It has already been a good tradition by Peter (PeterH here on the forum, not Peter v E) to invite the German-speaking Pagodentreff folks once or twice a year for the traditional Moeselle event at his nice scenic hotel in Enkirch located at the German river Mosel (Moselle). This has been the fourth year in row (Peter, bitte korrigieren).
http://www.pagodentreff.de/diskussionsforum/t13336-moseltour-1-mai-moseltour-2-july.htmlA total of 24 cars, all with two passengers, listened to Peter's invitation this time for the second event in July, which now was from Thu, Jul 02 - Sun, Jul 05. There was also a Mosel event already at the end of May.
Among the attending cars were 20 Pagodas, two R129 SLs, one W140 V12 sedan (S600) and one Volkswagen Golf I GTI.
So, Peter is already enforced to divide all interesting attendies up to two groups, one "early visitors group" which was there in May, and the later … ah, no, the regular Moselle attendees group, which now came in July.
All in all, this was again a long weekend with relaxation, lots of excellent food prepared by Peter, lots of (alcohol-free) beer and wine and of course an excellent Saturday driving tour guided by Peter.
This time he did not choose mainly scenic routes along the river Moselle but rather guided us through the rural and hilly landscape of the "Hunsrück", as part of the Central Uplands (German: die Mittelgebirge). The Hunsrück is a low mountain range in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. It is bounded by the river valleys of the Moselle (north), the Nahe (south), and the Rhine (east).
While touring through a comfortable 146 kms scenic route (about 90 miles), one of our major destinations was the small location of Gehlweiler, a rural village with a population of 254.
This nicely preserved village with its typical half-timbered houses was a few years ago the main and only location for 2013 cinema movie "Home from Home" (original German title: "Die andere Heimat – Chronik einer Sehnsucht"), a 2013 German drama film directed by Edgar Reitz. The movie focuses on the period of the so-called Pre-March (Vormärz) between 1840 - 1844 and the former emigration wave from the rural Hunsrück area to promising new destinations, here especially to Brazil. In those years, many areas within Europe were facing a strong economical poverty, especially among the farmers' populations (very similar to the Great Famine in Ireland, etc.) and many especially younger people emigrated in large covered wagon convoys out of their old homeland towards their new fate.
The movie covers this great escape and for this purpose the little village was completely remodelled and masked in a way that it looked like in 1840, a very poor village by then. The majority of the inhabitants of Gehlweiler were involved in the creative process of the film making and voted overwhelmingly in favor of the transformation of their village as a location. Many of them were background actors.
For us Pagoda folks (and other visitors as well) it was overwhelming to see on presentation boards and by the explanations of an experienced tour guide how much the "modern" and well-maintained village Gehlweiler was rendered and morphed towards the poor and shabby village "Schabbach" that it was during the movie. Some of the artefacts, facades and locations of the movie were still kept intact (for instance the blacksmith's shop with its intact fire place) and made it to us much more tangible in a dismal manner how hard and depressing life was a merely 170 years ago in this today beautiful and scenic landscape.
After that we continued our tour. We had a wonderful lunch break at another scenic location and in total two nice wine tastings.
The only drawback - and that was absolutely not Peter's fault - were the temperatures. It was constantly "hot" with temperatures around 37 °C (about 100 °F) all the days, and while all the Pagodas survived that pretty well, the majority of the crews was a bit … well, let's say overheated … overwhelmed, dehydrated by the weather. We could only compensate this with lots of (mostly alcohol-free) Weiss beer and apple cider.
Thank you all for this nice weekend and the interesting conversations.
A special thank you to Peter and his crew for hosting as well as for the wonderful trip. Basically, it was too hot to go outside - but Pagoda drivers and passengers are well known of being capable of suffering.
A dream was of rural countryside that we passed. During the Gehlweiler stop Peter served us with cold beverages and ice cream; just world class standard! For lunch we were served another big surprise. One potatoe dumling for each of us - but actually enough for three hungry people. Somehow people work and eat differently there. Later the afternoon a wine tasting even took place.
Unfortunately, not all participated in it. Some had to enjoy cold ice cream, others had to cool down the stressed relay of the fuel pump and others lost and found some major nuts and bolts from their suspension.
A such, we even did not miss a few short tech session insertions (see pic), not comparable with the tech sessions at PUB but still entertaining and educative to some of us do-it-yourselfers.
An eventful, diversified and very warm weekend.
Hopefully - most likely - we will be around next year again, same time, same event but a little less heat.
Thanks a lot, Peter, for this great event.
Achim
(without 114015)
