Germany (Part III) - Bacharach
Okey dokey... Time to babble on about Bacharach. I think we arrived there about the 1st of October, so I'm only 3 weeks behind on the posts... Gah! I'll get there soon, I hope.
Anyway, once again, caught the train from A to B, A being Worms, B being Bacharach (or is it supposed to be W to B?). Oh yeah, thats something I should share about German trains - there's a ticket you can get for about €22 that allows up to 5 people to travel anywhere within the state, or on the weekend, allows you to travel anywhere in Germany! Much cheaper than the standard tickets. Has to be off-peak of course, but who really wants to travel peak, anyway?
We also got to stay in a castle, Burg Stahleck, which has been completely refurbished, so its really nice inside - pretty much done up the way I'd like to do up an old house/building/castle. Still looks old on the outside, but really nice inside. Only problem with staying in a castle is that they're nearly always built at the top of hills. So, it was a pretty steep climb to get up there - with the pack on 
.
Good thing about Bacharach was that there was actually some other backpackers there, so it was a lot better. Spent a bit of time with one of the guys we met there - Ricardo - from the Dominican Republic, but living in Puerto Rico. He had been working for a week or so, and was talking some holidays before heading home again. Ended up hiring some bikes, and going for a ride - first downriver to Burg Reichenstein, then up river (past Bacharach again) to St Goar, to Burg Rheinfels - a pretty damn large castle, a bit ruined, but still pretty cool (except for the stinging nettles that i managed to find ). Then again, after all the castles I've seen this year, I'm getting to the point of being almost castled-out. After that, we couldn't be bothered riding back, so we caught the ferry back downstream to home - very relaxing.
<P align=center>Ricardo, Matt and Me on the ferry back to Bacharach
<FONT size=1>(with thanks to a nice old Indian guy)</FONT></P>
Then, the following day, it was onwards to Koblenz.
[Edit - added in the picture]