"Rhine Gelt" (Rhine Gold) in Wagner's "The Ring" and surely the Rhine is one of the golden nuggets of Germany's landscape. Packed full of history, culture, Romanticism, and nature. For me it was a long time in coming, I had seen the Rhine when I was 18 years old traveling on a night sleeper train but it was only a glimpse. This time we were to spend 3 days there to get to know its currents and eddies and see the mountains unfold as the Rhine swept us along. The place we stayed at was Bingen, a historical town with a medieval feel, famous for the compositions by the Medieval Abbotess Hildegard (Hilgegard de Bingen) a relaxing church music style that in its day was quite revolutionary. Other well known people who inhabited Bingen was the novelist Victor Hugo. For our stay we had met up with Leila's family and we spent a nice time baking under the autumn sun and enjoying strolls along the Rhine and admiring the interaction of flowers and public spaces of the city.
But for me it was the Rhine, the barges relentlessly pushing against its flow, and effortlessly gliding with it. The castles reminded me of lyrics from the Pogues's song "Lorelei" with "Castles out of fairy tales..." the drama of a rainy sky over towering skyline of Lorelei herself. Mythology was in my mind too as we took a cruise down the Rhine, Lorelei, the Valkyries, the Sirens, Rhine Gold and the Ring; History invaded these thoughts with Roman's fording into Germanic lands and Napoleon taking castles along the shore, Romanticism was born here and myth and history forming the imagination of Hitler and artists such as Goethe, Wagner, and the philosopher Nietzsche who played an important figure in my late teens. But these places were enhanced with the company, happy and pleasant.
