Last weekend the seventh Annual Mosel (Moselle) Pagoda tour Event took place
starting from Peter's hotel in Enkirch, a scenic little town at the river Moselle in Rhineland Palatine.
The Moselle is one of the most beautiful rivers in Germany heading into the largest one, the Rhine in Koblenz, which is about an hour down the river from Enkirch.
Peter invited in January and a total of 25 Pagoda teams signed up to participate in and celebrate the wounderful gatherings including some nice tours around his Moselle home - now for the seventh consecutive year.
A four-day Event provided all what the Pagoda teams could expect,
staying at his wonderful and first class hotel with excellent food throughout but also and especially great tours starting and ending again in Enkirch, which Peter meticulously had organised.
Arriving on Thursday (on July 4th, Independence day) a total of 23 Pagoda teams arrived for a nice wine tasting and Barbecue dinner with great welcome conversations.
Next day two more teams arrived and we started a 70 kms (~ 45 miles) tour through scenic routes heading towards the Nürburgring,
probably Germany's most popular race track (besides the Hockenheimring to say).
This great about 90 years old racing track starting its great and everlasting race career with no one less than Rudolf Caracciola was a sight to see; never have I been there before. The North loop with about 14 miles is one of the most challenging and very hilly race tracks worldwide being named the "Green hell" by Jackie Sewart.
The South loop with about 5 miles is a very popular race track for testing loops of all of the major car manufacturers where they finally test race their newest prototypes.
This Friday the loop was totally "owned" by Ferrari racing some of their most challenging touring sport cars and also three of their Formula 1 race cars. Since they were very afraid that we as Pagoda owners would be hunting and chasing them too much, it was not our day to populate this loop with our cars either.
A very well profound tour guide showed us to all the interesting places of the Nürburgring and especially the historic buildings and also the current pitts.
Highly interesting indeed.
After about 5 hours or so we headed back to Enkirch - again on scenic routes - for the more sociable part of our evening.
For the next day (Saturday) Peter had prepared another and not less interesting tour - this time about 90 kms (56 miles) on scenic second-order country roads towards Trier.
Trier is one of the most western cities in Deutschland - an University city - located close to Luxembourg and is with 110'000 citicens the fourth largest city in Rhineland Palatine.
But that was not the most exciting about Trier.
Trier is supposed to be the oldest city in Germany originating to Roman ancestries back to 30 AD and with traces of Celtic population even back to the 4th century BC.
Most impressive is the remaining of the very impressive Roman architecture, especially the Porta Nigra, the best-preserved Roman city gate north of the Alps;
the huge Constantine Basilica, the Roman Trier Amphitheater;
the 2nd century AD Roman bridge (Römerbrücke) across the Moselle, the oldest bridge north of the Alps still crossed by traffic, the impressive Trier Cathedral
and much more historical to see.
We had a great 2 hours City guided tour through all these sightseeings,
a well worth experience!
In the meanwhile, our about 30 Pagodas (since a few more local Pagoda teams had joined us as well for this day) were resting in the Sun on "Viehmarkt" (cattle market), one of the central places in Trier, where two major Roman traffic routes crossed in the old times.
Today this is a great wide market place and our Pagodas were ligned in the sun up for the public while we were visiting the city with the tour guides. Don't worry, in the meantime Peter, Roman and Ulli were taking care of and "protecting" our valuable sheet metal beauties - see the pics.
Later the afternoon we headed back - again on nice an rural roads - aside the hectic public traffic - but still along the beautiful and winding Moselle river roads wherever possible - to Peter's hotel.
A very long evening full with great conversations and exchanging experiences began, not to forget about a perfect five course dinner
- and we even carried out a little repair work with the selfless help of Peter and his car lift in his new garage and Roman, his friend, who helped out Frank - who had lost a flex-disk bolt on his less than 28'000 miles phantastic 'survivor' car.
On Sunday morning we celebrated a great leave-taking in a form of an extended breakfast. Just wonderful.
All in all this was clearly one - if not the main Pagoda highlight for many of us German Pagoda owners taking place in this Event.
The hospitality, tours, hotel and all side effects of the gathering are outstanding and remarkable.
Thanks a lot, Peter, for all your and your family's efforts.
We are all looking ahead for the Moselle Pagoda tour 2020.
Achim
