Western Europe: Germany - Charming Cochem

Cochem is a convenient base for travelling around Mosel. Despite being a transport hub, this town remains charming with coloured, terrace fronted restaurants along the waterfront, and complete with a castle perched on a rock, overlooking the town.

Roman dropped me off at Alf train station and I made my way to Cochem where I spent my next 3 days. I bought a day trip ticket as I have planned to visit Beilstein later of the day. I was glad that Weingut Rademacher was close to the train station. It is near the Cochem train station and the other side of the building overlooks their vineyard.

It was a short walk to the market place with very reasonable price for a room. The included breakfast served was generous, inclusive with the German fare breakfast of cheese, bread and cured meat as well as muesli. It could be a little noisy in the morning (possibly the train but I don't hear them in the evenings) and evenings when they hold wine tasting sessions but I slept like a log.

I visited the Reichsburg the evening I arrived, it can be reached by a bus shuttle or by foot. I was being silly thinking that I would buy myself more time if I got there earlier. I forgot that the whole reason of bus shuttle was probably to coincide with the scheduled tour times (about every 20 minutes) so it was probably a moot point of me trying to get there in between scheduled bus times.

The rooms and courtyards of the courtyards of the castle are only accessible with a guided tour. The guided tour I joined was in German, but free translation sheets in English. Obviously I have missed the English guided tour which was said to be at 12:00 and 15:00 on their website. I assumed the tour guide have cracked some jokes along the way as there were some laughter among those who didn't hold a translation sheet.

The castle was initially built back in the year 1000 A.D by Franconian Palatine. It was seized by a German emperor and pawned to the archbishop of Trier in some 100 years later. It was later destroyed by French soldiers in 1689. The now castle, belonged to the town of Cochem was reconstructed according to old plans by a rich merchant, Mr Louis Ravene.

I supposed when the weather is hot, it is only right to have some advantage which in this case I get long day time. I still had time to wander around the town after the castle. Ha!

Enderttor

I made another silly mistake of not checking out where to have dinner and randomly entered a shop which offers white asparagus which was in season. The town square was getting empty at an early hour of 7ish. If only calories can be refunded for things that didn't taste as good as expected. Despite feeling much better after the magical castle stay, my appetite had not quite return so this was my only meal in Cochem. Umm... rookie mistake.

It tasted as bad as it looked

Side note: It appears that I'm not the only one who had the perception that German trains are always punctual, it wasn't true though, at least the regional trains. Many of the trains I took were delayed. :P