After a night beside the Moselle and fortified with the gasthaus breakfast we made the short drive to Trier. Now a bit like my last trip to Bastogne and Trier in 2019  I had overlooked or not sought out the important history that defined each town. First, obviously was Bastogne’s WW2 history and the second was Trier’s Roman history. 

The city had been an important Roman settlement and boasted quite an important rôle in this part of the empire for the wandering Italians. Like other countries then it wasn’t until the 19th Century that the locals took a forensic interest in their Roman history and started to dig it out. Trier has an enormous bath complex typical of Roman settlements. The waters were heated and there were several pools of differing temperatures. In Britain and here the natives didn’t maintain this interest in ablutions and hygiene after the Romans left for another near millennium, why? 

In addition it has, remaining, a spectacular gate (Porta Nigra).

The city had other delights including a bright and different Cathedral and Basilica. As you might imagine Allied bombing damaged the structures and significant rebuilding took place after the war. Amongst the graphics was a contrite piece saying the Protestant Church in this region had kept quiet when the Nazis shut the synagogues in 1938 and also never chose to articulate any anti-Nazi positions throughout Hitler’s rise.

Frankly, most Germans might have felt that an end to rampant hyper inflation, the suppression of regime changing revolutionary (God-less) communism, the creation of full employment and the restoration of some national pride after the WW1 surrender was a good thing? Also to say anything hostile might have meant a visit from some violent thugs although if my children were being brain washed in school or the Hitler Youth I might have developed some strong views? In the end the whole country paid a devastating price for the Nazis’ vile ideology with their attempted genocides and the hell they’d wrought on their neighbours.

If National Socialism was terrible then the murder wreaked on the peoples of the USSR and China in the mid 20th century by their leadership through ideologically driven starvation or pogroms was horrifying. The system they purported to implement was based on a few books called ‘Das Kapital’ written a century or so before Mao and Stalin did their worst. Which brings us to a statue of a son of the city, Karl Marx.

The commemorative statue near the Roman Gate was donated by the Chinese on his 200th birthday. Given the current British predilection for defacing Queen Victoria or Winston Churchill statues for British colonisation or the tearing down of slavers statues then I can only assume that should the Germans also be revisiting history then the Trier city fathers were courting favour with Beijing to allow this. Maybe one for Groucho, Harpo or Chico instead?

So with 13,000 steps bagged we returned to the krankenhaus (my favourite German word after schnitzel) multi storey car park to find Samantha and hit the road to Bernkastel-Kraus. I’d programmed our good friend Google Maps to avoid motorways and tolls and we skirted the Moselle as we meandered north.

Feeling brave enough to drive 259 miles without refilling the car I eventually found a petrol station and filled her up. It took a while with ever increasing ‘kick backs’. Next, in the searing heat, was to find our gasthaus. This was Ingrid’s house, a sprightly yet mature lady who turned out to be quite an Anglophile. After chilling with a beer in our attic accommodation we felt restored and drove the short distance into the town itself. What a treat!

Chocolate box pretty in the evening sun and heat we strolled around; likewise the Germans. Surprisingly, apart from ourselves, there seemed to be no foreign tourists. Sustenance was achieved with another schnitzel. Not being a predictable boy I swapped turkey for pork.