1999 Trip to Germany

Paul Scott, Durwood Slinker (my father), Ron Jones, and myself visited Germany in 1999. Paul and my father are good friends for many years and Ron is my best college buddy. 

We arrive in Frankfurt Germany on Sept. 23, 1999. We rent a Ford mini-van at the airport and head northwest, going through Wiesbaden, then taking highway 260 to 274. We stay at the Hotel Oranien in Nastátlen. Then we take a day trip into St. Goar and St. Goarhausen. We follow the advice of Rick Steve's and go see the castle Rhienfels.

Paul Scott, Durwood Slinker, and Ron Jones. Our first night in Germany

Our first meal consisted of wild boar, venison, perch, stroedle, and delicious vegetables.

Rhienfels Castle. Photo taken from other side of river.

Church at St. Goar. We parked near here and walked around the city a bit, then drove up to the castle.

Tunnel under castle. Ron and me crawled around under there for quite a while. It is only about 3.5 feet high and about 3 feet wide. Completely dark. We had small mag-lites attached to headbands. Deep into the abyss we were nearly venomized by the most hideous spider we have ever seen. Even the Croc Hunter would have fled for his life. We left the 2000 year old spider to his kingdom, and worked our way back out. I am 6’4" tall, and let me tell you, crab walking for 30 minutes will really work your legs out.

We bought some fruit at a grocery, well they brought fruit for lunch, and I bought a bunch of different kinds of chocolate bars. The lack of nutrition that day didn’t kill me.

Here I am. This is my safari vest with 16 pockets. I like it better than a backpack, waste belt, or fanny pack.

We didn’t want to pack around a bunch of souvenirs from the first day, so here is a picture of some Steins. How could you pick out one anyway? They are all cool.

We drove down to Fussen to see the Castles. It has started to rain, and it rains for several days. The weather is the cause of the big hurricane that hit the U.S. about two weeks earlier. The cycle is from east to west, up the coast of the U.S., west to east, across England, France, Germany, etc… My advice is to watch the storm patterns here to know what it might be like there.
We travel to Rothenburg before going to Fussen. It is raining so hard that we leave our camera's in the car for fear of ruining them. Ron did get a few pictures off with his Cannon ELF. When I get them from him I will post them. The torture museum is very interesting. We leave our car in Augsburg, go to the train station and arrange for a night train from Munich to Venice Italy. He travel to Munich, going to walk down to the grounds where Oktoberfest is held. It is raining so much we decide to check on our train status. We are told that the Italian Railroad workers are on strike. We pull out a map of "night" trains that I have prepared before the trip. We are interested in going to Brussels or Paris. We vote and Paris wins. We eat dinner in the station and ride in a regular passenger car to Paris. It was tiresome.
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