City with magical charisma

Trip by train to Koblenz - one of the highlights of our tour. The weather forecast on Saturday evening looked anything but promising: continuous rain for much of the day. But as the old saying goes: When angels travel, heaven laughs! That would mean that heaven laughs when angels travel - and heaven laughed almost all day today. No further conclusions should be drawn here. We can simply look forward to an eventful, interesting and informative day in Koblenz, a beautiful city with an almost magical aura thanks to its eventful history.

At 10 a.m. sharp we set off on foot to the train station in Nievern. The tour guide had arranged the tickets in advance, so the 20-minute journey could start as planned. We got off in the city center, and as we strolled through the old town it was clear that the people had done a great job rebuilding the city after World War II. "Koblenz has always been a special location from a strategic point of view and therefore of military importance," said Heinz-Peter, explaining the fact that the city was completely destroyed by the Allies.

Nevertheless, there are many sights to marvel at, such as the Deutsches Eck, which has been home to a reconstruction of the former equestrian statue of Kaiser Wilhelm I with a genius since 1993. The statue is 14 metres high and attracts two million visitors every year. Perhaps because it is where the Moselle and Rhine flow together. It was impressive to see how the brown, rushing water of the flood-prone Moselle stood out against the calm grey-blue of the Rhine. Koblenz also owes its name to the confluence of the Rhine and Moselle - over time, "Castellum apud Confluentes", Latin for "the fort at the confluence", became the current name Koblenz.

We then took the cable car up to the Ehrenbreitstein Fortress, high up on the rocky spur. The complex is huge and offers a fantastic view of the city of Koblenz at its feet. A Prussian chief pyrotechnician from 1900 explained the situation and living conditions of the garrison over 120 years ago and their weapons during a tour of the fortress. He also showed how a muzzle-loading weapon was operated and even fired a shot, although this was somewhat obscured by the rain that had started to fall in the meantime.

Nevertheless, the exhausting eight-hour trip to this city, which is outstanding for its history alone and has many large and small treasures, was worth all the effort.