Small Trip: Vineyards, Castles, and River

Here's the second post about my small trip in Europe.

Before telling more stories about my small trip in Europe, I should tell you that I wouldn't have been able to do any of the trip if I didn't go for a year to Canada. Without realizing it, my Canadian experience has countless effects in my life.

This story below wouldn't have existed if I didn't go to Canada for a year.

The next part of my small trip in Europe was meeting a friend of mine, Elisa.

Elisa and I met in Canada when we (and a bunch of other exchange students) were traveling to Vancouver and Victoria in spring 2005. Then, Elisa came to Indonesia in summer 2008, followed by my little trip to Europe in winter 2008.

So when I was in Germany, Elisa and her family invited me and Lisa to come and visit her.

Very kindly, Elisa and her family also invited me (and Lisa) to do a very cool sightseeing.

The theme of the day were vineyards, castles, and Rhein River.

The first thing we did was (well, aside from driving to another town and walking around the town that is very famous to Japanese tourists) taking the cable car to go up the hill.

The picture above is the shadow of our cable cars flying above the vineyards.

Pretty cool, eh?

Then, when we got into the top of the hill, we were walking around the vineyards.

The view was very beautiful.

Below is a picture of the vineyard with grapes waiting to be harvested.

We actually 'stole' a few grapes (yeah. it was actually stealing because the vineyards and the grapes were someone's private properties), just to taste the grapes.

I was expecting the grapes would be sweet, similar to the normal grapes that were grown into eat-able grapes, not for wine. But it turned out that the grapes didn't have strong taste, it was rather bland.

Come to think of it, what Lisa said was true.

I took like thousands pictures of the vineyards and Lisa said,

"So Alien, for you it's the rice fields, for us is the vineyards."

After looking at the picture below, I cannot agree more.

The vineyards below are very similar to the terasering (terracing) rice fields.

So, Lisa, Elisa, and I were walking around the vineyard when we found a waiter-less cafe.

There was actually a very small cafe up in the middle of the hill without any waiter. The cafe has awesome view and great drinks. It has great grape juice and the Germany's most famous apfelschorle, which is basically sparkling water mixed with apple juice.

The coolest thing with this waiter-less cafe is that the owner basically trusts in everyone who came and got some drinks. there were two little compartments to put the drinks, there was even wine too. and there was a little box to put your money in.

The three of us got extremely excited about this based-on-trust cafe.

So we had our walk, we had our drink in a very cool waiter-less cafe, then we started walking down the hill towards the extremely well-known Rhine River.

On our way to the river, I took this picture below. A very nice small village.

Then, what would a European trip without a glimpse of an old house?

Below is a picture of one of the oldest houses in the region.

Thanks to Elisa and her parents, the three of us got to cruise along the Rhine River.

The cruise ship that we were taking was similar to the one like this one below, but less crowded. The cruise was very nice, mostly because we had a great day with the warmth of the sun and all the summer-y feeling.

Plus, from our cruise ship, I could see all the fascinating castles.

Of course, to me the castles were fascinating since I haven't seen that many castles in my life. I saw castles in three different Disneyland, but that was about it. Real castles were far off more fascinating.

I mean, imagine all the rich people who used to live in a castle. Imagine the way they live, they way they built the castle, plus they didn't have elevator or escalator back then, so they had to climb all that stairs to get to the top of the castles. That is fascinating.

Before you can see all the pictures of the castles, below is a picture of a small island in the middle of the river.

Both Lisa and Elisa told me that the small island in the middle of the river was used as some kind of gate. So basically, way back then, if you wanted to go through a river and cruise pass a castle, you had to pay a certain amount. The small island in the middle of the river was the place where you can drop off your gold or other things in order to pay off you're passing in front of a castle.

That was how they make money back then.

Pretty sweet, huh?

And finally, below are the pictures of the castles that I saw that day.

very fascinating.

Over all, I had a great day.

and of course, the biggest thanks have to go to Elisa and her parents to welcome me (and Lisa) in the most friendliest way possible.

The trip was lovely.