MOSELLE AND RHINE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 23203, 29 May 1937, Page 8

MOSELLE AND RHINE

■:': ;■ 'AN UNKEPT diarV ~\ Specially Written for trie Otago fj , /Daily Times :

* , ~By X"H. «.■• S.

■/X';'V : ; viii • .Thrusting across the course of the Moselle, which it turns into an exaggerated loop, the high ridge of the ■ Marienburg seems to stand above two valleys and makes a platform from which you look out over a charmed circle of earth. The slope's that rise from the river are dressed mostly in green—-the different greens of pasture and cropj vineyard arid forest;' but there is blue painted over the green, where the vineyards have been sprayed, there is gold where the grain is ripenjng, and some fields bare of red soil'to glow in the sun. The hills take this pattern \of shapes and colours as. an English landscape takes its hedges, and trees, as it miraculqus skill or miraculous chance had.brought about their combination- with. »its fluent lines. This kind of. perfection in the natural scene, a finish it has, or absolute consent, is rare; I mean rare, paitjcularly, in any wide sweep.of country. It lives commonly in landscape " bits," but with the same loss and fallaciousness as when poetry is reduced to anthology pieces. From Marienburg the eye holds a world in focus and sees the smaller beauty of nooks and corners summed, multiplied, and transformed in a serene amplitude. V LABOUR AND CHANCE ■

Herr .Willi Weinbaeh's own vineyards border the courtyard .of the Restaurant Marienburg and tilt down abruptly to the river—a pretty sight, and one which testifies to immense care and labour. But ignorance does, not readily understand the, testimony. It is a beginning, perhaps, to see two men toiling up the slope with their copper-sulphate apparatus, the shale shifting and sliding under their feet. Everything, Jn these hill vineyards, must be done by hand. Many are so steep that they have to be terraced with rock'walls. Every vine is tended through the months of, growth; and when the time of picking comes, the process is spun out and complicated by the need to coax from the grape and 1 the weather every possible advantage.,' ~'-They.range the vines, choosing for their ripeness not only single bunches but sometimes single berries; so that the pickers will spend many days, going over and over the' same stands, while the autumn"draws.out and the gamble with frost or rain balances promise and threat. ; A bad' season will undo all calculation, the utmost skill and the weariest labour; and it will depress the people of a village to a level of bare'subsistence,through the winter, Herr Willi Weinbach looked across the: Moselle to Punderich. In a normal season,, he said, it produces 8000" little casks of wine, and the vi3Jagers.;ii«e. comiortab]y enough;

but .broken weather and early winter, such as had, defeated them a year; or two before, can cut down the.vintage to 2000 cask s. Then comfort vanishes.- (These figures may not.be right; the proportions are,)Herr Willi Weinbach. is. styled on his hotel literature as " der dritte ": Willi Weinbach,the Third. The first Willi Weinbach. establish sd the place in 1,075,', and a portrait of this square, Hindehburghish "old |>; gentleman hangs in the best xOorh.' '■■;■;■. He built the hotel-restaurant, risfl ily but with wonderful tact and success, to abut on the ruins of the ancient Cloister of The fdoor opens upon its roofless ihtejrior, whose creeper-bound walls ma ike a small court. :'The;. end .wall, in] fact, of the medi'aeval foundation is ihe front one of ; Willi Weinbach the l First's. By some means, 60 years!) have been enough to age and; Barken the house . into an easy; coiigruity with its . neighb.6urr>-probab| y because nothing was l done to fajse.it into a tasteless singulation of antiquity. Its bedrooms—pretty rboma, with deep Windows opening amonjg the treetops over half the few: people come to Marient|urg for the day. They come in hunjlreds sometimes. Herr Willi told* us, as we walked about the grounds and everywhere found table*; and chairs and benches under the r|"ees and on little observation-terraces, that on holidays he had had ia thousand visitors at once. They \ drink beer, they drink wine, they dance in the open air to the panajrope, they admire the view; but especially they go to the' end of the littlja court and see the chapel, still almdfet perfectly preserved, which dates : from the eleventh century. We aaw all this in the early morning; ;he first of the day's arrivals were c limbing the hill as we went down. A FINANCIAL PROBLEM

Willi Weinbach the Tfyrd sent us to Beilstein. We must fao to Beilstein', then to Moselkerri and Burg Eltz. We had never heaj-d of them. But the first thing was toj, get money.' There was no bank in Bullay. Near the post office I consulted a likelylooking man. No, a reg;ister-mark cheque could not be < cashed in Bullay; nor could it be. probably, in Beilstein. The bank in iZell would be closed before we coulq get there; and.if we waited for it tq reopen in the afternoon, we should* not easily reach Beilstein. I repeated, to announce the interesting alternative: we could, go on to Beilstejin without money and without hope; of getting any, or we could dawdle -about Zell and get money too late to go on to Beilstein. And, as we s\at in the sweet-scented shade of |;a lindentree, watching Bullay bekjg as brisk as only brisk small plages can be, the likely-looking man caine up and prised open the jaws! of our dilemma. If we took a taxi, we could be in Zell before 12; and he had a taxi-man waiting; the fare calculated, and his wattch open. There was just time to flo it. "We did it. We caught the 2}ell branch of the Dresdener Bank in. the very yawn of closing for luncli We had money in pocket, the tax)-man was paid, and he dropped us in Merl on his way back. .But the .statesman whose brain and kindness solved this international problem!, had been .aJL too hastily and briefly,'thanked.

THE BEECHES Above Merl, which was merrier by half a thermometer than the day before, we climbed through the vineyards once again to the untamed higher slopes; yet not quite untamed, for at first there were fieldcrops above the vineyards, and the peas grew handily near the road. Better than the peas, though, were the wild strawberries hiding in the grass. As the cart-track twisted up to the level heights, it turned about us the confusing show of sleek hills and the bright band of the river. We did not realise it then; but this was our last sight, as from the top of the world, of the Moselle wriggling through the delightful jumble of its terrain. And this, also, was our first sight of a beech forest. It lay beyond the cultivated fields of this high ground, the edge of which it fringed; and occasional clearings still let the gentle turbulence of the hills be seen, heaving and falling through the distance towards the Rhine.- Sometimes the path plunged deep among the grey trunks, and the beeches made their own universe of lifting branches and sumptuous leafage. Yet the sun was never quite lost, the sky never quite shut out. The golden light explored the green shadow and the green waves of the tree-tops broke and scattered under the steady blue. These beech woods are glorious, so light, so open; and the beech is of all trees, perhaps, the one that most beautifully combines a giant growth with careless grace. It is a sort of openhanded tree, spreading generously and richly,..yet never greedy for

space and crowding it too full. But there is no bird song. There are no birds. One misses them. On the other hand, if there were birds there would be fewer wild strawberries; and along this wide path they luxuriated. BEILSTEIN • It ran out, after a while, to the open, high levels again, somewhere between Senheim and Liesenich, from which, probably, came the men and women who were busy in the fields here. The Moselle came into view again, before us now instead of behind or to the left. Then the path dipped down, across lightly wooded slopes, to join the valley road into Beilstein. A charming valley, where the fresh green turf lay almost lawn-smooth on either hand, and the single trees seemed each to have chosen the very spot to Dlease the valley best. The road sidles a little distance through the vineyards, then pounces suddenly down upon the village. ' In fact, it scuttles under a house to get there; they have made a sort of tunnel for it, because it would go that way Beilstein is placidly unconscious of anything extraordinary '• in the consequences of its precipitous site—the headlong paths, the breakneck steps, the bedroom window boxes, secondstorey, which flower by your feet as you stand on the terrace of St. Thomas's Church. All is as it has to be. If you want to buy stamps you climb two flights of crazy stairs and buy them from the pastry-cook who pulls them out from a little cupboard with tarjs in it. ; .Quaint?; It

is the last word to apply. Ups, downs, and oddities, Beilstein levels them all to .its own benign, slow temper.