So we head onwards to our second suggested location by the helpful Enterprise hire car staff member, Bernkastel-Kues. After I looked it up, I discovered it had been used in Harry Potter and the deathly hallows, and also sometimes mistaken for the scene in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang where the child catcher comes out, but that location is Rothenberg which we have been to some years ago.
I am very lucky today, as the atmospheric mist has lifted from the mountains, revealing miles and miles of undulating vineyards. What a perfect drive we had; shown below, where we also came across a ginormous bridge, you can see in the background. I wish I could add the video here going under that bridge, as it was epic!
35 minutes from the offset, we arrived into BernKastel-Kues, another stunning town besides the Mosel river, with plenty of bridges, and this time, a proud castle towering over. We find parking and stroll towards a bridge which Google maps says leads into the market. We encounter some angry looking fancy geese, and their eyes looked painted in a dark red Cleopatra style, adding to the menace,honking and hollering, strutting at one another. The fear must have been apparent in my face, as a friendly old man laughs and says something indecipherable in German, but sometimes you don’t need language to understand what somebody is saying!
As we arrived across the other side of the bridge, we could peer into narrow market streets, classic old German buildings; more gingerbread houses! The narrow entrance opened out into a lively square that was full of people making merry, and Christmas music playing. It was really magical to walk into this from the entrance, and I couldn’t help but have a dopey grin on my face.
Located at about 2 o’clock of the square, there was another narrow steep passage that led straight to the bizarre house which was used filming in Harry Potter. It honestly looked astounding that it was standing up as the base was much smaller than the heavy top. It gave a peculiarity without even trying.
In the market, there was also a huge building which was an apothecary, being used as a giant advent calendar with Disney characters in each revealed window thus far.
After wandering around for a few hours and exploring all the different little lanes and Christmas stands, we were trying to find space somewhere to have a sit down and a drink, eventually settling in an old stube (pub), with classic timber beams and each table had its own art piece theme! We were in Dali.
While it was settled, I checked to see whether 21 was going to be revealed today from the giant advent calendar building. It said that it would be revealed at 5:30 which was around about 50 minutes from when I checked so of course it would be rude not to.
We went back out onto the streets of extremely slow walkers and made our way through back to the market Square where people were beginning to gather. There was live trumpet music which neither of us particularly liked but were made to sit through, and then at 5:30 a woman appeared at one of the windows and proceeded to tell us a story in German about a little trumpet man, a schrank (closet) and a schemas (snowman), so goodness knows what that was all about but it did go on for quite a long while before the reveal we had been waiting for happened. 21 was removed and turned around to show a sad blonde looking woman which we think might be Rapunzel. We will have to wait until 22 to see whether or not it is as those small appeared windows seem to be pairs of people. Alas, we will not find out live as we will be in the airport region, but we will have to look it up for closure.
After the grand reveal we had to wait awhile for crowds to dissipate and then make our way back through the market Square to the bridge. The Riverside was equally as beautiful in the dark, river reflecting the castle.
We drive back to bad Bertrich to find ourselves some dinner and choose to go back to mamma Mia’s. On the walk there, we hear the haunting sound of an owl hooting. When we got to the restaurant, I had a rich chicken and mushroom pasta (which I could no way finish and Leon helped me) and Leon had another pizza. The walk back, the owl joined us again, this time, we found it quite funny and cute.
Much to Leon’s delight on the television was one of his favourite cartoons he has found from the Internet which is a German kids TV program which has gathered a cult following, burnt das brot. He’s a grumpy little piece of toast because his arms are too short and everything always goes wrong for him. It seems very bizarre to me, but Leon is pleased.
