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***image1***Courtesy photoEvery year on the second Saturday of August, this year being Aug. 9, about 500,000 guests will witness the most magnificent spectacle of the Mosel. The Rhine Aflame festival will light up the countryside on Saturday in Koblenz. For the event, castles, old half-timbered houses and the Rhine shore will be illuminated. Up to 10 fireworks displays will top off the celebrations along the river between Braubach, Spay and Koblenz.
Koblenz celebrates this annual festival with a number of special attractions, including an amusement park. Events begin at 4 p.m. Saturday, when entertainment will be provided near the famous Deutsche Eck, or German Corner, where the Rhine and Mosel rivers meet.
Several bands from Germany and elsewhere start their performances early in the evening near the Rhine bridge. There is an entry to these festivities and concerts which runs about €20. Tickets can be obtained from the Koblenz Touristik office at 0261-31304. Dance music will occur at the Rhine-Mosel hall all night.
Saturday’s activities include the opening of the amusement park at 11 a.m., and music and entertainment by several rock, pop and other music bands will take place everywhere along the Mosel shore, starting at 3 p.m.Several hot air balloons will take off from the Luetzel Mosel shore in the early evening with a fly-over as well as a
demonstration by water rescue aircraft. The aircraft will land on the German Corner around 7:30 p.m., with parachute jumpers following around 8 p.m.
Seventy decorated passenger ships, making up the largest flotilla of Europe with 40,000 spectators aboard, will cruise down the Rhine, passing illuminations and arriving in Koblenz at 10:30 p.m. Reservations for the boats need to be made a year prior to the event.
This spectacle can be viewed from the banks of the river or from the hillside on either side of a 17-kilometer-long stretch of the Rhine. While the brightly illuminated fleet slowly glides down the Rhine, the adjacent towns with their romantic buildings, fortresses and castles are bathed in Bengal light. Eight displays of fireworks along the way will light up the evening sky at Spay, Braubach (Marksburg castle), Brey, Rhens, Lahnstein and Koblenz. The initial fireworks display will kick off at 9:30 p.m. in Spay, while the final and most gigantic one will start between 10:30 and 11 p.m. from the Koblenz Ehrenbreitstein castle.
The town and river shores will all be illuminated prior to the Koblenz fire works display. Food and beverages, as well as some of the finest Mosel wines, will be available at stands set up along the streets.
Since nearly 500,000 spectators come to the Koblenz festival every year, visitors who plan to drive should arrive early to find parking and a good spot to watch the fireworks.
