Trier

Porta Nigra (Black Gate). Roman Gate to Trier from 200 AD

Trier was one of the three big cities during Roman times, with around 100,000 people living there in the 4th century A.D, the largest city north of the Alps. The Porta Nigra, shown above and also found on the 500 Deutsche Mark (DM) bill--like Burg Eltz--is from that time.

We had the good luck of attending a guided tour that started at our hotel--and the guide was an archeologist with a specialty in Roman history. He initially volunteered to show us other sites as well, but when he saw how much we enjoyed learning about the Roman times, he focused on that. He had brought some shards from an excavation. These were used as "base rock" for the roads that the Romans built. The legionnaires would go around and collect broken pottery, and then the pottery and some gravel were put down before the stones.

Here are some Roman coins. The smaller precious metal coins, which you can see at the bottom right of the photo below made of silver and gold. They were used by merchants or people from the higher classes. The larger coins were used by the common people, and we know by the fact that the coins had numbers and writing on them that at the time, most people had a rudimentary knowledge of reading and writing. Our guide had replicas of the larger coins because the originals contained lead.

Roman roads were built by the legionnaires, but paid for by bureaucrats. If a merchant prospered, he was invited for a fine dinner with the governor and given an honorary (unpaid) position as a bureaucrat. The merchant could then use the position to collect bribes, but it was also expected that he would pay for good quality roads, or maybe a bathhouse or an assembly hall, with his own money. The workers were soldiers who learned a trade as part of this work and in addition were fed and housed even when no war was on. After their service in the army, the soldiers retired and moved back to their original homes or settled somewhere else in the empire as civilians. The result was a skilled labor force of retired soldiers available for other work. No problem finding a contractor for home renovation during Roman times! And the Roman roads and bridges were well built. One of the Roman bridges in Trier still stands today, and seems to hold up quite well even with trucks rolling over it continuously. The Romans built for centuries, not decades as we do today.

We spent a good amount of time viewing the Barbara Thermen, the baths at the southern edge of town. And you'd have to go there to see how big these baths were (our guide explained that they were most likely 8 stories high!). The heating system was also very sophisticated:

Barbara Thermen (Barbarian Bath)

Another former bathhouse was found recently downtown when some local business owners tried to build an underground garage and found the foundations of a large administrative complex and small bath house:

We also stopped by the cathedral, which was beautiful but to my mind not as inspiring as the roads, the baths, and the other achievements of Roman times:

Trier Cathedral

In the afternoon, we took a walk to St. Matthias Abby. The church there is the official end of the Mosel Camino. It's a beautiful old church with a large crypt:

We had a little trouble finding the bones of St. Matthias, but believe that they are in this stone coffin:

St. Matthias (St. Matthew) was the only one of the 12 Apostles that made it north of the Alps and was the bishop of Trier in the early part of the 1st century AD. So visiting his bones used to be a very big deal, even if traditions like that are no longer vibrant nowadays.

With the very last part of our pilgrimage complete, we returned to the hotel for a rest, and dinner out later. We were excited about finishing the hike, and a little sorry that the simple time of putting one foot in front of the other was over.

For a week, while we mostly worried about staying hydrated and not getting wet, life was simple. We enjoyed the interesting small villages with great food and a slower pace than our so-called normal life. After Trier, we were ready to hang out with friends and family before returning to the hustle and bustle of Silicon Valley - and before spending time with our friends here, and telling our story.