Category Archives: Travel

A day in Trier

On October 6th I went to Trier for the day with a friend. I had never been there before, but she grew up near Trier and has been there very often, but never as a “tourist”.

We took the train from Koblenz, which goes along the Moselle most of the time. This makes for a picturesque journey, especially in the early morning when there’s some fog above the water.

We arrived in Trier, which was founded as Augusta Treverorum (“City of Augustus in the land of the Treveri”) in or before 16 BC, at 10 o’clock and started our sightseeing at the Porta Nigra, which is Latin for black gate. I think the gate originally had a different name, but has been renamed centuries ago because the stones have become black by pollution over time. (As usual, click on any photo for a bigger version.)

We then strolled through the city centre, much of which is a pedestrian area nowadays. Here’s the beautiful market place with the St. Gangolf church in the morning.

And the view to the right.

We went on to see the cathedral Dom St. Peter. Here’s the front side; note the different towers. Building of the cathedral beganin 326 AD, so it is considered the oldest church in Germany. Of course, it has been renovated, changed and in parts rebuilt since then. Note that at some point it was decided to add another floor to the right tower, but not the left. The Liebfrauenkirche is adjacent to the right of the cathedral.

Next, we spent a few hours visiting one of the exhibitions about Constantine the Great.

Afterwards we went to see the Konstantinbasilika (Constantine Basilica), a really beautiful building inside and out that was built in 310 AD. It is the largest surviving single-room structure from Roman times.

The inside used to be heavily decorated with marble plates, but is very plain now.

Nowadays the basilica sits right next to a rococo palace, the Kurfürstliches Palais. Incidentally, the palace now houses part of the Rhineland-Palatinate administration, namely the public authority that is responsible for schools (Aufsichts- und Dienstleistungsdirektion, ADD). Wouldn’t you like to have your office in this building?

There are some other Roman artifacts in Trier, namely the Roman Baths and the Amphitheatre, which we just saw from the outside. Here’s a photo of the latter.

By this time it was somewhat late in the afternoon, and we decided that we had done enough sightseeing for the day. We went back to the pedestrian area to go shopping and have dinner, then took the train back to Koblenz.

Bike tour along Moselle and Rhine

Hm, no posts for almost a month… Looks like I’ve been too busy during the autumn holidays and since. Let’s play catch up with a few photos here…

On September 23rd, Andre and I decided that we simply had to make the most of the beautiful weather and went on a bike tour of almost exactly 80 km (50 miles). We went downhill to the Moselle from our home, then rode along the river up to Koblenz, where the Moselle flows into the Rhine at the Deutsches Eck. We continued along the Rhine to Boppard, from where we took a train back up the hill to Emmelshausen, the nearest train station from home.

Click on the photos for a bigger version.

View into the Moselle valley. The town on the river is Brodenbach.

The Marksburg above Braubach, seen from the opposite bank. It is one of the few castles in the Upper Middle Rhine Valley that has never been destroyed. The chimneys to the right belong to an old mine, by the way.

Coming soon: photos from my excursion to Trier and André’s and my almost-but-not-quite 100 km (62 miles) hike on the Rheinsteig along the Rhine.

Back to school

You probably haven’t noticed that it was a bit quiet around here for two weeks because I don’t post regularly enough, but André and I have been on vacation during the last two weeks of my school holidays. We went to the southwestern part of England during the first half of August and were very lucky with the weather – we only had rain on two days but never got wet while hiking.

We hiked several parts of the coastal path that surrounds most (all?) of England and did one or two other hikes as well. I was fascinated by the public footpaths and bridleways that anyone can use. We walked through fields with cows, sheep or horses and even crossed several private gardens, where one feels a bit like an intruder, but if there were people present they just said hi and didn’t seem to be bothered by random hikers at all.

I might write a bit more about our trip if I can find the time; however, I’ve been back in school since Monday, and the first few days have been very hectic. We’ll see if it gets better after the first couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, here are a few photos (as usual, click for bigger version).

Obligatory shot of Stonehenge.

Durdle Door near Lulworth Cove on the Dorset coast.

It’s the enigmatic frog! (Found in a wooded area of Exmoor.)

This is Dartmouth after sunset, as seen across the Dart from the town centre. We attended a wedding there.

Wouldn’t you like to ride in a car like this to your wedding?

Tomatoestomatoestomatoes

Of all the plants we sowed in our garden this spring, the tomatoes and peppers were the only successful plants – probably because we grow them in pots instead of the soil. Almost everything else has been eaten by slugs. Too bad they don’t seem to like dandelions, we have way too many of them.

   

Anyways, the tomatoes for which André has lovingly cared since March are starting to yield fruit. I already froze some “regular” tomatoes – most of those are going to be used for cooking – and today I picked the first bowl of cherry tomatoes (about 1.2 kg/2.5 lbs).

These are really very tasty! We’re having pasta casserole with cherry tomatoes, broccoli and ham tonight: Nudelauflauf mit Schinken und Brokkoli. (I substituted some of the brokkoli with tomatoes, since we have so many.)

As usual, click the photos for bigger versions.

Another earthquake

This morning around five we woke up because the bed was shaking. Yep, it was another earthquake. We were even able to feel aftershocks, I think. It was a 4.0 on the Richter scale, and the epicentre was about 50 km north of here, close to Andernach (where we lived until last summer). Here’s the data and a map (time shown in UTC, so add two hours for daylight savings time in Germany).
I also found out that a second earthquake happened half an hour later, but we didn’t wake up again, probably because it only was a 2.0 with nearly the same epicentre.

The local newspaper, the Rhein-Zeitung, says the first earthquake has been the strongest earthquake in 15 years (article in German).