Best of the Rhine

From the beginning of history, the Rhine has been one of Europe's main north-south trade arterials. Many of its castles were built by medieval robber barons to collect tolls on passing ships. Of the Rhine's 800 miles, we're tackling just 36, the scenic, castle-studded Rhine Gorge. There's another castle about every few kilometers, each with its own history and legend.

For hands-on thrills, you can hop off this tour and climb through many of these castles on your own. My favorites are Rheinfels and Marksburg. This tour covers the stretch of river from Bingen to Koblenz. It can be done by train, by car, or boat.

And you can do it in either direction. Now, get ready for the castles of the Romantic Rhine. But a word of warning first. Be careful as you approach the cliff called the Lorelei.

Many a sloppy tourist has lost his or her way, falling under the spell of this alluring siren. More on her later. To help us along the way, I've invited a good friend and virtual travel buddy. Welcome, Lisa.

Guten Tag, Herr Steves. Lisa will give us helpful directions and sightseeing tips throughout the tour. And my first tip is to be sure you get our tour updates. Just press the icon at the lower right of your device.

You'll find any updates and helpful instructions unique to this tour. Things like closures, opening hours, and reservation requirements. There's also tips on how to use this audio tour and even the full printed script. Yes.

So pause for just a moment right now to review our updates and special tips. It's okay. We'll wait. And then... Let the tour begin. The tour begins.

If you get out of sync, you can pause, fast forward, or rewind to the appropriate track and pick it up from there. The tour works best heading north, but you can also use it going south. Just play the audio tracks in reverse order, clicking backwards from one audio track to the previous one as you go. The easiest way to do this tour is by train, from Bingen to Koblenz.

The express departs hourly, takes 40 minutes, and makes no stops. The milk run takes longer and makes several stops along the way. This lets you hop off to tour a castle or sightsee a town when you like. Try getting a seat on the river side of your train, where the views are a little better.

But beware that by train, many sights on this tour will be a blur through the train window on this high-speed trip. By car, you have much more flexibility, stopping to tour castles along the way as you like. Drivers should take the road along the west bank. Again, it's a bit more scenic.

By the way, for cyclists, there's even a bike path along the west bank between Bingen and Koblenz. A Rhine boat cruise is the most popular and most relaxing way of all. But it is slow. From Bingen to Koblenz, that is, going downstream, it takes a full four hours.

Going upstream is nearly twice that, far too long for my taste. Consider doing just the hour or two stretch between Bacharach and St. Gore or Bopperd, which has the most castles, by boat, and doing the rest by train. Along our journey, I'll be pointing out sights either on the west bank or the east bank, so learn the basic directions.

The Rhine flows north. Before you board your train, board your transportation, and start this tour, serious students might enjoy listening to track number 16 and track number 19 in advance. These give a quick introduction to the Rhine, the castles, and today's commercial traffic. Now, get ready to enjoy your tour of the romantic Rhine.

Remember, follow the kilometer markings, keep an eye on the big picture, and don't stress if you don't see everything I mention. Okay, all aboard. Board your train, boat, or car, in Bingen. Head downstream and start the next track as soon as you see kilometer 528. Kilometer 528, the Niederwald Monument.

The ancient Romans planted the first vines here. They found that the steep folds of the Rhine Gorge held in both warmth and moisture, the slate soil absorbs the heat of the sun and stays warm all night, resulting in sweeter grapes. Wine from the flat fields above the Rhine Gorge is easier to produce and therefore cheaper, but it's only good as table wine. Wine from the steep hillsides of the Rhine Gorge, where grapes are harder to grow and harvest, is more expensive, but also tastier.

Because the Twisting Valley has so many microclimates, wine connoisseurs can often, even identify the subtle differences between a wine grown in one village from the next or from the West Bank to the East. Vineyards once covered four times as much land as they do today, but modern economics have driven most of them out of business. The vineyards that do survive require government subsidies. If you see metal rails running up the hillside, that's for transporting grapes during the harvest.

This was originally a crane tower for unloading goods from river barges. Goods needed to be offloaded, then carried around a treacherous reef, and then reloaded nearby. Today, that reef is marked by buoys. For centuries, Bacharach has been famous for its wine.

Notice the big keg along the river. The name Bacharach likely derives from altar to Bacchus, the Roman god of wine. The medieval popes... Pope Pius II ordered Bacharach wine by the cartload.

Today, Bacharach draws lots of tourists for its time-capsule quaintness. You can visit the evocative ruins of a church on the hill, see a house dating from 1368, and walk the town walls. After Bacharach's medieval prosperity, it declined, falling victim to plagues, fires, and the Thirty Years' War of the 1600s. In the 1800s, romantic artists rediscovered it so well-preserved, it was nicknamed the Sleeping Beauty Town. They put it on the Grand Tour map as the jewel of the Romantic Rhine. Kilometer 546.

Falt's is tourable, but its interior is bare and dull. Burg Gutenfels, overlooking it from the hillside, is now a privately owned hotel. On the east bank, the town of Kaub grew rich from toll collecting. Find the green statue amid waving flags.

It's on the riverfront directly below the castle. The statue honors the German general Gebhard von Blucher. He was Napoleon's nemesis. In 1813, Napoleon swept through the Rhine with Blucher on his heels.

Blucher built a pontoon bridge, the first of its kind across the river here at Kaub. He crossed the Rhine and outflanked the French. Two years later, Blucher and Wellington would team up to defeat Napoleon at Waterloo. On the west bank, immediately opposite Kaub, look for the big, gaping hole in the mountainside.

It's near the ferry dock, which is marked by blue roadside flags. This hole is the last working slate mine on the Rhine. As you travel, notice the roofs on the houses. Rhineland Slate. On the west bank is the town of Oberwesel.

She sits at the end of a long, man-made spit, combing her beautiful hair. Steep a big slate rock in centuries of legend, and eventually it becomes a tourist attraction, the ultimate rhinestone. The rock inspired the poet Heinrich Heine to write the Song of Lorelei. It tells of a sailor who was so enchanted by Lorelei's song that he crashed and drowned.

His father, ordered the nymph killed. As soldiers closed in on the nymph, she called for Father Rhein to help her out. Huge waves carried Lorelei to safety, and she's never been seen since. But alas, when the moon shines brightly, the wine flows, and the tour buses are parked, a soft song can still be heard from the Lorelei.

Listen carefully. Sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors, sailors,

Gore is the classic Rhine tourist town. There's a half-timbered shopping street perfect for buying a souvenir stein and a leafy riverside park, just right for strolling. Rheinfels Castle, once the mightiest on the Rhine, is the single best Rhineland ruin to explore. It's a 15-minute hike up to the castle.

Sitting like a child, like a dead pit bull above St. Gore, Rheinfels rumbles with ghosts from its hard-fought past. First built in 1245 to guard a toll station, it withstood many wars. In the 1520s, it was a thriving cultural center, hosting the artist Albrecht Dürer and the reformer Ulrich Zwingli.

By the 1600s, this castle had become the strongest and most modern fortress in the Holy Roman Empire. It withstood a siege of 28,000 French troops in 1692, but eventually the castle surrendered to the French without a fight. In 1797, the French Revolutionary Army destroyed it. Today, while thoroughly ruined, it offers your single most convenient and evocative castle experience on the river.

Then, often with the help of chains and a tower on the opposite bank, he'd stop each ship and get his toll. There were 10 custom stops in the 60-mile stretch between Mainz and Koblenz alone. No wonder merchants, eager for freer trade, were early proponents of the creation of larger nation-states. Some castles were built to control and protect settlements, and others were residences of kings.

As times changed, so did the lifestyles of the rich and feudal. Many castles were abandoned for more comfortable, unfortified mansions in the towns. Most Rhine castles date from the 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries. During this period, there was a power struggle between local rulers and the Holy Roman Emperor, who was, at the time, more powerful in name than in practice.

When the Pope successfully... asserted his power over the German Emperor in 1076, local princes ran wild over the rule of their emperor. The castles then saw military action in the 1300s and 1400s. That was when emperors began reasserting their control over Germany's many feudal kingdoms.

The castles were also involved in the Reformation Wars, in which Europe's Catholic and Protestant dynasties fought it out using a fragmented Germany as their battleground. The Thirty Years' War, which raged from 1618 to 1648, devastated Germany. Finally, after a third of Germany was dead, a treaty decided the outcome. Each ruler got the freedom to decide if his people would be Catholic or Protestant.

The French, who feared a strong Germany and felt the Rhine was the logical border between them and Germany, destroyed most of the castles along the river prophylactically. Louis XIV in the 1680s, the Revolutionary Army in the 1790s, and Napoleon in 1806. The castles were rebuilt in Neo-Gothic style in the Romantic Age in the late 1800s. And today, they're enjoyed as restaurants, hotels, hostels, and museums.

As you travel the Rhine, think of how important the river was for trade so long ago. The Black Forest upstream from here was once poor and wood was its best export. Black foresters would ride log booms down the Rhine to the Ruhr north of the Rhine. where their timber fortified coal mine shafts, or all the way to Holland, where logs were sold to shipbuilders.

Many a log boom was busted up by the Rhine's treacherous reefs and curves. If they survived, they'd come home reckless, loaded with money, and likely horny, the German folkloric equivalent of American cowboys after payday. Kilometer 567.

Four centuries ago, after enduring the horrific wars of religion, it was decided that each prince or king got to decide the faith of his subjects. It was generally Protestants north of the Rhine and Catholics to the south. While church attendance in Germany is way down, the towns here, like Germany as a whole, are still split with both Catholic and Protestant churchgoers. The Stretch Between Kilometers 570 and 580

The family car is often parked on the stern. Workers live up in the bow. In the Rhine town of Kalb, there was once a boarding school for the children of the Rhine merchant marine. But today it's closed since most captains are Dutch, Belgian, or Swiss.

The flag of the boat's home country flies in the stern. The German flag is black, red, and yellow. Dutch is horizontal red, white, and blue. Belgian, black, yellow, and red.

Swiss is a white cross on a red field. The French flag is a vertical red, white, and blue. Logically, imports go upstream, things like Japanese cars, oil, and coal, while exports go downstream, German cars, chemicals, and pharmaceuticals. A clever captain manages to carry goods in both directions.

You may see a few giant Dutch container ships which transport much more cargo than the others. These have been driving many of the traditional barges out of Belgium. It's a business presenting the German economy with another challenge. Tugs haul much of the cargo.

Going downstream, a tug can push a floating train of up to five barges at the same time. But upstream, they can only manage one at a time. Before modern shipping, horses dragged boats upstream. The faint remnants of their towpaths survive at points along the river.

From 1873 to 1900, workers actually laid a chain from Bonn to Bingen. And with the help of this chain, boats with cogwheels and steam engines hoisted themselves upstream. Today, 265 million tons travel each year along the 530 miles from Basel on the German-Swiss border to the Dutch city of Rotterdam, where the river finally hits the sea. Riverside navigational aids are of vital interest to captains who don't wish to meet the Lorelei.

Boats pass on the right unless they clearly signal otherwise with a large blue sign. Since ships heading downstream can't stop or maneuver as freely, boats heading upstream are expected to do the tricky do-si-do work. Cameras monitor traffic all along and relay warnings of oncoming ships. The triangular signs you see posted along the river indicate if a ship is in that particular stretch of river.

They're placed before especially narrow and troublesome bends in the Rhine. If the left side of a triangle is lit, an oncoming ship is in that sector. When the bottom of the river is lit, that sector is empty. There may be two or three triangles per signpost, depending on how many sectors or segments of the river are covered, enabling the captain to anticipate traffic far upstream.

The lowest triangle indicates the nearest stretch of river. You'll also notice the large black-and-white kilometer markers all along the riverbank, which we've been keying our tour into. I erected these years ago to make our tour easier to follow. Very funny.

Okay, actually, the distance from the Rhine falls. A famous waterfall where the Rhine leaves Switzerland and becomes navigable. River barge pilots use these markers to navigate. Kilometer 580, Marksburg Castle.

There's part of a battering ram, suits of armor, the hall where knights dined, and a very Gothic chapel. Behind the castle, you'll see three modern smokestacks. These serve as vents for Europe's biggest car battery recycling plant just up the valley. Kilometer 586, Lonnek Castle.

That's the tip of land where the Mosel and the Rhine Rivers come together. This piece of land is considered the center or the soul of the German nation, its sacred land for many German nationalists. It has a reconstructed memorial to the Kaiser. Across the river from Koblenz on the east bank is the yellow Ehrenbreitstein Castle.

Not as old as the others, just about 100 years old, it now houses a hostel. Whether you're starting or ending your Rhine tour here, Koblenz is a good spot. It's the place where the industrial present meets the atmospheric past of the Romantic Rhine. We hope you enjoyed our tour of the Rhine, and we'll see you next time.

Thanks to Gene Openshaw, the co-author of this tour. This tour was excerpted from my Germany guidebook. For more details on eating, sleeping, and sightseeing, refer to the most recent edition of that guidebook. For more free audio tours and podcasts, and for information about our guidebooks, TV shows, bus tours, and travel gear, visit our website at ricksteves.com.

This tour was produced by Cedar House Audio Productions. Danke schön! Auf Wiedersehen! And goodbye for now.