The Onion(less) Market

I was really excited about this one. An onion market that has happened since the Middle Ages when the onions came on boats and barges… sign me up! I triple checked that the market was in-fact Wednesday & Thursday as so many are only on weekends, and set off to the Rhein River town of Boppard and then it all fell apart. After an hour and a half drive I had to circle the narrow streets of Boppard for 45 minutes before I gave up and parked illegally in the grass on the other side of the railroad tracks. Narrow roads don’t bother me at all, but these were so crammed with people parking however they chose I scratched my bumper :(.

We walked down to the promenade where the market was to happen and immediately I could smell onions and my sour mood flipped up. The onions I smelled were cooking at the food tent that only offered a couple kinds of bratwurst—no special onion dishes. No onion flatbread, which we see a lot at markets. Nothing. I walked the entire promenade and did not see any onions for sale! The picture on the advertisement I saw showed braided onion wreaths and rods and I didn’t see any! Time to re-evaluate.

Brock couldn’t stop watching the river boat cruises and barges going by, and I didn’t want to go home unhappy so we boarded a cruise and set off on the Rhein.

Our tour lasted 2.5 hours and went down to St. Goar and back and I think we saw 5 or 6 castles in that time. Complete castles, not ruins. My favorite was called Maus Castle and was built in the 1300’s. After WWII a foreign millionaire bought the castle and now you can tour the castle in the summer and enjoy the birds of the aviary.

pardon the blurry photos. iPhone on moving boat isn’t the best way to take the shots

Another fun find was the Zur Klosterschenβe. The front building is a pub, and the only way into the church behind it is through the pub. Apparently you can often find the minister working the bar too!

It was a little hard to wrangle Brock as all he wanted to do was run around the ship, but we both had a lot of fun. At one point you could see three complete castles. The announcer said that this was the only place on the Rhein to see so many at once. One of those castles, Rheinfels, was the largest military fort. Here are a couple views of the riverbank:

The other cruise passengers were hilarious. There were I think 3 different tour groups, two from England and one from Asia. The English were loud and made fun of the German beer music playing and the Asians took millions of pictures of themselves. They got on and off at different stops and had such interesting commentary. We always try to not be tourist when we go out and all these people were like “Look at me! I am foreign and rude and loving life!” Also, Brock got his cheeks pinched by at least 3 Grandmothers.

We got back to Boppard and hoped the car hadn’t been towed (don’t worry it wasn’t). Brock was pretty tired after such an exciting day so we just headed back to the car, but enjoyed the walk a bit more than when we came down to market earlier. We walked through the river park that was filled with colorful flowers. There was a group of older people playing a game in the gravel with balls and a little further down was a large chess set waiting to be played with.

The buildings of Boppard were really beautiful. It seemed like every window had a box overflowing with flowers. The town is a tourist destination for Rhein River so the buildings are a bit more colorful and elaborate than we typically see. Check out this hotel!

I am desperately trying to come up with an onion themed “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade” statement but am failing. Comment with one if you have one! When I got home and had better service on my phone I tried looking up more details on the market and found it was along the promenade and in the market square so maybe I just missed the onion part in the square? I don’t know. But after all that time trying to find a parking spot I can tell you I should have seen roadblocks or signs for the marketplatz and didn’t. Oh well. At least Brock and I had a fun day out and I crossed riverboat cruise off my list.