ride back home, where I again fell asleep. Unfortunately, this caused me to miss when we stopped near my tram stop to let some people off and I rode all the way back to Bonn, where I just barely caught the tram back to my stop. I ate dinner with my family and we watched some Fussball on the TV until I caught a call from a friend back home. After the call, it was a little late, so I worked on homework for a bit and did this blog, and that brings us up to the present moment. Tomorrow is more school, but Thursday I leave for Paris! I'm so excited, I'll be able to see the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, and have Easter mass in the Notre Dame! I should have Wifi where I'm going, so I should still be able to update this blog as we'll be staying in an apartment for the 4 nights before heading back into Germany for school.

Till then!
Erin Z