Stuart’s GoldWing Blog

The view from the Hotel Garage was not encouraging

Having ridden through a lot of rain during the first half of our journey to get to the Mosel, naturally we were hopeful that the band of bad weather would stay behind us.  But it was not to be and by late evening, as we finished our meal and drank our drinks,  the band of heavy rain had caught up with us.  It rained hard throughout the night and at breakfast time we learned that it would probably rain all day. Having caught us up, the band of bad weather decided to sit on top of us for 24 hours.

Our Hostess, the ever-helpful Bettina, came up with the idea of a train excursion to Trier, a large town about an hour away.  The train station was literally a stone throw away and “family” tickets were available for groups of five people of any age at a special rate.  The whole group except me (I was feeling constrained by my dodgy hip) set of for the day wearing a stylish mixture of biking gear and other rainwear and carrying the Hotel’s entire stock of umbrellas.  There was no disguising the fact that they were tourists making the best of the bad weather.

I spent the morning in my Hotel Room writing part one of this Article and looking out of the window watching the rain fall on the vineyards which rise steeply behind the Hotel up the hillside, at the top of which I could also see Klotten’s very own castle.  The Mosel Valley, as the Rhine Valley, is peppered with castles, many still in occupation, although of course as museums or hotels rather than active fortresses.  Unfortunately Klotten’s is one of the seriously ruined castles and for some reason staring up at it that morning did nothing at all to lift my mood.  The vineyards were neatly kept but deserted, so apart from the noises arising from the rain falling heavily and the occasional contribution from my stomach trying to cope with breakfast, I was on my own.

Letting the Train take the Rain

Trier is a large city which has existed since Roman times and has a Roman triumphal arch and an amphitheatre as well as being a scenic location on the Mosel. But it really was raining heavily and continuously that day, so even the prettiest and most fascinating place looses some of its appeal on such a day. The group did their best to enjoy the place, but it wasn’t really adequate compensation for missing a day of riding, which is of course what we had all come for.

Having enjoyed a very substantial breakfast I wasn’t getting hungry but by lunchtime I was fed up of tapping away on the keyboard and staring at the rain, so I convinced myself that it was brightening up a bit.  On went the riding togs and off I went for a ride around the local area with the idea of taking the opportunity of riding alone to re-familiarising myself with some of the twisty roads which climb the side valleys of the Mosel.

On a rainy day in a city, why not go to church?

I did ride up a couple of side valleys and it did serve to get my eye back in a bit for riding twisty roads in wet conditions, but there was so much surface water washing across the roads bringing debris with it that it was only safe to proceed fairly slowly.  After a couple of valleys I decided there was no fun and not very much other value in trying to do any serious riding, so I would either have to think of something useful to do or head back to the Hotel.

.... or eat

As part of my planning for the Tour I had searched on Wikipedia for information about the local area and discovered, among the many bright and attractive things to be learned about the Mosel, a dark side to the local history.  A Concentration Camp had existed from 1941 to 1944 within a few miles of Klotten and I had marked its location on my satnav, with a vague idea of looking it up.  As I was riding along in the rain this waypoint came on to the satnav screen and reminded me of this research, so I headed for it.

... or get playful while eating

According to Wikipedia, there was nothing left of the Zeisig Sub Camp except for the ruins of a tower-like building which is pictured looking a bit dishevelled among some trees.  But the location of these remains was given very precisely, so it seemed entirely possible that would be able to find them.  I’m not sure why I wanted to see the ruins, not least because I generally find ruined buildings pretty boring at the best of times, or what I hoped to achieve.  But I suppose it was a bit like wanting to see and pay respects to a war cemetery while I was in the area, which I have done in Picardy.  There is something awesome about such places and since I was on my own, there was no reason not to.

.... or get serious about eating!

Another photo on Wikipedia, harrowing in nature, showed an example of the barbarity which had gone on there between 1941 and 1944.  Large numbers of slave labourers, many French in origin, but also people who had been deliberately and suddenly, in the middle of the night, “disappeared” from their homes and families from all over Europe.  Many of them were involved or suspected of being involved with the Resistance. The suddenness of their disappearance and blank refusal to give any information about what had happened to them was deliberate and it was intended to terrorise the rest of the population into submission.

.... or start to really wish it would stop raining

Zeisig was one of a number of Sub Camps of Natzweiler-Struthof, a German concentration and extermination camp located in the Vosges Mountains in France, about 50 km south west of Strasburg.  It was in Alsace-Lorraine, a part of France which was annexed and became part of the Third Reich, so it was completely germanised. This Camp is estimated to have received over 50,000 prisoners between 1941 and 1944, of whom 25,000 are estimated not to have survived.  People were brought there from Poland, Norway, Holland and the Soviet Union as well as Germany and France.

Although there was a crematorium and a gas chamber at Natzweiller-Struthof, it was not used for mass extermination, presumably because the objective was to use the prisoners as slave labour.  Most prisoners were males and the aim was to work them rather than kill them before they were exploited in this way.  The gas chamber was however used to kill some people for purposes of medical experimentation and some captives, notably the female SOE operatives who ended up there, were executed.  After the War the Camp Commandant of Natzweiller-Struthof and a few others were convicted of war crimes and either executed or imprisoned.

..... or stay cheerful regardless

Zeisig was a work camp to which prisoners from Natzweiller-Strudof were deployed as slave labour.  Zeisig was an underground complex tunnelled into the hills on the opposite bank of the river from our Hotel in Klotten with one entrance at Tries and the other at another village further up river called Bruttig.  At its height, 13,000 people were imprisoned and employed at Zeisig, so it was quite a large-scale enterprise.  They manufactured spark plugs, ignition systems and glow plugs for Bosch, living and working underground in harsh conditions under brutal control. The administrativeve headquarters was in Cochem.

The place where Zeisig’s ruined ventilation shaft tower was supposed to be located is along an unmarked narrow track off the public road near the entrance to Valwig.   There are open fields to the left of the track, in which cattle and horses were quietly going about their business of eating, and on the right there is dense woodland.  Although there were a couple of unpaved tracks leading into this woodland, there was nothing to indicate what was up there and the woodland was too dense to give anything more than the odd glimpse of more open areas – and nothing to suggest any buildings, ruined or otherwise.  I didn’t fancy either exploring these side lanes on the Wing or abandoning it on the narrow roadway to explore the woods on foot, so I restricted myself to stopping from time to time to look into the woods as best I could from astride the bike for signs of artifacts. Then, having drawn a blank, I rode beyond the supposed location of Zeisig to look for a turning place.

Zeisg's Airvent Tower

Eventually a side road which was sort-of paved appeared and I spotted a small building about 100 yards along it so I turned into it, rode up to the building and parked nearby.  It was no bigger than a garden shed but it was solidly built, with a tiled pitched roof and it was clearly well looked after.  There was no-one about and having turned off the bike’s engine, there was nothing to be heard except the rain.  The building turned out to be a small Christian chapel or shrine and within the open entrance – there was no door – I could see bench seats on either side upon which were woven mats, presumably for kneeling in prayer.  Although deserted when I called there, it seemed to be in regular use for some purpose.

There was also a well-made and modern notice on the outside explaining the building’s history.  It referred to dates as long ago as the 14th Century, with other significant dates in later centuries up to the 19th – but nothing after that..  Whatever this little chapel commemorated, it seemed to have nothing to do with Zeisig.

The rain was still falling steadily and being trussed up in riding gear with, thankfully, dry hands inside my Gortex gloves, I decided not to get my camera out and instead concentrated on the somewhat daunting task of turning the bike around on the gravelly track to make my exit.

I was of course some distance from any proper road, fairly deep into woodland and well aware that my dodgy hip would make for quite a struggle picking the bike up if I dropped it, so I took very considerable care not to do so.  It was a silent and sombre place on that rainy day and it felt more than a little spooky being there alone, knowing what had gone on sixty odd years ago somewhere fairly close by.  If anyone had turned up behind me and spoken while I was turning the bike around I dread to think what would have happened, however friendly their intentions might have been. I would certainly have dropped the bike!

As I rode slowly back along the access road I paused again at the supposed location of Zeisig to look into the woods for a hint of anything tangible but saw nothing. So I made my exit and headed for Tries, one of the villages either side of Zeisig where, according to Wikepedia, there was a memorial stone to the victims of Zeisig.

Tries is a pretty little village through which I rode several times during this holiday and on this first and very rainy day when I first went there it happened to be hosting an international girls rowing competition on the river.  There was Union Flag flying (or rather drooping) among the row of competing national flags and I suppose if my mood had been lighter I would have stopped to show interest and support, because the girls on the river were competing regardless of the rain and they clearly did deserve to be supported for their perseverance.  But my mind was on Zeisig and its victims, so I rode past without stopping, in search of the memorial stone.

I didn’t find it and eventually I settled for parking the bike on the village’s cobbled square opposite a Cafe and went in search of refreshment.  It was a  fairly typical German Bakery/Cafe with a tempting display of cakes and pastries.  I’m not sure that eating a cake and drinking coffee was a proper way to show respect for the victims of Zeisig, but I did at least think of them as I sat looking out of the Cafe window at my bike, counting my own blessings for being in Tries as a motorcycling tourist, in very different circumstances from their time in the area.

Barbarous cruelty took place at Zeisig

There are places all over in England where people were tortured or put to death in horrible ways at someone’s whim in past times and of course horrible things are still happening too; there is someone being prosecuted for battering a toddler to death in UK as I write this Article.  Klaus, our Hotelier, was vaguely aware that there had been some sort of camp in the Mosel during the WW2 but he knew no detail. Klaus is of the second generation since the War, so why should he? The Mosel has long reverted to the peaceful and beautiful wine-growing and tourist area it was before these mad, bad few years in the 1940s and the current occupants, except perhaps for the odd local historian, know little or nothing of that time or those events.  Even in the 1940s the locals probably knew very little of what was happening in this secret underground Bosch Factory.  But detailed information about what went on, lots of it, is preserved for history and is readily and freely available.  Although Wikipedia makes it easy to access the basics, it is on German websites (to which there are Wikipedia links) that the detailed history is being preserved.  And I’ve no doubt the memorial tablet in Tries is still there too; maybe I’ll find it next time I visit. There’s a photo of it on the internet, so next time I’ll try to remember to print it off, so I can use it to ask for directions.  My German isn’t remotely good enough to start asking Cafe staff where their local slave labour camp memorial is located; I get myself in a tangle trying anything more ambitious than ordering a coffee and pointing at the particular cake I fancy.

By early evening, as I got back to the Hotel, the Trier train excursion party had returned and were deployed on the veranda drinking beer or wine, having at least enjoyed each other’s company for the day.  The train ride had turned out to be quite a long one, an hour and a quarter each way, so they had at least been dry for the best part of three hours of the day and the journey had been very good value for money on their bulk-buy family tickets.  Their trip had passed the day effectively, but there is a limit to how much pleasure can be extracted from wandering the streets of even a very pretty place if it’s rain ing heavily.
It couldn’t be helped but our first day in the Mosel had not been wonderful, but the rain was genuinely easing at last and by late evening it had stopped altogether.

The weather forecast for next day was better

As we gathered to eat our second dinner together we heard from the ever-helpful Bettina that the weather forecast was improving and the following day would be sunny with maybe the odd shower.  We were hopeful of much better weather for our second day in the Mosel and my thoughts turned to planning the riding excursion to which we were all looking forward. Rob Ellis, a Nottinghamshire lad who rides a stylish black cherry GL1800, has a fine baritone voice and smokes like a chimney, had been to the Mosel himself several times before, so Rob and I pooled ideas about how to give the group a decent day out and a representative taste of the Mosel/Rhine area without overdoing things.  Tomorrow would be another day and hopefully we would make a proper start to our biking holiday in the Mosel.