Meanderings

For the past two nights we have been parked up at Wohnmobil Stellplätz Mosel in the small riverside resort of Traben Trabach. When we looked at the road atlas back at Leiwen, it became obvious that our original plan to drive up the Moselle to Koblenz, then follow the Rhine southwards was over-ambitious. Even if we had not mooched around in Normandy and headed straight for Germany, three weeks would not really have been enough time to do both rivers, Although on the map places can look near each other, the way the Moselle meanders through the hills more than doubles the distance as the crow flies.

Meandering river and bendy roads = slow going...

On the whole the roads are pretty good, but the valley is too narrow for the old villages to be by-passed, so you end up edging your way down narrow streets. It makes for slow progress. Its very picturesque though.

Apart from this feisty German Hymer driver who nipped past us on the apprach to bend.

The riverside wine villages are lovely, but a tight squeeze for a motorhome.

Other factors are affecting our plans. This weekend is a bank holiday, the German equivalent to Whit week. According to the chap next too us, its a nightmare on the roads. Here, given the narrow streets and limited river crossings, we think it could get gridlocked. Although the stellplatze here takes 45 vans, and there are plenty of other places to stay nearby, by mid afternoon yesterday the 'voll' sign went up, everyone is staying put, including us.

The stellplatz at Traben Trabach is one of the best, no wonder it was full.

Not that I am complaining. It is rather lovely here. The stellplätze is next to  a 'Weingut'. It is owned by the family Piefer. They have developed a little 'wein cafe, and do snacks at lunchtime to wash down a glass of their excellent Moselles. If you want to buy a bottle or two they are happy to let you sample them and explain some of the intricacies of Mosel wine labelling. So now we are beginning to differentiate our trocken from our feinherb, and a Riesling-Hochegächs from a Kabinett. How impressive is that, especially if expressed in a full-blown Herr Klick faux-Prussian accent.

This is magic - wine from the nearby hillside,

pressed and bottled in the Peifer family 'Weingut', only a few yards away...

from our fridge!

The town itself is nice to stroll around. We are camped on the Traben side of the river. It has narrow streets and a clutch of early twentieth century hotels on the riverbank. These are built in the German equivalent to Art Nouveau, known as Jugendstil. Perhaps its best described as Rennie Mackintosh meets Brothers Grimm!

Traben Trabach - drop dead gorgeous.

Some of the Jugendstijl buildings are more Brothers Grimm than Rennie Mackintosh

Others, the reverse is true

I liked the metal bridge though - it looked forwards to modernism, a kind of pre-Bauhaus geometrical simplicity...

Trabach occupies the opposite bank, across a long metal bridge with an old gatehouse at one end. There are more touristy shops and cafes on that side of the river, mainly because the larger river cruise boats dock there. It's not all tourist tat, we found a good local butcher where we bought a few slices of home cured ham for lunch and some bratwurst for a BBQ later on.

Brarwurst on the BBQ

Thought, some hours later at 2am. - maybe one bratwurst each would have been sufficient...

But at the time it seemed the way to go!

We have had a great couple of days here:

Wandering about in the beech and pine woods above Leiwen spotting small furry creatures snuffling about in the undergrowth. Gill was disappointed by the lack of gnomes, however.

Peaceful woods, high above the river.

Cycling along the Moselweg to visit local wine villages like the excitingly named 'Wolf'. We did not spot any, but a chap with two very well behaved German Shepherds passed us, that's probably as good as it gets these days.

The nearby village of Wolf (Gill: 'who needs an ebike!)

Barge spotting... forget cute flower painted narrow boats, these things that trundle past are huge black bulk carriers. They operate day and night. Sometimes you wake in the darkness to hear their throbbing engines come and go,  it's a romantic sound somehow, 'like a train in the distance' as the Paul Simon song goes.

Yesterday was the first day this trip that was truly tee shirt weather. An afternoon so warm that the only thing to do was nothing.

We sat about chatting about daft stuff, like does a photograph of your own knees count as a selfie'?

Gill Kindled a bit of Mark Twain, and read out some if the funniest bits, then settled down to disturb the German 'quiet time' with more than an occasional, chortle and snicker, but in deference to prevailing cultural norms she marked the truly hilarious passages with nothing more than a suppressed guffaw.

Gill and Mr Twain - the odd guffaw disturbs the stellplatz 'quiet time...

Pete reading a classic of contemporary German fiction....the Lonely Planet Guidebook.

I spent most of the afternoon lost in my Kindle too, stopping momentarily to remark that colloquial speech has not yet caught up with the eBook. There is no equivalent in common parlance to  having your nose stuck in a book; having your nose stuck in a Kindle sounds hazardous, whereas surfing a book sounds just silly. Oh the complexities of our not quite so new millennium!

The unique Rick Mullin - a strange mix of William Burroughs, J G Ballard and Lord Byron

What I am reading  at the moment is all about the complexities of the new millennium. I have come across a group of American writers who are commenting on 21st century politics and culture in a quite unusual way. They have produced book length epic poems written in the style of Lord Byron, but using 21st century  situations and American street slang  that sends you surfing Urban Dictionary and Google to get your head around half of it. I have to make a list of words to look up later as I go along. Yesterday's words of the day included: 'switchyback' - a railyard for transcontinental trains covered in overhead wires (preferred meeting place of hobos); 'Squeaky Frommes' - a one time member of the Manson gang, jailed in the 70s for attempting to assassinate President Ford; 'grifter' - card-sharp, dishonest gambler. I love the immediacy and vibrancy of American English, it reminds me of the richness of Shakespeare's language. I wonder if I am drawn to it because it feels fresh and evolving right now; maybe I see it as some kind of antidote to becoming elderly. If so, I suppose, personally speaking, it's a doomed project!

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