| Cologne, Germany |
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| This doesn't even begin to capture the enormity of the Dom Cathedral in Cologne, Germany. It is massive and is located right in the heart of the city, near the Rhine. It kind of looms there watching over you as you walk around and at seemingly random intervals, it's bells start chiming and echoing through the town. It is beautiful and scary all at the same time. |
| We traveled to Cologne, Germany in mid-December to get a trip in with some friends before the holiday season. Why Cologne, you might ask? Aaah, the answer is simple. . .it was cheap. Our return flight cost one centime. . .yes, that's right---one centime. You can read more about iit in the Germany journals we will be posting shortly. The trip turned out to be a blast and we were very impressed with Cologne and the German people. Everyone was almost ridicuously welcoming and seeing as to how everyone was gearing up for the holidays, we got the full German Christmas experience---markets, food, bier and bitter, bitter cold. |
| If you see something huge and scary and strange. . .what is your first instinct? Clearly you should climb it, right? Let me just say this was not exactly a walk in the park. What we actually climbed in pursuit of the best view of Cologne was one of the cathedral spires and 509 steps in total. The spiral stairs we climbed up were also the down stairs, there was a constant stream of people behind and above you, no resting points, and each step was no larger than necessary for a lonely priest to climb his way to ring the bells. Once recovered from the claustrophobia and fear for our lives, however, the views were well worth it. |
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| Yes, in Germany there are pink houses. . .and yellow and orange and all sorts of colors. . .and random churches that look like castles. |
| Us on the Rhine River, photo taken by our friend Liz. We were actually on a massive boat on the river that had been taken over by a Christmas market. |
| Those Germans sure do like Christmas. We ended up arriving right in the heart of all of Cologne's holiday festivities. There were markets everywhere where you could buy all kinds of traditional foods, beverages and anything you could possibly imagine from flying fat angels to light-up Santa hats. |
| It was shortly after seeing the market for the first time that we decided to eat our way through Germany. Above left you can see Jeremy and I eating a traditional bratwurst in the ridiculously small bun they serve it in. (Is it just me or is Jeremy trying to look manly while eating that sausage?) Above right is our friend Liz enjoying a pretzel (or brezel if we are going to be German about it). |
| And yes, on the subject of food. . .this is exactly what it appears to be---a chocolate fountain! It took a lot of willpower not to break down the barrier and dive right in. |
| After all that eating, you can bet we needed to wash it down and in the wise words of David Letterman---"There isn't a man, woman or child alive that doesn't enjoy a lovely beverage." From upper left moving clockwise, you can see the outside of the bier haus where we spent our last night out, the crazy animated puppet band that provided the music that evening, Liz, Colette and Jess enjoyiing their beverages, and lastly, the ridiculous trays of tasty brew that kept the party going. Don't forget to check out the video clip of the bar by clicking here or at the top of the page. |