Me and Toan, a friend I happened to share the room with at Haus der Jugend (among 8 others) on thursday, made me go with him with a boat from Frankfurt via Mainz to Rüdesheim and then on another boat up to St. Goarshausen, right next to the very famous site of Loreley.
The first part of the trip was really slow, but totally ok. We just sat looking at the German landscape and some towns and some ugly ports. Eventually the vineyards began creeping out in the landscape, too. From Rüdelsheim we went on another boat, and found ourselves in Tourist hell -- packed boat, lots of japanese tourists, and a japanese speaker voice and special japanese stewards. :-/
The trip paid off well though, as we got to see much of "//Romantical Rhine//", with the highlights being Rüdelsheim and Loreley (where they even played the poem in the speakers, terrible).
Going off the boat in St. Goarshausen was cool though; we lost all the tourists and could look at it for ourselves. The town didn't have much, but after a quick drop-in at the tourist information and a long wait for the rain to stop, we went to Burg Katz and looked at the town from above. Then, we went to Altstadt, where the information women said there would be a festival.
We found some chairs and tables and got seated, and found ourselves in a ''very'' local party. We tried some genuine german food that we hadn't seen yet -- Bretzels, spundekäs (dialectal) - a cheese thing looking more like cream that was served to wine and apparently only found here along the Mittelrhein, and Altstadtbratwurst. To all of this they served beer, or better, local wine! We tried some and in the end drank almost 2 bottles (for two persons). After all the other tables were filled, we eventually got company by some very old local ladies and a little younger lady. I found out I can actually talk German with true locals! :-) I got compliments for my German.
The party was a local party for the restoration of the town hall that was finished, and we heard a representative talking about this, then the Burgermeister talk about this and other things, like new labelling of the local Sekt. Then came a performance from some group clad in Black suits with cylinder hats and women dressed accordingly traditionally. Sadly, their songs and puns and jokes were told in all too much dialect for me to get anything, but all the people though it was great fun. They told verses (rhyming ones) about the story of the city, with satire about the lack of bridges across the Rhine (no bridge between St. Goars and St. Goarshausen) and satire about the mayor, the stairs that were not finished etc.
We had great fun talking with the local people, with them being very interested in Toan and his recent travel to Armenia. Eventually we had to go to catch the train.
Exciting to see how you can go from tourist hell to the exact opposite in the turn of a hand.