Pomp and Circumstance in Beilstein

Today, after leaving Hotel Bömer in Alf and after an excellent frühstück to power us on our way, we entered the very steepest section of the Mosel Gorge, the Calmont. Vineyard railways were everywhere. There is a description in our book of an "aided" hiking path here in the steepest vineyard in Europe that has 6 ladders, 22 stirrups, 16 spikes, and about 100 sections of cable. I don't know what all of those are but it doesn't sound like a relaxing stroll. Our book also notes, somewhat unnecessarily it would seem, that proper footwear is essential. We however, remained as we have this whole trip (the Col de Bussang at the beginning the only exception), on a completely flat cycle path.

This would be a fabulous area to come to however, if you wanted less ambitious hikes but lots of them. The Moselsteig Trail runs the entire length of the Mosel on the German side and offers 365 km and 24 legs of different trails connecting different towns and villages as described in the list below.

We passed by the Kaiser Wilhelm rail tunnel, the longest in Germany when built in 1879. Construction on a new larger tunnel to replace this single-track one was begun in 1916 during WW I but was abandoned, unused when the war ended. During WW II, a tunnel on this abandoned route was used as a concentration camp, with 13,000 prisoners providing slave labour for an underground factory producing ignition systems for military vehicles. Work on a second tunnel was started again in 2010 and was apparently finished in 2016, 100 years after the original scheme was started.

Roman burial chambers from the 3rd and 4th C have been found high in the vineyards near here. The wall paintings inside are original and apparently the best-preserved of their kind north of the Alps.

Along the way in the wine village of Ediger, there apparently is a graphic example of how interlinked religion and wine have been in this area. In a chapel in the vineyard above the town, there is a painted relief " Christ and the wine press", illustrating the wine-blood symbolism of the church. A spindle presses blood from the body of Christ as he carries his cross, while his feet stomp the grapes in the wine press trough. We also saw this lovely figure in a church. When you are not used to spending much time in churches and cathedrals, the torture iconography otherwise taken for granted is disturbing. There doesn't seem to be much celebrating the joy in life.

We wanted to linger a bit in this section of the gorge and so had booked ahead a couple of days ago. To our surprise, we had been able to reserve 2 nights in the small hotel Rick Steves had recently written about in an article on the "dreamy Mosel". He had loved the tiny village of Belstein and the Hötel Haus Lippmann. Our book noted about Beilstein, "Much favoured by film and TV companies for period dramas, Beilstein has maintained an almost unspoilt medieval appearance." When we cycled in we did feel quite transported to another time.

When we found our very picturesque little hotel right on the river, and were warmly welcomed and shown our room, we felt transported to another economic bracket! Jim and I looked at each other in stunned silence, both thinking, "Maybe they have made a mistake and given us the wrong room?" It was elegant and roomy with double sets of French doors out onto a big terrace with views down the river in both directions and of the vineyards on the other shore. It had a sitting area and was furnished with beautiful antiques. The bathroom was an equally roomy, modern marble wonder with a big rain head shower and heated towel racks. (We have showered in very small spaces where you really don't want to drop the soap as there is not room to bend down and pick it up.) It was hard to imagine that the hotel could have a nicer room. I don't think it did and mais non, there was no mistake, and for two nights we lived in splendour, certainly the piece de resistance of our trip - wait, of all our trips! It was more a splurge for us at 140 E per night but it could have been double that. We would not have been staying there but we would not have been surprised at the price.

The rest of the hotel was equally beautiful, a tastefully renovated 16th C building that has been in the Lippmann family for a long time. The main dining room where there was an enormous frühstück buffet in the morning (included in the room rate) was positively baronial with old weaponry on the walls, stained glass windows and heavy dark furniture from centuries back but bright and cheerful at the same time - whitewashed walls, red and white checked linens and lit candles. There was another smaller room off this one with cosy banquettes where we had a wonderful dinner our first night. Jim had a whole trout and I had a venison stew with spätzle. The prices were very reasonable. The sun had reappeared for our late afternoon drink on the restaurant terrace before dinner and we were pretty happy in the style to which we are NOT accustomed.

Beilstein is beyond adorable, its colourful half-timbered buildings squeezed into a crease of the inclined vineyards, window boxes overflowing with flowers. With a population of only 800 (seems less), it has few shops of any kind, just small hotels, cafes, restaurants and wine bars. The crooked, narrow, car-free cobbled streets wind up from the small main square between the crooked buildings to the ruin of Metternich family castle on one hill and a church on the other. Metternich, the Austrian politician we might recall from early 19th C Euopean history was the last owner of the castle.

The origin of the name of sweet Beilstein is grim however and describes an early form of hunting where noise and fire is used to drive animals into a human funnel that leads to a cliff, a "beyhelstein" where the panicked animals plummet to their deaths. It was at such a place that this village was established in the 14th C.

We spent the afternoon climbing up to the top ramparts of the Metternich castle for the astounding views. One can get only imagine the utterly backbreaking work the serfdom had to put in constructing these edifices on the top of the highest peak around and the lives that must have been lost as for the ego gratification of some powerful person. Not much has changed in the works it seems.

A German film or series called "Rothenburg an der Mosel" was filmed in Beilstein. We felt a bit like we were in a movie while we were here. Lots of tourists came in waves during the day as busses and day tour boats arrived but they were all gone in the evening except for those staying in the village and it was delightfully quiet except for the chugging of the odd barge passing by. Needless to say, we slept like well-fed babies