Untitled Page 16

March 27, 1960

Tonight is a good night to write since it marks the end of one unit of our
trip- the journey down the Rhine from Köln to Metz. It has been a thoroughly
fascinating four days and in some ways the scenery was quite different from
what I expected.

We left Köln Thursday AM and made the 20 kilometers to Bonn by noon. The
countryside was not especially interesting, small plots of farm land and
small towns, and the trip was really hard work because of a constant headwind.
In Bonn we ate lunch in a park beside the old university. Them [then] I sat and
even dozed for about 3 hours in the park watching the people strolling along the
river bank and the barges moving down the river. It was a leisurely and
productive afternoon- did some needed reading for Econ. About 5 PM we rode
across the Rhine and about 15 kilometers down- south, although upstream,
of course) to the town of Honnef. Here we left the river and climbed for
about a mile up to the youth hostel situated on a high hill overlooking the
small valley and looking across to the many castles and ruins. By this time
we are into the more characteristic Rhine country with hills rising rather
steeply up from the river, broken here and there along the way by valleys
formed by the entry of a small tributary to the Rhine.

Friday was the day we really began to get acquainted with the Rhine. We went
from Honeff to Koblenz, down the east bank. There are good highways down
both sides of the river but there are only four auto bridges south of Köln,
including one in Metz, so we pretty much had to choose one side and stay
there. We chose the road down the east bank because it is less heavily travelled,
goes through fewer large cities and stays generally more along the
river. As we rode along, many things were as I had expected. There really is
a castle or old monastery on about every other hilltop and the rolling hills
and colorful river barges were right out of my tourist's anticipation.
But we noticed several things which did not fit with the typical tourist
description and, to me, these elements made the Rhine a much more interesting
place. One thing was that there are many small towns along the river, rarely
more than 5 miles apart. Some of these are very old with churches built in
the 11th or 12th centuries still standing. Many have fine examples of old
half-timbered house construction, of old stone towers or town walls etc.
In a sense then they fit with the story of the "romantic Rhine" which every
visitor comes to see. But when you consider the next two observations to
follow, the townspeople are not so romantic at all and they certainly don't
sit around in peasant costumes waiting for tourist trade.

The second thing to notice was the variety and extensiveness of framing
operations in the Rhine valley. In the northern end we saw lots of truck
farming in high plateaus or gentle slopes above the river, or in the flats
right at the river's edge. Gradually, as we have been moving southward, the
slopes rise steeply and immediately from the river's edge. At this point
truck gardening gives way to vineyards which produce the famous Rhine wines.
Every hillside then is not scenic thick, green, virgin forest. On the contrary
almost every inch is vineyard. Almost all of them are on lands sloping at 40
degrees or better, sometimes almost straight up. It is unbelievable by
American standards that such rocke [rocky], shaily, steep ground should be cultivated.
It must of course be worked by hand- plowed, planted, fertilized, sprayed,
tended, harvested, etc. It is truly amazing that they grow anything - much
less some of the world's best wine. As we move south today (leaving Rudesheim
toward Mainz) the steep hills melted away again and vineyards were replaced
by truck farms or grasslands, to some extent. All in all, the main impression
that every foot of ground produces, with much willing hand labor encouragemt [encouragement],