Me and R overlooking the Rhine
Although I’ve been in Germany twice before, I’ve never visited Frankfurt or my cousins who live near there. However, this seems to be the trip for family connections.
Me in front of the house my dad lived in for the first few years of his life
After ‘fahren down the autobahn’ as Kraftwerk would put it, we arrived at Badenheim, the village where my grandmother had grown up and where my dad had been born. The family were all incredibly welcoming, especially as only some of them had met us in Australia and even that was almost a decade ago.
Badenheim
My second cousin S had put together a busy and fun-filled program of sightseeing for us, which began with a walk around the village to see the house my grandparents lived in, and then a big family dinner at a local pub feasting on schnitzel and French pizza, where we were introduced to “schorle”, the half-and-half wine and sparkling water drink, and stayed for hours discussing the past and the future.
Da planes!
Our first full day was taken up with a visit to the Sinsheim and Speyer technical museums. We’d mentioned to S that we were keen to see these, as Sinsheim had a Concorde and the earlier Russian version of the faster-than-sound plane, the Tupolev, that you could go into and explore. I wasn’t quite aware of how much my fear of heights would be challenged, but I made it into both. It was amazing how little room they had inside, especially the Concorde with its luxurious reputation, which had two seats on either side of an incredibly narrow aisle.
The highlight of the Speyer museum was the Russian space shuttle. While you couldn’t go into the actual cockpit, the museum had opened it up so you could stand within the heart of it, which was pretty exciting! They also had a submarine to walk (or creep) through, and various other planes like a 747 and an Antonov: a 1960s Russian freight plane which apparently can move an elephant!
Very squishy inside the U-boot
We also visited Speyer town to see their huge cathedral and wander down the main shopping street, vaguely in search of a Birkenstock shop.
On the Rhine, with Lorelei in the background
Our second day was spent taking a boat ride down the Rhine from Bingen to St Goar, which apart from the blazing hot sun, was very relaxed. We saw many castles along the river, and the Lorelei rock, and gorgeous scenery where well-tended grape crops crawled up the hills, punctuated by picture-book villages. While walking through St Goar, we unexpectedly came across a Birkenstock shop, so I picked up a pair of gold glitter shoes – of course!
On the cable car overlooking Rüdesheim
We then made our way back to Bingen on the train, before catching the car ferry across to Rüdesheim (more touristy, and has the “more expensive” riesling growing on that side). Wa wandered through the tourist area to take the cable car up the hill to see the view and the Niederwald monument. This was incredibly beautiful, but also very hot!
Frankfurt Apfelwein schorle, with the traditional jug behind it
Our final day with the family was spent in Frankfurt, and we went to a restaurant to try traditional Frankfurter food and drink. The “green sauce” is particular to Frankfurt, as is the apple wine, which is like a strong cider. We drank it “schorle”, mixed with sparkling water, which was very refreshing on such a hot day.
We bid a fond farewell to the family and headed to the Frankfurt Hbf. If any of you are reading this – thank you again for your very generous hospitality!
The heat had caused many delays for the trains, and even though I’d left a 90 min buffer between my train to Munich and my sleeper train to Zagreb, the ICE finally crawled into Munich 10 mins after the sleeper was supposed to leave. I hightailed it between platforms and luckily they’d held the sleeper for those of us on connecting trains – phew!
Two Weeks Away 