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Fog is located in the valley. So tight, that the Rhine can only guess. He swallows all the noise. No ship diesel we hear no engine noise. It is quiet here on the height, so quiet that one could believe, very far away from any civilization. This is in clear air even the Cologne Cathedral can be seen. But today, Bonn and Cologne are among the sea of fog - as well as the Seven Mountains, one of the oldest nature reserves in Germany.
An hour ascent have enough to get out nassgrauer cold in the sunshine to come. Now compensated a shining day for early departures. The peaks of the Mount of Olives and Drachenfels protrude from the white mist as the summit of a high mountain. They are just 460 and 320 meters high. Not exactly that which we call mountain giants. But the amount is relatively Siebengebirge, just like the word "mountains" for more than 40 hills in the southeast of Bonn.
Sei's drum, a mountain, then, albeit one that poses no danger. Even inexperienced hikers make the climb to the Drachenfels, and no one must fear to lose. Among the trails are well developed and marked, as it would need a mountain rescue. No, the Seven Mountains is a mountain without fear, to the distress in heeled shoes to cope. Although in such a case, rather the cog railway recommends.
From Dutch incorcoporated
Who the view from the Drachenfels can roam, can hardly imagine that this summit is still the most popular in Europe should be. An amazing wonder that every true mountaineer just a tired smile would. But as I said: Everything is relative. In the absence of their own mountains, the Dutchman even the highest mountain of Drachenfels to their chosen country. So many come every year that you might believe all of our western neighbors must be at least once in his life, the hajj the Rhineland, to conquer the Drachenfels.
It was not the Dutch, the popular Drachenfels made. This honor is due uniquely British: Lord Byron was the first person in his anthemic poem "Childe Harold's Pilgrimage" an image of the Rhine between Bonn and Mainz designed, which for decades the idea of his fellow countrymen should dominate.
In the center of the third Cantos focuses on those lines that every Englishman accompanied on his tour: "The castled Crag of Drachenfels Frown o'er the wide and winding Rhine..." So popular were these lines that they are in the travel guides that time again and again been reprinted. Only a little later, it was the painter William Turner, whose watercolor paintings from the Rhine the enthusiasm of his fellow countrymen fired.
Within a few decades, the Seven Mountains as the epitome of the romantic landscape of the Drachenfels and its symbol. With sufficient material in the presentation of luggage made the British so on a journey into the Sommerfrische, transported by a technical innovation: The steamship shorten the arduous journey from London to Cologne to a few days.
An idea of the rush to the Rhine Valley and Siebengebirge convey the passenger numbers of the Rhenish-Prussian Steam Navigation Company. 1828, a year after the opening of the regular service, whose vessels carry 33,000 passengers. 1853 there were 153,000. Six years later there are more than 800,000. Between 1860 and 1890 fluctuated in the yearly number of passengers at about one million one. Every other travelers coming from England. This is mass tourism, one in the history of humankind, a new phenomenon.
Luxury Hotels of the Rhenish Riviera
As a result, experienced the "Rhenish Riviera" a veritable boom. On both banks of the Rhine build wealthy families from Cologne and the Ruhr summer seats. In Koenigswinter arise at the Rhine promenade numerous luxury hotels for a bourgeoisie, according to the turmoil of the Napoleonic wars of the incipient industrialization benefited. Today, the typical seven-day-visitor a mountain, after the walk and the steak fries are still on the same day the homeward journey compete.
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But what is it exactly what the people are so fascinated by the Rhine and the Seven Mountains? Why did not the masses on to the Ruhr? Who simple curiosity and a certain herd instinct aside can be found in Byron the answer. The keyword is - Pilgrimage. The journey to nature becomes a pilgrimage, the natural place for a quasireligiösen experience. At the Ruhr as in Manchester, from the incipient industrialization already disfigured, was such an experience hard to imagine.
Who the Dragon Castle, halfway up to the Drachenfels located, viewed, but still on a different idea. So splendid is this "castle" on the Middle Ages trimmed - from the neo-Gothic architecture to knights armor in the corridors - that imposes a thought: Was it just Siebengebirge the Disneyland of the 19 Century, a kind of landscape Wunderkammer Guaranteed Showers effect, mythological surrounded by seven dwarves behind seven mountains, the knight Roland and the dragon?
Whatever the explanation was that there is some truth in this miniature edition of a mountain, something that is now almost two centuries for its attraction provides. Maybe it's simply the beauty, the charm of this landscape represents. A beauty, which each reveals the aufmacht and a few hours on the well-groomed trails through valleys and mountains.
Only embellished, then protected
The fact that this beauty is preserved, since 1869 to ensure the "beautification association for the Seven Mountains." Beautification should not take too literally. The intervention of the Association shall be limited to the installation of trails and are otherwise conservative in the classic sense of the word. Preserve the landscape should be, that capital, for the constant stream of visitors makes. This is primarily aesthetic task compounded until recently, classical roles of nature such as the protection of flora and fauna add.
How seriously are the founders of the association was with the embellishment of beauty, one can read the statutes: Until today, the association has the right to purchase to make. But until now no cause for such drastic measures. But there is widespread agreement that the whole magnificently Siebengebirge is protected - and thus well prepared for the annual influx of visitors.
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