Bacharach, Germany

I woke up feeling even groggier than yesterday; the head cold was kicking in good and proper. I hold this as my excuse as to why at breakfast this morning, mid-munch on a piece of Nutella on toast and spraying crumbs everywhere, I cast my eye down at the formerly beautifully laid table to see a small sign stating that it was in fact reserved for a corporate team at Lidl. Whoops! I packed up my stuff and fled guiltily, chuckling that a budget supermarket appropriately put its staff up in budget accommodation.

Peering at the map, I discovered I was just roughly parallel with my old student digs, and I suddenly felt an unashamedly nostalgic urge to revisit. I figured I wouldn’t look out of place; by the time a typical German has jumped through the hoops of a three-year Abitur (A-levels), a couple of years of military or civil service and a five year university degree, they generally have a kid or two, are thinning on top and have cultivated a full beard. And that’s just the women.

Within ten minutes I was pushing Ron down the lane that flanked the halls, past the multi-storey car park and the footy pitch where we used to have a kickabout with the kids from the adjacent school, to find myself staring up at my top-floor window. Predictably, nothing much had changed. This was Mainz, after all. I even half-expected my former German flatmate Oli to be up there in the next window, still trying to pass his second year of Physics.

Pedalling past the uni blocks (and bar) that held so many good memories, I reached the poppy field the halls looked out onto, and decided to trace the route I used to take daily to campus. It was an oddly emotional experience. The winding route flanking the field, ducking under the motorway and weaving through Mainz suburbia was imprinted on my memory, unlike the way to the pub yesterday which I had completely flummoxed me, which says something about the effect beer has on your brain.

Arriving on campus at the Institut für Physik’s ugly trio of cross-shaped buildings, I strolled the whole length of the campus, taking in the sights. Fully satisfied that I’d wallowed in enough nostalgia, I freewheeled Ron all the way down the hill past the train station and on to meet the river Rhein once more.

The plan I’d hatched was to follow the left bank of the river Rhein – the most picturesque stretch of the flowing behemoth – in the direction of Koblenz. As I set off I was already at a disadvantage, what with a regular-as-clockwork cough helping me keep time and adding to the pounding of my headcold. As I picked my way through the wildly alternating scenery of wildlife reserves and industrial estates, the swollen Rhein did its best to thwart my progress, having flooded the cyclepath in a few spots, frustratingly leading me to double-back and guesstimate an alternative route.

I finally emerged at Bingen, a delightful little town nestled at the foot of the steep hills of the Rhein valley peppered with neatly laid out vineyards. The 30 klicks or so I had put in had been tough in my wheezing condition, so I happily shelved any plans to pedal on further and instead jumped a train to Bacharach, further on round the meandering course of the river.

Hundreds of years old, and clearly named after the legendary composer Burt (who is, as everyone knows, an undead three thousand year-old vampire who has secretly penned the majority of the greatest tunes in Western civilisation), Bacharach was a  typically wonky and sleepy German village which had “tourist day trip” written all over it, apart from one thing: its Youth Hostel, which just happened to be an  imposing 12th century castle high on a hill. Since it’s not every day a member of the proletariat gets to bunk up in such a place, it was an opportunity not to be missed.

Getting up to the castle was a challenge; not knowing quite how to get there by road, I masochistically carried Ron on my shoulder up a winding path of steps, half expecting it to be closed for winter. But lo and behold it was open, and I grabbed a bed in a large dorm overlooking the castle’s courtyard.

As night fell, sleepy Bacharach started to ooze more character. Although the streets were deserted, the interiors of the wonky little buildings glowed invitingly, and after a bit of looking I found a hostelry to settle in. The place was a little timbered inn run by a landlord and landlady, and the bar was propped up by a couple of locals that seemed to be part of the furniture. Completing the ambience was a radio pumping out mostly soft rock hits – a typically German occurence for a country that is forever 1987 – and a little dog called Cleo. I’m not an expert on dogs, but I think it was a terrier; in any case, it was the type I imagine you could throw pretty far. I’m not a huge dog fan, but this little thing was very cute. When I had tickled it behind the head once it was forever my friend, sitting under my table for the rest of the evening.

I dined on a juicy steak and a glass of Kölsch, a slightly bitter-tasting but delicious pale beer served in long thin glasses and originating from Cologne, accompanied by the radio, including Raindrops Keep Falling on my Head, at which I had to grin. Listening to Bacharach in Bacharach: just fancy that.