It will literally punch you in the face with photons and you’ll see just how wrong you are. Watch this video, then continue down below:

 

I’ll just let the pictures do most of the talking. So what you just saw is the amazing view from the top of the Pinnerkreuz looking down into the Moselle Valley, and the city of Cochem. An absolutely incredible view. So one of the main attractions of the city of Cochem is the Reichsburg, (Imperial Castle). It’s been sitting on the hill for 1,000 years, or at least the tower, and some of the buildings. Though it was significantly expanded over the centuries. It was super neat to go through with a tour, thankfully in English. I’ll just post pictures and videos, and let those explain the rest. Surprisingly, not only was photography allowed inside, flash photography was allowed inside. Haven’t seen that anywhere else, not that it was really necessary though. Early on in its history, the ownership of the castle became unclear, and disputes arose, the Emperor stepped in and claimed it, forcibly buying it, and told the quarreling parties to split the money. As the centuries went on, the castle began falling into a state of disrepair, the castle was acquired by a Frenchman named Louis Ravené in the 1800’s and he repaired and reconstructed it. Sadly, entrance to the 1,000 year old main tower of the castle is not permitted.

Next I went across the Moselle River through a neighborhood, just a casual regular neighborhood with nothing fancy about it. Well, there must be something fancy about it, otherwise I wouldn’t be describing it, right? Wrong! It has a hidden secret. A major secret that was so secretly secret even the Stasi of East Germany did not know about it. In this neighborhood is just an ordinary looking house, that blends in with the rest of the neighborhood. But it has a tunnel underground. A tunnel that leads, or at least did lead to the secret underground bank vault of West Germany! The west Germans built a bank bunker to protect cash and a small number of civilians from the neighborhood from atomic bombs, during the cold war. The Moselle Valley, being surrounded by tall mountains proved to be a reasonable place to protect money from nuclear bombs. But it wasn’t regular money that was stored here. What kind of money did they store then? Micky Mouse Fun Bucks? Not exactly. The West Germans were afraid of East Germany and the Russians completely flooding their fragile economy with counterfeit money, and completely ruining them. So they had around 15 billion in cash of a new style/design of paper currency locked away. So if it were to happen, they could immediately replace and distribute the counterfeited money with these new bills around the country within approximately 14 days. It was a maximum security bunker as well, built to keep thieves and nuclear blasts out. There’s 5 components of a nuclear blast that the bunker must be built to withstand: Radiation, Heat, Electromagnetic Radiation, Pressure, and Fallout. The bunker is approximately 30 meters/nearly 100 feet deep, but it’s on a hillside, so the number varies depending on location. It has a kitchen, living quarters, offices, full climate control and even warm cotton clothing in case of nuclear winter. It was built in 1964 during the Cold War fears of nuclear war, and it was so secret not anybody in the houses even right next door near what was going on. Complaints about the noise/work/etc else about the construction of it, led to the Government telling them it was an office for training federal employees, as well as a bunker for them if there was nuclear war. While not entirely a lie, as it was built to hold 75 employees, and about 100 regular civilians, there are far more than 100 residents in Cochem. And obviously nobody knew about the secret vaults. Annoyingly, there is only German tours, however my guide in particular is one of the few people who actually worked in the bunker during it’s heyday.

After getting back on the other side of the river, I went to the Sesselbahn. It was a neat chairlift to the top of the nearby mountain where I took the video you (should have) seen at the top. I also had dinner at the restaurant giving an amazing view of the valley below.

Quite annoying this is only in landscape mode. I followed the instructions in VLC to rotate the video, but it caused all my videos to rotate sideways when I saved it, so I had to redo, but at least when I did it, it rotated all my videos back, so until I figure out a solution, it’ll have to be sideways. Boo.

 

The main great hall.

 

Another video on the balcony.