2024 Christmas Markets Rhine River Cruise - Day 2 - Koblenz, Germany
10 December 2024
We docked in city of Koblenz in the early morning of Tuesday, 10 December. Koblenz is the city where the Rhine River, and the Moselle River meet, merging into a larger section of the Rhine.
Right across from our mooring was a castle perched upon a hill overlooking the Rhine River. It looked beautiful and well maintained from our vantage point, but was not on our agenda for this visit. We had signed up for a bus tour of Cochem, Germany. Pretty early in the morning, we left the ship and hopped on a bus.
The tour was 5 hours. About a 1 hour to get from Koblens to Cochem, about 3 hours to tour the castle and check out the town, and 1 hour back. Thankfully, the bus was very nice and our tour guide was interesting.
In ancient times, ships navigating the river with goods would be charged a fee of some kind, often in the form of giving up some of their valuable cargo, by each city along the river. Castles with cannon overlooking key points on the river and chains across the river that could be raised, ensured ships would have to stop and give up the "tax." Koblenz and Cochem both funded their cities by charging merchants to pass through via the river.
Our tour guide also told us, since construction with stone was more expensive than with wood frame and plaster, an all stone facade was a status symbol. Owners of all stone buildings were thought to likely be wealthy.
We had a short walking tour of Cochem while we waited for the van that was going to take us up the hill to our tour of the Imperial Castle at Cochem. Cochem is a lovely, old, small town along the Moselle River. The town contracted an artist to provide a history of the town on a tower shown below.
Apparently, there were few instructions, or constraints given to the artist, and it came out as more of a mural than a historical account of the town. The artist used materials from different areas and eras from the towns history to create the collage. I liked it, but it didn't exactly translate to a bullet point list of important historical events for the town.
Many towns along the rivers have high water marks in public places with a line where the flood waters reached and a date. I captured such a place in Cochem captured below.
As you can see, the water from floods could get quite high! I'm guessing people must use the basements and lower floors to store items that aren't damaged by flooding. You might think the flooding happened in the distant past, but the highest mark was from 1993!
We also happened upon a couple of vending machines with quite an assortment of wines in them in a walkway between streets.
I hadn't seen vending machines with alcohol in them since leaving Japan many years ago, where they have beer in vending machines. Pretty cool!
After a bit more of a walk around the town, we were directed back near where our bus had dropped us off to pile into vans for a ride up the mountain to see Cochem Castle. It was a regal, large castle overlooking the town and the river below.
The castle was beautifully restored and maintained but wasn't heated and somehow felt even chillier than outside, with some sort of dampness in the air. Like being in a walk-in refrigerator or something.
After the tour, we walked down the hill toward the Christmas Market near our bus location. Along the way, our tour guide told us how straight, smooth facades on houses and business also indicated that the owner was likely wealthier than ones with more crooked timber work. As the photo below shows, it can get pretty crooked!
I wonder what the floors look like in there?
After we got back to the river, we had about a half hour of free time and hit the Christmas Market which was a 5 minute walk from where we were to meet the bus. It was kind of early, but Cochem is also a small town, so I'm not sure how crowded it gets, even in the evening. It was nice to walk without the huge crowds of some of the other markets. Galina had some gluhwein and I had a hot chocolate, then we headed to the bus for our trip back.
We found out that a barge had run into the gates of one of the locks on the Moselle River, rendering that lock unusable and stranding any ships upriver from getting back down until it was fixed. The fix is expected to take several months and there are a few river cruise boats stuck there. River cruising seems a bit more risky than ocean cruising, as far as plans being changed last minute. High water, low water, equipment malfunctions, and heavy port use by cruise boats can all impact your ability to keep your itinerary.
Spelling note, if you notice I spell things like gluhwein and Moselle differently, or different from how you may have seen them spelled, it's because it seems very hard to find consistent references for them! I seem to get different spellings depending on where I look. My apologies if you're German and know I'm spelling them wrong!