Cochem - Reichsburg Cochem

High above the town of Cochem lies the Reichsburg, one of the best storybook castles in the Rhine or Mosel Valley. You can hike up to the castle, but it's a fairly steep trek. Using SJ as our excuse, we opted to pay 2 Euros for the shuttle ride up.

The views from the castle were very stunning. We walked around the outside for awhile, but opted not to go inside. You could only enter as part of a tour, and the tours were only in German. Since it's doubtful that the tour would mentioned anything about how to order lunch at the bakery, my knowledge of Germany wouldn't have helped me very much.


After walking down from the castle, we crossed over to the other side of the river and found a nice outdoor cafe for some warm apple strudel and Federweisser. Since Cochem is a major wine producing town, the Federweisser here was light years better than what we had purchased in Bonn.

As was explained to me by the woman who sold us our bottles, Federweisser is only good for a few days. The first day it is produced, it is extremely sweet - almost like sparkling grape juice. The second day it is a little more tart, and by the third day it is completely fermented. They cap the bottles only with foil with holes in it, because since it is still fermenting, if they closed the bottles they would explode.