Burgen as seen from a neighboring vineyard.
Burgen is a rural village of a few hundred residents in Germany’s Rhineland-Phalz state where I spent the better part of seven months in 2018, hosted by a local engineer. It’s a calm, lonely town that despite relative anonymity has a distinct character that years later, has stayed with me. This is an effort to document some of that character and the changing face of the town through the seasons.
A rural backroad on the north side of the town, the first picture I took in Burgen.
A restored vintage Volkswagen Bus sitting in the shade of an aging garage. The foundations of the houses in Burgen are often hundreds of years old, with new protrusions added on over time and the aging brickwork and facades maintained as long as possible by their owners.
As a result of the careful preservation of buildings and homes, Burgen hosts a variety of traditional German architecture, the oldest of which is mostly clustered around the town center. Houses are packed tight and residents are very familiar with one another. The people are warm, welcoming to visiting guests, and life in town has a pleasant rural slowness that comes with the distance from its busier neighbors, such as the riverside Bernkastel-Kues.
Bridges connect the two sides of Burgen’s downtown, home to a number of guest houses, restaurants, and wineries along the Frohnbach river, which runs the length of the entire town.
Nestled in the wine-rich Mosel Valley, Burgen is surrounded on all sides by expansive rolling vineyards. Much of the town and its neighbors’ industry revolves around winegrowing and wine tourism—in the peak months of summer, the Mosel Valley floods with German and international travelers for wine tasting and sightseeing its landscapes and historic castles, but in the spring, the lush hills are quiet and calm.
Rows of grapes from the vineyards of Weingut Norwig, a Mosel Valley winery based in Burgen.
This Catholic chapel is one of the oldest buildings in Burgen, originally built in 1086, and still stands on the south side of town.
A thick morning fog rolls in, collecting in the valley basin and completely shrouding all but the peaks of the surrounding hills. Fog is common due to Burgen’s mild, temperate climate and low elevation, making this a regular sight, especially in the cooler months.
The town as viewed from the south. Solar panels can be seen on many of the roofs in Burgen and are becoming more and more popular as Germany moves toward alternative energy solutions.
One of many rainy days in the early summer.
A house for sale on a street corner. In town, it’s not uncommon to see homes and buildings of wildly differing ages, constructions, and states of repair in close proximity to each other, making for a dynamic and interesting urban landscape.
A home and garden built to accommodate the steep slope of the land.
A fallen crabapple in a gutter drain grate. People in Burgen grow a number of fruiting trees, and depending on the season, loose crabapples, cherries, and walnuts can all be found on the sides of roads or picked fresh from the branch.
Midsummer sunset over fields just outside town.
Past the vineyard hills sprawls miles of farmland, with hunter stands stationed regularly, giving clear sightlines for hunters working to maintain the wild boar population. Wild boar are prevalent in the area—in the evening, when they are most active, it’s not uncommon to hear snorts and grunts coming from the thick forests around the town.
As night falls, a lone street lamp lights up a side road running along the local sports field.
Fall colors come warm and vivid across Burgen’s landscape as the year’s wine harvest comes to a close. The tourism season ends, and as workers who have come from all over to help pick grapes return home, everything begins to slow down.
Turned leaves carried on gusts of wind in a breathtaking shower of yellow and orange.
Autumn sunset over the western side of town.
As winter comes, the grape vines wither, leaving only a few brown leaves clinging to bare trellises. Winter in Burgen and the Mosel Valley is mild and wet, with very little snowfall until very late into the season. In some vineyards, a remainder of grapes is left on the vines until the weather is cold enough to freeze them. These frozen, concentrated grapes are harvested and used to make Eiswein, literally “ice wine”, a sweet, refreshing regional specialty.
One of the main roads leading into Burgen with a sign marking distance to Veldenz, another village nearby. As the weather cools, winter brings back with it the familiar blankets of thick morning fog.
Sunrise over Burgen’s first winter frost. The town is quiet.