Ausflug: Here be dragons...

Every weekend we try to take a day trip, or an Ausflug, somewhere interesting--sometimes we hop on the subway and go to a new museum or church in Cologne and sometimes we go a bit farther afield. The other week we visited Drachenfels ("dragon rock" or "dragon cliff") in Königswinter, which is about 45 minutes south of Cologne by train and has a nice walk up a hill to a ruined 12th century castle.

This area was made famous by Wagner's Ring Cycle (Der Ring des Nibelungen), the opera that includes the famous song, The Ride of the Valkyries. Wagner based the opera on an old Norse legend about the warrior, Siegfried. On this hill in Drachenfels, Siegfried supposedly killed the dragon, Fafnir, stole its treasure and then bathed in or drank its blood. Our visit to the area was a bit tamer :)

One reason we went here is that the hiking trail is very near the train station (oh, how we miss having a car!). You start going up a nice wooded trail, complete with hobbit holes.

The trail takes you to Drachenburg (literally, dragon castle), which has been around since the late 1800s and has quite an interesting history. We didn't spend much time here, but continued on to the ruined castle atop the next hill.

The castle can be reached by a cog train, and it over looks the Rhine and surrounding farms and hills.

Drachenfels is also known for its rocks--Drachenfels trachyte was quarried by Romans and then later used to construct the Cologne Cathedral!

After checking out the castle, we wandered back down and enjoyed the snow. It's so nice to get out of the city!

view of Drachenburg through the snowflakes and trees