Castles on the Rhine

Leaving Rotterdam, we crossed The Netherlands and into Germany.  We drove along the banks of the Rhine River on “The Romantic Road.” 

I did all the driving.  David was too young to have a license.  With his Illinois license Karl was permitted to drive Army vehicles, but the Army forbid his driving civilian cars.  David sat quietly scrunched up in the Opal’s narrow back, while Karl’s role was criticizing my driving. 

On the sunny side of the river, vineyards rose in neat tiers of vines almost to the top of the mountains.  For years my favorite drink with dinner was white Rhine wine, but I never thought of where the grapes were actually harvested.  I marveled that farmers could tend vines on such steep slopes. 

Wild forests covered the mountains on the shady side of the river up to castle walls.  And there seemed to be a castle on top of every mountain.  The views were spectacular, ever changing, like in a Cinemax movie.   The settings were romantic, like a book of fairy tales where every page has a different picture.  But I couldn’t help thinking that these many castles, with their thick stone walls, were built when every village distrusted everyone else and lived in constant fear of attack by its neighbors.

Most of the castles were in ruins, but when I saw a sign saying “To the Marksburg” I turned off.  And went straight up the mountain. 

I was on one of those heart-stopping, narrow, twisting mountain roads, with many switchbacks. I rounded a curve and yelled, “Holy Moses!”  Coming down the mountain towards me was a huge bus full of tourists.  The road was so narrow, I didn’t see how we could pass.  I pulled the car with its right wheels on the edge of the cliff.  Somehow that bus driver squeezed that mammoth machine between the solid rock of the mountainside and my little car without scraping a border or a fender or pushing me over the cliff. .  

At the top there was actually an open space with a parking lot with half a dozen cars.  Karl, David, and I left our car and ran towards high, forbidding walls.  We passed under a portcullis, through an arched stone passageway, and into an interior stone-paved courtyard where a uniformed attendant sold us tickets and told us to hurry ahead to join the last tour of the day.     

We were given a complete tour of the castle, up and down narrow, winding stone staircases, through rooms large and small and along the battlements.  I looked out a narrow slit of a window. Far below the village beside the river was exactly as if I was looking at it out of an airplane.  

With many small rooms, I could see how in the 17th Century the castle was a prison, but I was surprised when told in the last century it had been an old folks home.  At 50 I was already coping with pain in arthritic knees.  I could not imagine elderly people living in those cold, damp rooms with uneven stone floors, and especially going up and down the many twisting stone steps. 

Since we were the final tour of the day, I drove down the mountain without meeting any other vehicles coming up. We had seen up close what it was like to live in a fairy tale castle, and it did not look like one bit of fun.