Actually, I got off the train at Ahrweiler Markt. It is such a lovely day that everyone decided not to ride their bike but simply carry them on the trains in such numbers that no-one can get on or off the train.
Such minor things cannot detract from the day!
Ahrweiler is our location today due to its Roman Villa and Der Regierungsbunker or Government Bunker as well as its silver mine. First things first.
When arrive at Ahrwheiler Markt make sure you actually make it into the town at some stage.
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| The main square in Ahweiler Markt with the grape vines on the hills behind |
It is very easy to find somewhere for a beer or a coffee, for a snack or a full three course lunch. By late afternoon, the crowd had rolled in and there was a real vibe of people and happiness.
But still in the morning, there were few folks about and I thought I'd now head off to the villa.
The villa was found by mistake back in 1980 when road works uncovered some ruins and archaeologists were called in. For me, I think it is the scale of the place that defies belief. A Roman Villa is effectively a mansion with servant quarters, bath houses and space for a family of ten or twenty. Even the very basics of the hypocaust or under floor heating require special attention to details and smart engineering techniques. Water flows in and through the building. This is clever but must also have brought a feeling of nature and peace with it. The site has to work with nature to allow the water to flow in and through; interesting and pleasant.
The remains are now covered in a massive timber and glass building with a ceiling that vaults the villa, leaving no stone touched but the site completely sealed off from the weather.
The site remains under excavation; being a Sunday, no-one was working today but it would be neat to be a tourist here and watch the archaeologists going about their business.
The quality of the finds is remarkable too. The pottery is complete, the glass shards and nails are plentiful. Occasional glimpses of mosaics and wall paintings hint at how beautiful the place must have been in its heyday.
The site began as a villa, then a bigger villa was built in top of that and then, by the 3rd or 4th Century, it had been converted to a guest house. The excavation has uncovered all stages if these buildings, most interestingly the first house's cool cellar which was filled in to make the second house. I'm not sure where they stored their cold goods in the second house...
The site was destroyed by a landslide in the 5th Century. This is very easy to understand when you see how sheer the nearby hills are. The site remained under all of the landslide material until 1980. Quite amazing!
After a couple of hours puttering about in the villa, I headed up those steep nearby hills to the bunker. It costs 8 Euros to get in and you have to do a tour and the tour is in German (but a written English program is provided and is quite helpful) but even without the English program, this is a must do. Even my generation (now approaching 50 years old) is a little young to have been a part of the Cold War but this place reinforces those times with devastating clarity.
The site was originally a train tunnel but a massive train tunnel; designed for steam trains pulling heavy goods. The tunnel is eight metres in diameter and this is much larger than any comparable tunnel built today. It is long as well; two sections of tunnels that combine for six km length. It worked as a tunnel right through until the end of WW2 when the local French bombed it every 200m to render it useless.
When Germany joined NATO, the rules required they be able to sustain Government in the event of a nuclear attack. A number of sites were reviewed and this one was chosen. The guts of the design centres around that original train tunnel; once it was cleared and sealed. Numerous side tunnels were built but the rules required 80m of rock to provide safety to anyone within. This may not have been enough as the calculations were based on the bomb that hit Hiroshima and by the 60s this bomb was quite small compared to the armaments being constructed by the US and the Soviets. Anyway, these we're the parameters and off they went to build this massive bunker between 1958 and 1970 in compete secrecy.
It's the doors that did my head in. There are so many. The outer doors are 1.2m thick and there are several of them in sequence. Basically, the first 100m of tunnel are designed to be sacrificed if a bomb is dropped. There are series and series of decontamination showers and monitoring equipment to make sure that anyone coming in is not contaminated. The doctors monitoring folks wood do this via windows so as not be contaminated themselves.
The 8m tunnel is high enough to be divided into two floors with offices, laboratories, workshops and the like downstairs with very rudimentary sleeping accommodation upstairs. Dormitory accommodation with four people to a room; very Spartan in design and outlook.
Strangely enough, the design allow for 7,000 people to live in safety after a nuclear blast (assuming that there was no direct hit) for thirty days. But there seemed to be no plan for what happens after 30 days; hopefully the worst of the radioactivity had blown away by then.
During exercises when the site was actually locked down, some people suffered from claustrophobia and were unable to function effectively.
They tested the system every Monday; that must have been something to behold! The alarms would sound, warning lights would flash and those massive doors would slowly but inexorably close, sealing the outside world to its fate.
A little creepy!
Most of the facility has been stripped back to the original tunnel so only the first 200m or so remain with sections of the complex moved into this museum section. One of the neat parts of the tour is to get to where the tunnel opens out and extends away for almost 200m. The echo of sounds here is phenomenal! It seems to reverberate forever. The authorities have had concerts and recitals in this area and it would be inserting to know if this reverb is actually too strong.
As we came out of the bunker and back into the warmth of the sun (I would take a jacket as the tunnels were quite cool), I was about to head back down the hill when I noticed another trail, this one called the Rotweinwanderweg. Having now googled this (check out http://www.ahr-rotweinwanderweg.de/) I now know this is a 35km trail that runs through the wine district of the Ahr Valley of which Ahrweiler is central. The bunker is about 2km from the Ahrweiler itself so I thought I would follow the Rotweinwanderweg back and was rewarded with a view of Ahrweiler like this.
You can see the grape vines in the foreground (and so steep! How do they pick grapes and prune the vines in this terrain). The village itself in the middle and if you look closely you can see the green grass and the cream trail that mark the edges of the city walls. While way off in the distance you can see a ribbon of road suspended by concrete legs; the autobahn to Koblenz.
By following the “red wine wander way” I came out near an abandoned silver mine; abandoned while leaving the skeletal remains of the bridge that was used to haul the treasure trove away. These massive legs are all that are left of this bridge.
If you look closely you might make it out that these legs are now used as climbing walls. Amazingly, this was as far as the bridge's construction went. These massive legs were built but nothing was added to them; the price of silver must have crashed significantly, I guess. It is not difficult to imagine how imperious this bridge might have stood above Ahrwelier below. The sign below shows how the trains would have looked had the bridge been built; the views to Ahweiler Markt are just magnificent!
This was a great day; from 1st Century Roman state of the art living to 20th Century state of the art paranoia buried deep within the heart of the mountains. I think I'll need to come back and explore the Ahr Valley in more detail, especially its wines!
The photo of the ruins remind me so much of a roman village complex found on Santorini that I explored back in 2000. Although looking at your shot it looks so much more German in its construction :-)
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