It’s Germany’s national day today, and a public holiday and what will be our last day in Saarland this time round. It’s amazing to look back on the last week (has it only been that long?) and realise that we have been in something of a tourist heaven, lurching from one attraction to another, from tourist town to tourist town for just seventy kilometres along a very windy river, through some of the most beautiful natural environments one can imagine, albeit in weather that perhaps wasn’t always conducive to showing it at its best.
Astonishingly, barely half a century ago the region was impoverished comprised of only exhausted coal resources and a dying steel industry. In the wash-up after the last World War, it’s value was such that France apparently moved to have Saarland declared a country rather than bear responsibility for it, but the people promptly took action to become part of Germany. There is a legend that in the latter part of the last century German Chancellor Kohl (in jest) even threatened French President Mitterrand with returning it to France , such was the perceived lack of value of its place in the world. Just look at it now! It’s all grown up and is truly something of a gem in the country’s tourist crown.
We’ve been here in Saarburg before too and visited the little museum and ridden the chairlift over the vineyards and climbed the castle turret and visited the bell factory and had lunch in a cafe by the mill race, and now we’ve done it again. With just a little luck if we have the opportunity we might just come back again and do it all again some time in the future. Perhaps we’ll stay just one more day!
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