Next stop for us came along the Rhine. Pretty tedious train ride to St. Goar from Brugges, so we were happy to make it and ready for a taste of the famed Rieslings from the region. Had some great weinershnitzel that night along with a nice bottle of Riesling that Will and I took care of pretty easily. We did our best to learn about the different types and the steps taken to decipher a bottle. Generally speaking, we went for the drier style and dabbled with those slightly sweeter. The next day we did a lil sightseeing at the Burg Rheinfels, one of the more in-tact castles in the region. Pretty cool to think about guys in armor carrying immense swords and others with their bow and arrows at the same place hundreds of years prior. From there, we went into a little wine shop and had a "wine tasting." The owner of the store gave us the tasting and is also a winemaker in the area. First , he gave us a taste of peach brandy, possibly the best liquor i've ever had. Then, for whatever reason, let is try his award winning ice wine. It is a dessert wine, meant to be savored. He told us it takes 60 lbs. of grapes, which are harvested at night when they are frozen, to make a single bottle of wine. If the whole winemaking process is not finished in a timely fashion, the whole crop is wasted. Well, it was delicious. We then tasted all of their brandies, i'd say 10 or more. Flavors ranged from a Christmas potpourri to raspberry to creme. We grabbed a bottle of his trocken (dry) riesling and a good sized bottle of the peach brandy to avoid to many consecutive hours without at least a little buzz. Got to love the all day Euro buzz. Have a beer or two at lunch, then another couple more with dinner, then a fewmore to cap off the night. We hopped on the last boat to Bacharach, one leisurely hour on the Rhine, after some more beer and bratwurst.

We continued our buzz with another beer in route and enjoyed the vineyard speckled mountains and imposing castles. We were rewarded when we got to Bacharach with a 20 minute uphill hike to our hostel, or should I say castle. Well it was both, Burg Stalheck. We had time for a quick bite in the oldest building in town before we had to be back at the hostel. First and only time we had a curfew, ridiculous. The second time we hiked up to our hostel was a bit more challenging after another bottle of vino, this time from Bacharach. Unfortunately, Bacharach was a really cool city, a little more so than St. Goar, but the life of a vagabond entails constantly picking up and moving on. It made it a little easier to know that we were headed the Swiss Alps. And we still had our peach brandy in case we came across any Sasquatch.