A little city along the Rhine, St Goar

St Goar, Germany

A small little city along the Rhine River, which mainly deals with wine and cuckoo clocks. St Goar is pretty quiet and nothing much really goes by except for their cars, which drive really quickly on VERY SMALL roads. It was the drive to St Goar that kept me awake for most of the journey. Germany is a land-locked country, so the Rhine River is a important source for them. Most people are very reliant on it for agriculture as well as transportation.

Along the Rhine River were many medevial castles built by one Ludwig Wilhelm II, King of Bavaria, aka Mad King Ludwig. Many of you must be familiar with the Walt Disney symbol (the one with the castle), that symbol is modelled after the Neuschwanstein Castle. It has a Byzantine and Gothic kind of architecture, which suited Ludwig's infatuation with castles.

Unfortunately, the castle was never finished until after his death. However, his fantasies with castles finally caught up with him, because he was depleting the resources of Bavaria, coupled with the lost of independence of Bavaria to the German Emperor, Mad Ludwig withdrew into his own world of fantasies and often dreamt of living in fairy tale castles where kings had real power. Finally, was found dead on the shores of Lake Starnberg, near one of his castles called Castle Berg. Ludwig was a strong swimmer and the water he fell into was only waist deep. He was announced to have commited suicide by drowning, although the mystery was never solved.

River Rhine as mentioned is one of most important sources in Europe. It is also the longest in Europe. It has its origins in the Swiss Alps and it runs through France and Germany (Upper Rhine) and finally turns to enter Netherlands where it meets the river Meuse and Scheldt to form the Rhine-Muese-Scheldt delta.

Welcome to St Goar

River Rhine behind wenqi. Very calm very unassuming, but it flows at a rate of 300 cubic metres per second

The largest free hanging cuckoo clock in the world. right outside our hotel.

A wine tasting session. St Goar is famous for their wines, and the wine tasting session was held in a 70 year old cellar. The owner of the cellar is only 60. It was his father who built it. His most treasured assets are his ice wine. Those who drank it before would definitely remember it. those who haven't, must try one sip.

Ice wine is a sort of dessert wine, sweet with no alocoholic taste. It requires very stringent conditions before harvesting the grapes. Grapes must be frozen when harvested, and it required 10 consecutive days of -8 deg and below temperatures in order to get the right taste in the grapes. Any short of these criteria who result in a non harvest for ice wine. The last harvest was in 2007 and the previous one was 2003. thats why it costs about more than $2oo a bottle.

cuckoo clocks. Originated in Germany. They may be small, but their price tag... hehe... is far from small. The cheapest is around 399 euros, the most expensive is in thousands.

Medevial castles. Mostly built by mad king ludwig

This is a medevial castle built in the middle of the Rhine. It use to have 2 long Iron Chains on either side stretched across the river. It was used as a toll booth for ships running up and down the Rhine.

The slopes of the mountain used to grow grapes for their wine. The picture doesnt exactly show how steep it is, but, it is indeed very steep and treacherous to harvest the grapes.