Vacation in Saarland

Guess what this contraption is.

Jutta and I braved the long, 4 hour drive down to Trier to visit her good friend Ruth this weekend. Ruth was the person who tested my room before I came, apparently, and decided everything there was perfect. She does not actually live in Trier, but in Saarburg, because she lives only 500 meters or so from the river Saar, which is on the other side of a hill (burg) with a castle named Saarburg on it. However, telling other people she lives in Saarburg is as descriptive to most people as I telling people in Germany I live in Cypress. No one has actually heard of it.

Ruth showed us around Saarburg on Saturday. If you guessed those were the wheels moving the cable of a gondola, you guessed right!

We took the gondola up one of the many neighboring hills to a camping and holiday resort for Hollanders. There was a luging track to entertain the kids, and the man running it let me on for free (he's one of Ruth's friends, I think). Twice. Luging is really fun, even without the snow and ice they have in the Winter Olympics. This picture is only blurry because yours truly is traveling at the break neck speed of 35 kph (only 4 kph from the record on this track).

We walked to the Innen-Staadt next. Saarburg is not only home to a castle, but to its own waterfall. The water is directed into sluices where it powers water wheels. The whole Innen-Staadt is built on a hill. The houses are cramped together, though, and driving cars literally up and down the tiny streets seems almost impossible. The town seems to have been compressed not only from the sides, but from the top as well. Either that or the people who built it were super short.

We drove into Saarland to view one of the state's most famous photo spots, a place where the river makes a complete U-turn around a hill.

A few hundred years ago one could see the castle that was built on the hill between the river (the bend in the river was once a strategic point not only for photographers). Jutta and I visited this castle on Monday, because you have to hike an hour to get to it and it was much to late on Saturday to be trekking through a dark forest. Unfortunately, the castle is closed on Mondays, so all we could do was walk around the perimeter. It is a lovely, and effective, castle, though.

Saturday evening we visited the Saarburg Schloss instead. It also has a lovely view of the river and the grape fields on the surrounding hills.

Sunday was Floh Markt day in Trier. It was supposed to start at 11, but the place was jam packed long before. We somehow managed to find a spot, even if it wasn't the best. We did sell a lot of stuff, though. The car was packed with boxes and random objects when we left Wesel, and we came back with a respectable amount. Ruth was the lucky one. Apparently while I was out walking around the flea market, someone came by and bought practically everything from her table. They even wanted to buy the table, too! My bartering skills are terrible, so I did not end up doing much in sales. Out of the whole day, I only sold one item, a rug that wasn't even ours, but Ruth's.

Our wares. On the left is Ruth.