Musical Outing on the Rhine

We are members of a club that supports the work of a local organization that offers master courses to young talented musicians and then holds concerts at the end of each course.  The concerts are usually offered in our town and in castles in our area.  We attend the concerts here in town about ten times a year and had never gone to any of them further away.  However, when we received an invitation to spend a day on the Rhine with a tour of the town of Oberwesel in the morning, lunch, then a talk on the music that was to be played and a concert, we decided to go, especially since we had never been to this town before.

This is a medieval depiction of the town and in general things have not changed too much.  The 14th century church at the foot of the hill is still standing although we didn't go inside as it was Sunday morning and there was a service being held. 

The castle is still at the top of the hill watching out over the town.

The name of the castle is "Schoenburg", which means "pretty castle", now a five star hotel we were told.

                                                                                    
Of the 21 towers that surrounded the town in the Middle Ages 16 are still standing.  If I remember correctly this is the customs tower and a lot of the wealth of the town was gained by charging customs to the boats that carried goods up and down the Rhine.

This was the watch tower to make sure fires were noticed in time - one of the scourges of the Middle Ages.   

This is the same tower viewed from the Rhine promenade.

Large parts of the old wall surrounding the town are still standing and you can walk along the top.  The view however is not very exciting because there are a lot of train tracks between the town wall and the Rhine.

This is another of the towers.  Unfortunately the windows have been modernized, although I can understand that this was probably necessary if someone actually wants to live here.

Many of the houses are half-timbered and very typical for this region.

This was where Frank and I had lunch, which was quite tasty.

                                                                                    
Right in the middle of town there are the ruins of a Franciscan monastery.   Napoleon disbanded it in 1802 and then it was destroyed in a town fire in 1836.  I guess someone was asleep in the watch tower.

There is a fence to keep people out, which is probably a good thing when you see how crumbly the walls are.

This is the view of the Rhine from the top of the town wall.  At the bottom of the picture there is  a sign that says UNESCO because this area, the "Midlle Rhine", is a World Heritage site.

Rhine cruises are very popular with the tourists and some of the boats are really large. 

At the end of the day we heard a lovely concert after an informative introduction that was unfortunately a little over my head.  The Fauré-Quartett played works by William Walton and Johannes Brahms.

We will try to go to more of these excursions in the future.