You are a scrolling movement on your mouse away from a trip from Trier through the valleys of the Moselle and Rhine Rivers which meet at Koblenz. The villages of timber-frame houses in the shade of hilltop castles by the dozens, all medieval structures meant to impose toll on Rhine navigation rather than to prepare for warfare: images which keep alive the memory that Germany is at the same time an old and a new country. Old, because it draws back on the Celts, Roman settlements at the 'limes', the Empire's frontier, Germanic tribal invasions and the succession claimed by Frankish tribes under Charlemagne's elusive vision of a united Europe, embedded in a Germanic Holy Roman Empire; new, because this unity of Germany only came about effectively in very recent times, even when disregarding the temporary split-up of Germany in East and West in the grip of the 20th century Cold War. In fact, Germany accomplished its unity for the first time in the 1860s, when dozens of little States, Duchies, Electorates and Free Cities were one by one absorbed into the Prussian Kingdom by Kaiser Wilhelm I and his Chancellor Bismarck. Here in the valleys of Moselle and Rhine, for instance, the castles and villages witness of old families and even older mini-States, often subject to the ecclesiastic rule of an Archbishop who prayed for the well-being of people in his church and squeezed them like lemons outside his church walls. I would nearly forget that Napoleon did his bit as well to eliminate part of the patchwork of little fiefs, but most credit is due to Bismarck, no doubt. Next in line of credits are … the Romans, because they were the ones who introduced wine-making to the area of Moselle and Rhine, creating the timeless perspective to theof things which attract us here today: the half-timber houses of wine producing and wine tasting villages such as Neumagen and Rüdesheim, surrounded by scattered Roman remnants and medieval castle ruins. Wine, attractive buoyant villages, mysteriously romantic castle ruins, the inviting nature landscapes of the winding river, what else does one need for an original blend of the mysticism of the past and the mondaine experience of the present.