Cochem, Germany, is simply one of the most charming towns you’ll find this side of Oz.

Due to our impeccable timing (the beginning of the Coronavirus as well as arriving there late in the day), it offered itself to us as a sleepy little town. In fact, it often seemed as if we were the only tourists in the entire place!

Despite that, I’m guessing even during normal times it’s still a fairly sleepy little town. With only 5,000 inhabitants and nothing more of note than its charm, I don’t think it’s a common tourist destination. Of course, that may be one of the reasons we liked it!

The most exiting thing that happened to us there is that one of my shoes decided to come apart, resulting in half of the bottom of my shoe flapping about every time I took a step. We were walking past a construction site during the sole’s attempted escape, and so I began rummaging through some of the surrounding detritus in the hopes of finding a length of twine or maybe ten wads of chewed gum; anything to hold the shoe together.

A man approached us from within the building that was under construction while I was digging through the garbage, and upon seeing my predicament, kindly offered me some duct tape to help keep me walking.

But after walking another 20 minutes my other shoe, obviously being jealous of all the attention given his twin brother, decided it was going to get into the game and flopped apart in exactly the same way. We were too far from the construction site to ask for another length of tape, but then we spotted a shoe store in town. The manager also kindly helped me by allowing me to use some of her shoe glue.

Unfortunately, that didn’t last a terribly long time, so I mostly walked around Cochem like a drunken duck.

It’s sometimes very good to visit places where no one knows you or will ever see you again. That gives you total freedom to walk around like a drunken duck, complete with duct tape wrapped around one shoe! Quack quack!

Cochem Castle dominates the skyline, but it’s not a castle of particular note otherwise. It was long in ruins until 1868 when it was purchased by a businessman for a paltry sum and then reconstructed.

We didn’t get a chance to go inside because of the hour, but that same hour allowed us to grab a photo of its main tower shining in the sun.

But mostly it was the town itself that delighted us, with its narrow cobblestone streets amidst traditional German architecture.

It also has a beautiful river running through it, I mean, is that the definition of picturesque or what?

As you can see, it was packed with tourists. Actually, it could be that they all ran for cover upon seeing a rather large bearded foreigner stomping around like a duck.

Since there isn’t a lot of other news to relate about Cochem other than the views, we’ll just mosey on through the rest of this entry with a series of captionless photos. Enjoy!

So that’s Cochem, Germany. A town we’d never heard of, but one we enjoyed visiting all the same!

Now, trust me when I say that I haven’t given up on writing words, I’m sure to the dismay of many a peruser of this blog (“You use too many words, Dad, just show us the pictures!”), but since Tuntange, Luxembourg is another town we stopped in that really offers nothing of note, historically or otherwise, except for its beauty and a large estate/palace we wandered through for a while, here goes a series of pictures without my bothering you with any more words. That doesn’t happen often with me, so enjoy it while you can!

You don’t get to see an estate like that every day! (Well, unless you live there.)