Wiedersehen, Deutschland!

The town adequately vacant and our ecstasy adequately high, we carried about the town, looking for the three big churches and Roman ruins that are apparently the other big draw, aside from the wine. Instead, we got sidetracked by kitsch, in a store that sold beer steins made and painted in town, nutcrackers made and painted in town, amber melted and hardened in the forests around the town and Alcatraz Psycho Ward: Outpatient t-shirts. With a full knowledge of Boston, the owner enticed us to buy at least a reasonable amount of his products.

To celebrate, Nils rode the horse, to the horrification of the native Teutons.

Aha, but no, you aaaare.

On this street, more kitsch, including some corduroy German fedora-hats that German men wear when they're walking around their pretty towns.

By this time, my German had returned like springtime, so, like those people who try to show off by speaking another language, I was trying to show off by speaking another language. At one point, a befuddled Nils saw one of the churches and pointed, saying "This...thing...big."

It was big.

...and yet another pretty town beer.
So we bade goodbye to Boppard, and continued on our quest, moving mostly north and mostly quickly.

And we finally came upon Koblenz, where we decided to do a bit of hiking to the final castle before heading on to Cologne, one of the trip's main points.

Koblenz, because of its location at the confluence of the Rhein and Moselle, ingested quite a large amount of bombs in World War II, so most of the town is new, suburban, vinyl-sided row-houses. Not all that exciting, but we made our way up to the castle to see if it could offer redemption for the Wonderbread town.

At least we found what looked like to be a moat, and celebrated with ninja moves.

Then we remembered the very essence of our trip -- floating through Europe, pulling together energies garnered from sources everywhere. And we knew that Cologne on Thursday was to be incredible, the start of Karnival, a weeklong party before Ash Wednesday. So we made a quick decision to rearrange the schedule that had before been Cologne-Amsterdam-Belgium.

Amsterdam? On a whim? No.

Yes.

...and off we roared.