A long Weekend - Part Three: In the Pentagon

There is no possible way of describing Wiesbaden, the State capital of Hesse, in one word, or even one sentence (except we make it a very long one...). Well, maybe in short: Surprisingly awesome!

Spa House & Casino

Relatively unscathed by WWII the city is bursting with architectural grandeur and historical landmarks. Of course the Romans (again) settled here first and cultivated the area, attracted by the many hot springs and the almost Mediterranean climate.

The medieval period defined the city core and somewhat resembles the shape of an uneven pentagon, hence, the name: The Historic Pentagon. Today, part of it is a pedestrian zone with nice restaurants, boutique stores, antique shops, cafes and beer gardens.

The Pentagon

Wiesbaden is one of the oldest spa cities in Europe, some even claim it is 'Europe's wellness capital', and many celebrities, from royals to artists, frequented the area quite regularly, and still do. For that and for legal gambling, of course.

And why did we end up in Wiesbaden? We didn't bring bathing suits, we don't gamble and we are not famous. We came to meet with fellow blogger Nikos and the wife again, and this time it was planned!

Blogger Selfie

We arrived in the afternoon, conquered the Pentagon to grab a coffee-to-go (YES, finally!), to shop for vegan chocolate and have a refreshing Radler in the beer garden at the Market Church in front of the Hessian Parlament while waiting for our hosts to arrive.

Market Church

The beer garden was about two hundred meters away as the crow flies from where Mr and Mrs Nikos live, yet Nick managed to get lost, and couldn't find us... He definitely needs to work on his navigational skills, and this is where Mrs Nikos took over.

First we got free parking in their garage, which was nice as downtown parking is quite expensive, but it turned out to be a bit of a challenge to get into the designated spot. However, Roland managed despite Nick's help.

Kochbrunnen (Boiling Fountain), a hot spa

We were reasonably hungry, but Elektra (the wife) had other plans. We had to walk up and around the Pentagon first. From Rheinstraße in the south, and west along Schwalbacher Straße, then north down Röderstraße and along Taunusstraße and Wilhelmstraße in the East, or so... we kinda lost track after a while.

The guys were getting really grumpy from starvation... but finally we arrived at Thai Banyan, to quench our thirst with funny cocktails (Nick had Sex on the Beach) and were served an excellent dinner. After this it was football time for Roland, and another walk in the park after dark (actually it was just around the block) for Sonja and Nick.

On Sunday all of us slept in, while Elektra's mom was already busy with breakfast. We felt just like being in a B&B. What a lovely treat.

After breakfast we walked some more, and Nick's wife, a true ambassador of her hometown led the way to Neroberg. Through a lovely park with picturesque villas we strolled, and to the boys' relief we entered the Nerobergbahn, a water powered funicular railway from 1888, instead of climbing the hill.

On Neroberg, the guys were hungry (again), and got fed with curry wurst and fries. But not before adoring the view over Wiesbaden.

Beer and Wurst

We had some Radler for refreshments, before we opted to walk downhill. Elektra procured a pound of cherries from a food truck, and while strolling through the shades of the forest we carried out a spitting contest.

Russian Orthodox Church St. Elisabeth

Nick's mom-in-law had meanwhile been busy with late lunch preparations, and again well fed we chatted the afternoon away. Eventually it was time to part ways. Nick had to get to the airport, Elektra needed to pack for a gig in Northern Germany, and we had a two hours drive getting back to the Black Forest.

Thank you Nick, Elektra and Gudrun for a fantastic weekend. We sure had fun! (Pics below: courtesy Nikos).

A long Weekend - Part Two: A Place for Robber Barons or Sleeping Beauties

For the night we stayed in a nice hotel in Landstuhl, which gets regularly frequented by Americans visiting friends and family on the nearby base. (We seemed to be the only German speaking guests...).

On the next leg of our trip we meandered through the Palatinate Forest, a low mountain region and national park in southwest Germany. Our route took us south towards Pirmasens, then southeast to Bad Bergzabern, we traveled south again towards the French border, and left the best part for last: Route 48 to Hochspeyer.

The weather was nice and not too hot, so we hiked up to Berwartstein Castle, a robber baron's headquarter in the 13th century, destroyed and restored several times, and today rather resembling the home of Sleeping Beauty.

Seehof Pond

In the past this region had been quite popular with the two-wheeled crowd. Alas, thanks to frequent weekend warriors causing disturbance and accidents over the past years, the best routes through the area are off limits for motorcycles now on weekends and holidays. So, when on a motorcycle make sure you visit the region during weekdays.

A long Weekend - Part One: We like Rivers.

River Rhine

Another long weekend lies behind us involving 1,400km of driving, a house warming party at our friends place, visiting our moms, and a mini blogger meet-up, all occasionally interrupted by watching football matches. In order to spice up "the long commute" we traveled along river Rhine, but at Koblenz, we decided on a whim to follow river Moselle upstream.

The Moselle is one of the busiest waterways in Europe. It is the largest German tributary of the Rhine, and flows through France, Luxembourg and Germany before it empties into the Rhine. A winding river bed, steep slopes, wine growing (Riesling, anyone?) and castles are typical characteristics of this river.

Vineyards with Castle Thurant on top

While on a coffee stop in Alken we climbed the old stairs up to St. Michael's chapel (11th century), where we found an old graveyard and an ossuary (learned a new word today). On top of the hill sits Castle Thurant, overlooking the vineyards, the village and the river valley.

View on Alken

We took our next cultural break in Cochem, a romantic village at the river, and popular with the tourist crowds, especially from the Netherlands. Throning on a high hill sits the imperial castle of Cochem. Unfortunately Cochem gets flooded every couple of years when the Moselle bursts its banks, but somehow the inhabitants manage to clean up everything within weeks.

Cochem on right

Cochem Castle

Cochem downtown

Flammkuchen & grape juice

The heart of Cochem

The Calmont bend from below

And from above

Then we said good-bye to the river, with the promise to return... next time on scooters.

Germans and Football (yes, it's football, not soccer)

Football means for Germans, what Rugby means for Kiwis, Cricket for Eastern Indians, Hockey for Canadians, or this other armoured ball game with an egg shaped thing for Americans. It's the German Volkssport (the people's game), every kid grows up with it, and it's cheap as it doesn't need much equipment, so everybody can afford it.

Hence, we haven't slept much lately... we had to watch the World Cup every night. We cheered with the Dutch when they beat up Spain, and we celebrated even more when the German team crushed the Portuguese.

The ritual of watching a football match is best done in a crowd. Ironically we Germans abused the English language (once again, there sure is more...) and called this watch party "public viewing". Apologies for that. Every German however knows its Germanized meaning:

Put a big screen in front of a huge beer garden, bring on the beer and currywurst, and everybody: don your World Cup jerseys. Who said that Germans can't have fun, eh?

World Cup Statistics

Source: Finanz und Wirtschaft

Roland: I totally love useless statistics, and right now I am really having a lot of fun: the 2014 World Cup in Brazil is a few days old now, but we can already find many entirely fascinating and utterly useless statistics out there in the intersphere. So here is a collection of my favorites!

1. If you want to win a game you better concede the first goal. At the time of writing this nine games were finished, and five of them were won by the team that went behind 0:1.

2. Within the people of the 32 countries that play the World Cup there are two obvious correlations:
a) the less religious the people are the richer they are!
b) the more beer they drink the more uniformly distributed their income is!
Undeniable proof can be found here (sorry it's in German).

3. Brazil is the country where the most butt lifting jobs are executed, while in no other country more people are killed by their lawnmowers than in the United States (proof here: sorry, German again).

4. Brazil will win the World Cup: using a complex statistical forecasting method the website FiveThirtyEight predicts that Brazil will win the World Cup with a probability of 43% (followed by Argentina 13%, Germany 11%, Netherlands 7%). At the moment of writing this Holland already beat Spain 5:1, and now Spain's chance of winning the Cup is at 0%. I would not bet my fortune on that!

5. Brazil will win the World Cup: YouGov provides an analysis of polls in 19 World Cup countries asking who will win the cup. The result: 16 countries believe in Brazil, the Gauchos believe in Argentina, the Spanish in Spain and the Americans... in the United States! Unfortunately there was no poll done where the most clueless fans can be found...

6. Germany will win the World Cup: The most convincing of all statistics has been developed by a highly regarded scientific company called Electronic Arts. They found an extremely difficult, but unbeatable algorithm under the name of "Fifa World Cup Soccer 2014" that undeniably predicts Germany to win the final against Brazil with 2:1 after conceding the first goal (reference to statistics 1). Miroslav Klose will score the match winner with his 16th WC goal and becomes the player with most scores in the history of World Cup. Now this is proof that cannot be argued with!

Paul-Pietsch-Classic 2014

Possibly the most beautiful car ever made: 1950s Mercedes Convertible

Paul Pietsch was a German race driver from Southwest Germany who once started in three Formula One races in the 1950s and subsequently became one of Germany's leading Motorsport journalists. He died in 2012 at the age of 100 years. 

To his honor every year since 2012 a vintage car rally is organized called "Paul-Pietsch-Classic". Obviously this rally is not about winning a race, but about showcasing some of the most beautiful cars that were ever built. Although the heat was almost unbearable on Saturday we could not resist having a look at these treasures, so we headed out to Offenburg, where the finish-line would be, and we would not be disappointed. We are no experts in vintage cars, so in some of the cases we have no idea what we were looking at, but we definitely loved all of these beauties.  There was an official winner (an 1960s Opel Diplomat), but this seemed to be of insignificant importance at best. 

An unofficial competitor: an amphibious vehicle

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