Germany, Day Three

The next morning, before showering, Jim and I took the two dogs out into the country on a walk. It was rather foggy and cold, but we could still discern houses on distant hills and enjoy the beautiful yellow and orange woods. Jim often runs in this area. He told me a very unusual story in which he was actually run over by a deer. Basically, it sprang from the woods and knocked him over into the snow. Ouch.
After cleaning up, we went to a picturesque little town called Eltville Am Rhien. As its name suggests, it was located along the river Rhine. We began a walk along the river’s shore, looking at some of the impressive buildings across the water or down the shore from us. We turned into a little courtyard area where the berg (castle) was located and went into its walled garden. Poor Jim: I had to look at everything. I even made him pose for a picture. We climbed all around the wall area, eventually making our way into the rest of the town. This was comprised of impossibly fairy-tale-like cobble streets and half-timber houses, restaurants, and wineries (being one of Germany’s wine regions). After walking all over the town and taking many pictures, we made our way back to the “Smart” (when in Rome, people) and headed towards Mainz before it got dark. At some point Jim tried to apologize for the prevalently misty weather but I stopped him and observed, much to his amusement, that it was just “Brothers Grimm weather.” For the rest of the week, if it clouded up or got misty, Jim noted that it was getting “Grimm-y.”
In Mainz, after leaving the Smart in a parkhaus, we walked to a square that opened up in front of a very large church. We were both very hungry (nothing had actually been open in Eltville), so we went into a chain café. I ordered a cheeseburger. I know that’s terrible and all but I figured it was a chain and that missing its German food probably wouldn’t hurt me. Of course, this was also a bit out of character for me. I never order hamburgers in restaurants in the States but being away for two months can give you weird, insurmountable cravings, especially when your diet has been consisting primarily of salad and pasta.
Here, too, we walked down to the Rhine and made our way along its edge, although it was quite dark by then. We observed, on our way down, a lady cop writing a ticket for a parked car and taking quite a lot of pictures of the interior. Either there was something of interest in it, or Germans are just really thorough. What I can say with some certainty is that they are very clean. All of the towns I visited were attractive, fresh, orderly, and, I guess, scrubbed. This is very unlike Florence, which I am sad to report has extremely dirty streets. Every time I wear my white ballet flats, I have to spend time that night scrubbing the dirt off of them and swabbing on some polish.
The walk back to the parkhaus concluded my adventures for the day. I spent another pleasant evening reading over some coffee and sweets.