Alex reporting here from Amsterdam as David is passed out asleep from a long day.

Today was amazing. We opted to take the long train down to St. Goar out of both strategy and intrigue.

When we got to the cozy town along the Rheine we were both amazed at the beauty of the region. There are castles built into the mountainsides across the way in St. Goarhausen mixed with stone-paved streets and small old-style German buildings. A spectacular area and a good change of pace from Dusseldorf and Cologne.

Our first task: Find the statue of Loreley, a mermaid that lured ships into the rocks alongside the river. We crossed in a ferry into St. Goarhausen, ran down, and got a great video of me singing Loreley’s song to the tune of “Gilligan’s Island”.

Next we backtracked and made our way up to Rheinsfels castle. An old castle overlooking St. Goar and the Rhein. It’s kept mostly in its original state and it’s seen some wear and tear, but it’s hard to feel more connected to the town than we did walking through the castle. We got a nice view from up top, before it was my task to crawl through the unlit, muddy, and 3 ft (at their highest) tall mine tunnels. I can’t imagine how scary it was to try and invade the castle through those tunnels. It was pitch black (except for my headlamp) and there were many many dead ends. We then examined the smaller than expected dungeon and headed into town.

While I loved the tunnels, the town challenges was perhaps the highlight of the day. First we examined the beer stein headquarters which had both the largest beer stein in the world and 3,000 custom ones to examine. Several were made with Berlin on the side and a piece of the Berlin wall on top. Unbelievable! We completed the task there, then checked out the world’s largest free-standing cuckoo clock. We learned key info about the song it plays when it chimes (‘Edelweiss’) but couldn’t get anyone to perform. Until….

Searching for the eiswein (ice wine) challenge, we found Stefan’s wine shop. It looked like a typical gift shop from the outside, but inside me met Stefan, a key element of the day. Stefan’s family has been making eiswein for more than 500 years. Needless to say, they know what they’re doing. He was very happy to see Americans in his shop as his eiswein is frequently shipped back to the States and he’d spent a few years living in New York. Stefan sung Edelweiss for us, gave us the history, and then had us sample 2 of his eisweins and some of his peach brandy. Delicious! The wine is very sweet and goes down smooth. The brandy had a strong peach flavor without as much of the alcohol taste. We bought a few small bottles of his flavored brandy.

That wasn’t all Stefan helped us out with. After discovering that nobody in town sold or had heard of a Loreley Sundae, we did some research and improvised. We purchased a vanilla sundae with fresh whipped cream and walnuts (no rum, grapes, and raisins available) from an ice cream store and then took it back to Stefan who graciously topped it off with some of his chocolate brandy (he didn’t think eiswein would taste as good on top). One of the best sundaes I’ve ever had. Thanks for everything Stefan!

After that we grabbed some food and a return train back to Cologne. We were able to squeeze in one more challenge before the 5:15 PM deadline and got back to the train station. From there we got our info for the next day and took a train to Amsterdam.

Tomorrow’s challenges? Much closer to town in general, but we’re looking to go the extra mile….

Auf wiederschen Germany!