Cologne, Germany

Waking up in a 12th century castle for the first and no doubt last time in my life, I made the most of the regal feeling, strolling around the courtyard one last time and taking in the  view from the battlements before I saddled up and freewheeled Ron down the road into the village to become a peasant once again.

Pedalling sedately along the Rhein was a joy; I was feeling better in myself, and there were plenty of interesting sights to take in. Accompanying the vineyards every few miles would be an impressive ruined castle or quaint little settlement to buzz through. Although a grey day, the rain stayed away and I made the village of St. Goar in good time, passing the famous Lorelei rock, steeped in legend as a place on which a suicidal siren apparently lives, singing and calling sailors to a watery death. No evidence of any shipwrecks today though; I reckon nowadays she’d need a microphone and amp to make her deadly brand of karaoke heard over the constant burble of the ship traffic transporting goods up and down the river.

I rested briefly in St. Goar to refuel and rehydrate and took in the sights – cobbled streets and half-timbered houses aplenty – before the final push along the riverbank to Boppard, my 30 klicks goal on two wheels, which had more of the same old-fashioned Germanic styling as well as an  incongruous and very familiar public telephone box. I didn’t linger too long, however, as someone in the local council had seen fit to install megaphones throughout the main streets of the town out of which jolly Christmas propaganda was being pumped in the form of songs heavy on the jingle bells and low on artistic merit.

I transferred onto the iron rails at Boppard, as the remaining twenty klicks to Koblenz were apparently not as visually appealing as the previous thirty. I didn’t really have it in me to cycle any further anyway.

Koblenz is one of those places that quickly brings to mind the words “logistical” and “hub”, because there is precious little else to compliment it with. I had passed through there before, ten years ago, and coming out of the station today, I realised why. A quick walk around the drab square outside the station had me thinking “bugger this for a lark”, and I was back on the train heading for the far more exciting Cologne, a further 100 kilometres north-west.

Cologne had all the hallmarks of a classic German city. Its centrepiece was an  utterly terrifying twin-spired gothic cathedral, blackened by age and looking more akin to a temple to Satan than a dedicated monument to an all-loving Supreme Being. Its Christmas market was bubbling with activity, as were its beerhalls, I found to my dismay. The four establishments I checked were bursting at the seams with raucousness and joviality. I had to head out to the Belgian Quarter in a last-gasp effort to find one that had space, right at the far end of a massive hall as it was. But no matter; soon the beautiful fresh Kölsch was being served up and I was presented with the best meal I’d had in Germany so far: goose breast, red cabbage, roast apples with cream and cranberries, a mashy stodge of potato and a token sprig of something vaguely green. A banquet perhaps not quite fit for a king, but wonderfully appreciated by a weary traveller who woke up this morning in a castle.