The name of the rose

I have just come back from a business trip to the Rheingau, a beautiful wine region near Frankfurt. We spent two days in a nice conference hotel:


From my room I could see the river (and hear the highway, which kind of destroys the romantic atmosphere):

Because collegues from other countries were participating, afternoon sightseeing had been organised for day 1. The weather was bad, so we couldn't walk through the vineyards. Instead we visited Kloster Eberbach:

The Cistercian monks were excellent wine makers and of course the monestary has a vineyard:

If you recognise this room, but don't know quite where you have seen it before: it served as the monks' dormitory, but it was used as the "Skriptorium", that is the writing room, in the movie "The Name of the Rose":

It looks much bigger than it actually is due to an optical illusion. The pillars are lower at the end than at the front of the hall to repair a mistake the builders made in the lower floor.

Would you like to be called Mr or Mrs Cat's Elbow???

Wine making accessories are everywhere in this monastry:



After centuries of freezing to death (life expectancy of the monks: 30 something years) they finally installed heated and added decoration to one room in the building:

This is a "speaking" emblem: at the top is the cloister (German: Kloster), then a boar (German: Eber) and at the bottom a brook (German: Bach), so all together it is Kloster Eberbach. This meant that illiterate laymen could note down the name of the cloister.

At the end of the tour we tasted some white wines from the region. It was pitch dark, so I cannot actually tell you anything about the colour, but they tasted nice.



This part of the country is full of castles and we had dinner (seven courses, I won't have to eat for at least another week!) in one of them: Auf Schönburg