The Weinstrasse- 25th – 27th May

Vines surrounding Bad Durkheim

After leaving the Rhine we headed along the German Wine trail, or Weinstrasse.  The drive itself is beautiful, with vines as far as the eye can see in all directions.  The wine of the region is mainly Riesling and what was truly staggering was both the number of wine producers and the quality of the wine. Most of the wine producers tend to have a wine store or weingut in the nearest local town, where you can have wine tastings or wein probes.  It’s a bit different to NZ- no imposing, architecturally designed buildings, just a small home with bottling areas where someone from the winery will sit outside at a small table with you to taste the wines.  I don’t know if we were particularly lucky but the wine probes we did were incredibly successful and the motorhome is currently well stocked with wine! 

Our first weinprobe.  The lady was really lovely and did very well with limited english. 

At another weingut.  We are leaning our bikes against a roman sarcophagus!  The owners of the vineyard had contacted a museum who had said "thanks but no, we're full!"

Our base for this time was Bad Durkheim.  Bad, we eventually found out, means spa or something like it.  Our campsite was huge but very pretty, and we were happy to pay extra to have a site right next to the lake.  We didn’t realize that also came with all night long, incredibly loud frogs…but still, it was very picturesque.  We even went for a dip.  It was also (for Martin’s interest mainly) next to a small airstrip, which had a restaurant that served really good food, beer and of course a huge selection of wine!

A beautiful spot.  This campsite also won points for being the first we have visited in Europe that provided both toilet paper and soap in the bathrooms!

Bad Durkheim itself was a lovely town to wander around, with a huge number of sculptures and parks.  It also has the world’s largest wine barrel, capable of holding 1.7 million liters… which of course has never held any wine and is actually a restaurant.  Bad Durkheim also has the world’s largest wine festival… which is next month of course.

The big wine barrel.  It was built by an actual Cooper.

Sculpture of a wine grower from 1936.  I think Morgan has managed to capture the spirit don't you?

Wurstmarktbrunnen.  A crazy statue in one of the town squares.  This translates to sausage market fountain. Wurstmarket is the name of the wine festival - strangely.

Some various shots of Bad Durkheim

Dunno what this is but it looks amazing...and evil

Lots of houses in this area had beautiful big arches and decorative gates.

Colourful houses.  The one in the middle is the oldest house in Bad Durkheim, dating to 1559. It has a metal bumper  fitted (with the red stripes) to stop trucks hitting it.

Schlosskirche St. Johannes

I couldn't get him off this for hours.

On our way out of Bad Durkheim we visited the ruins of a monastery and the ruins of a castle.  Both were really impressive and up on hills with great views.  The castle was definitely enhanced by the group of children dressed in medieval costumes singing/yelling songs that stuck in my head all day!

Romervilla Weilbert

Sculptures in the park

Klosterruine Limberg

Burgruine Hardenburg

Das Medieval Kinder- super cute. 

Highlights- when have I not said “the food” and “the wine”?  To todays list I’d add; walking to the shower in the morning and being greeted by cheery calls of “morgan!”, “morgan!”- weird for me so I’m not sure what it was like for Morgan!; the german language- it’s amazing how much you can guess, work out and replace by sign-language!

We’re off to France for a short time now, following the French wine trail through the Alsace region.  Strasbourg here we come!