About 3 million visitors cram into Rüdesheim's cuckoo-clock alleys each year to wallow in wine culture and Rheinromantik. A viscous slurry of peoples, languages, and wine oozes through the narrow Drosselgasse as bits and pieces of polka emanate from open doors and windows. Cable cars lift off with a hum from a village square to convey passengers across hillsides combed in Riesling. A Romanesque-style church – memorial to medieval polymath Hildegard of Bingen – rises in the distance. At the top, a wooded path leads to the towering figure of Germania, erected in 1883 to celebrate German nationhood. Engraved on its base, one reads:

The tone of defiance, like Germania's brazen-faced vigilance, seems incongruous in its setting (see plates 6.1a and 6.1b). Vintners on the hillside below potter among their vines, patiently coaxing into existence a world commodity export. The village on the banks prepares for night-time revelry.