Saturday 23 April 2022

At Nibelungen Bridge in the city of Worms, in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany

 The Nibelungenstrasse is a German tourist route through the Odenwald between the Upper Rhine Plain and the Main Valley. Part of the federal highway 47, it leads some 110 km (~69 mi.) from the city of Worms over the Rhine River, crosses the mountain road near Bensheim, leads through the middle Odenwald to Miltenberg, and then follows the Main River valley up to Wertheim.

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(in southwestern Germany) The city of Worms, in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate, is also a harbor on the west bank of the Rhine River, just northwest of Mannheim. Known initially as Celtic Borbetomagus, by the reign of Julius Caesar, it was called Civitas Vangionum, the chief town of the Vangiones. Found on the Upper Rhine about 60 km south-southwest of Frankfurt am Main, Worms is one of the oldest cities in northern Europe. It was the capital of the Kingdom of the Burgundians in the early 5th century, hence is the scene of the medieval legends referring to this period, notably the Nibelungenlied.
+ Rebuilt by the Merovingian kings, Worms became a diocese about 600, and a favorite residence of the Carolingian and Salian emperors. The Bishopric 1803) grew progressively in chronological power and country -- and Worms became a free majestic city of the Holy Roman Empire in 1156. A city with 7,000 years of history, a former center of Jewish scholarship, an important place in the Nibelungen legend, and the site of significant Protestant Reformation-related events, Worms has a lot to offer visitors.

+ Featured here is the Nibelungenturm (Nibelungen Tower), which serves as the gateway to Worms, via the Nibelungenbrücke (Nibelungen Bridge) that spans the Rhine at the western end of the famed Nibelungenstrasse. This is, by the way, one of the two bridges in Germany that I have crossed more than 100 times*, sometimes on foot (the other being the Old Bridge [Alte Brücke] in Heidelberg) during the 16+ years that I lived and worked in "Deutschland." The Nibelungen Bridge connects the city of Worms, across the Rhine, with the Hessian cities of Lampertheim and Bürstadt; it is the only road bridge between Mannheim in the south and Mainz in the north. The Nibelungen Tower, a Worms landmark, is really interesting in that there's a more to it than meets the eye of the average tourist (or wayfarer). In recent times, the Nibelungen Tower has become a modern educational and meeting place of a very special kind. Though furnished with 47 beds, two kitchens and two conference rooms -- and a dining room with balcony -- these facilities cannot be booked by tourists or most corporations. Yet, the tower can be made available to school-trippers, certain not-for profit entities, or for "off-site" educational conferences.
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*Indeed, I once fell from this bridge in Worms (to the ground, just shy of the water's edge) during an "Army Exercise" -- back-in-the-days when 50-mile-hikes were all the rage --, and suffered a spinal compression fracture, which I'm still feeling the effects of to this day.



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At the medieval Cologne Cathedral (Kölner Dom), in the city of Cologne, Germany

 One of the key inland ports of Europe, Cologne (German: Köln) is the historic, cultural, and economic capital of the Rhineland. ===========...