Eau de Cologne

After Orientation was over, Allison, Kathleen, Tiffany and I planned a last minute trip to Cologne, Germany for the weekend. So we hopped on the train Friday afternoon and were off. It only took about 2 hours to get there, super easy too. It was FREEZING. Average 19˚F in the middle of the day, but it was still beautiful. I couldn't help but think how much better it would have been to explore the city if it was just 10˚ warmer. It was kind of torture. As soon as you stepped outside you couldn't feel your toes, fingers or nose anymore. A cold I will never forget. But less about the cold, more about German experiences!

It all started when we had 18 minutes between trains in Aachen, Germany. Allison and I were starving so we ran downstairs and ended up getting pretzels! It was so good. Pretzel, butter, and chives. A great combo.

YUM

We arrived in Cologne, got off the train and saw this:

Woah. (The Dom)

Literally the biggest Cathedral I've ever seen. Its so tall and magnificent, I could have stared at it for hours if my toes had feeling in them.

We went to find the hostel and set our stuff down, but once we were in the warmth and comfort of indoors it was very hard to convince use to leave again, especially since the sun was already down. We decided we could leave to get food from the grocery store down the street to make dinner, so we did, but you couldn't convince us to leave again after that.

                                          

Trying to google translate the directions

We decided to stay in for the night so we played cards with out new Swiss friend Katia. It was fun and warm. 

Cards!

Katia

Katia was travelling by herself and had been travelling since september. She was very good at english and a good addition to our cards group and we kept running into her on Saturday. Yay new friends.

The next day we went to the city center to take an indoor heated tour of the city. It was interesting and Cologne is a cool city. A lot of it was bombed and destroyed during WWII so it was interesting to see new and old things so close together.

The only remaining part of the original 11th century Roman wall

The Rhine and some cool apartment buildings

Then we went to the Lindt chocolate museum. Such a good idea. Really informative and lots of free samples. YUM.

The fountain of chocolate heaven

After, we went to the Cologne City historical museum, which was also very informative. They had these cool recorded story things so you could listen to information about what you were looking at in english! Also, it was free. Major plus side. I learned a lot of new things about Cologne that I wouldn't have known otherwise. 

Also has a cool car with wings on top of the Museum

Then we wandered to find a legit german pub so we could have a real german dinner. I had a cheese pancake thing, tiffany had some german meat dish, kathleen had sausage with amazing sauerkraut, and perfect mashed potatoes, and Allison had AMAZING spaetzle. We were all in love with Allisons dish. It was so good.

After we stuffed our faces we went back to the hostel to get ready to go out. We decided to do a pub crawl since we didn't know where the poppin places in Cologne were and thought that it would be a good way to see a bit of the nightlife. It was just us 4, Katia, and 3 belgian girls because it was freezing outside so all the tourists were home, but the Germans were out and ready to rage. It was really fun and we got to see a lot of different Cologne bars. Cologne has a poppin nightlife. 

We got up the next morning, packed and checked out of the hostel and headed back to the Dom to climb the 537 steps to the tippy top for a great view of Cologne. It was a looooot of steps and I definitely felt the burn, but it was worth it because the view from the top was magical.

Tiny spiral staircase for 2-way traffic all the way to the top.

I got dizzy from walking in such a tight circle for so long and had to take a couple breathers. I can't imagine doing it in the summer time when theres hundreds of tourists because it was hard enough to get past the people coming down when there were only a few of us there.

Almost to the top!

Amazing

Afterwards Allison and I decided to go to another German city because everything in Cologne was closed because it was Sunday, and we wanted to do some more exploring. Kathleen and Tiffany just went back to Maastricht because they needed bikes, so we parted ways.

We decided to go to Bonn, where Beethoven grew up to get some culture, and maybe breathe some creative air. But first, Allison needed to put on more layers to try and not freeze as much.

She's adorable.

Bonn was really cute. Everything was closed here too because Europe doesn't do Sundays, but it was cute to walk around and explore the deserted city center.

Fascinated by frozen water

The church in the city center

The Rhine

We were starving and decided to eat some more authentic German food so we stopped at this pub, which claimed to be where Beethoven fell in love with his wife. Ahh cute. We both got some great soup and a history lesson about Beethovens love life. 

Cute

Great trip to Germany. I plan to explore more of my homeland once it warms up a few degrees. :]