Bingen, Germany 🇩🇪 2022

Date: 8-9th September 2022

Travelled: 70 kms from Worms to Bingen   

Visited:  Bingen and Rüdesheim am Rhein    

Stayed: Wohnmobilpark Bingen, €12.50, N49.96890, E07.94500  

Budget: 107 days @ €104 per day

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We escape Worms at a reasonable time, but our first stop is only 6 km up the road. Pam has found a self service laundromat and she tells me we need to do some washing desperately. We find it in front of a large supermarket and quickly get the machine to work.

We have breakfast whilst the second load runs through. The dryer works a treat and we are on the road 90 minutes later.

Our route this morning follows the Rhine for much of the way and we stop at the village of Nierstein to relax over a coffee and watch the big barges making their way where ever.

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So we arrive at this small wohnmobilpark and luckily get ourselves one of the only two places available. It actually about 3 kms from Bingen, so the scooter will be handy.

We had presumed when the German summer school holidays were over it would quieten down a little but it is the opposite, everywhere we have spend the night in the last week is full by mid-afternoon.

Once we have settled in, Pam insists on a walk so we walk down to the Rhine for a look. We find the remains of the Hindenburgbrücke and huge road and rail bridge that once crossed the Rhine here. You can read about it if you zoom in on the panel below but the gist of the story is the Allies bombed it relentlessly to slow the German retreat until the Germans blew up what remained to slow the Allied advance.

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The remainder of the day drifts away and we plan a shopping run into Bingen tomorrow and a ferry to Rüdesheim am Rhein for lunch.

Other than the sound of a train in the distance it’s a very quiet night. We would be the youngest people in the stellplatz so it’s hardly party central. Germany is Europe’s industrial power house, there is a busy freight and passenger rail line on both sides of the Rhine and trains pass every few minutes.

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To be honest we don’t really give Bingen a proper investigation. It’s obviously a wine town and there are oak casks stacked here and there but we focus on a quick shop and getting it all back to the Hymer. The scooter makes it all the easier as we can park virtually outside the supermarket get what we need, load up and be on our way.

Once everything is in the Hymer’s fridge we ride the scooter up to the ferry terminal, pay our €4.40 pp return fare and are on our way to Rüdesheim.

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Rüdesheim stands at one end of what the tourist brochures would describe as the Romantic Rhine. To be honest we stopped off here in 2016 on a Rhine River cruise and spent the afternoon taking a chairlift to Niederwald Monument that stands high up on the hill and walking the vineyards back to town. Why, why not.

Today we do the town. Rüdesheim is a tourist town with lots of tat, cafes and ice cream sundaes but it’s a well preserved and lovely piece of German history.

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The Catholic Church pictured below was virtually destroyed on 25th November 1944 as a result of Allied bombing (see the strategic Hindenburgbrücke bridge photo above). Some 200 people died that night including 20 children. The church was only a few hundred metres from the bridge and I can only suppose bombing from 20,000 feet was not an exact science in 1944.

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Above, a couple of random photos as we complete our walk around the town. There must be 20-30 cafes and restaurants but Pam finds one with a perfect salmon salad, so that’s where we settle in for a very late lunch. The wiener schnitzel is excellent though a wicked pepper sauce remains elusive despite me constantly asking ‘mit einer abgefahrenen Pfeffersoße bitte’.

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We manage to get the ferry back to Bingen and the scooter back to the Hymer just before the rain strikes. So that was another couple of wonderful days on the Rhine.

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Michael + Pam