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On Thur, Nov 25 I took the train to Koeln to visit my friend Andreas. He was my exchange partner in grade 11. We went to a bar on Thursday night and drank Koelsch, which is the specialty beer of Koeln (which in English is Cologne). On Friday while he was at school I walked around Koeln and saw the Christmas market - every German town and city seems to have a Christmas market set up now, they're really nice. 
I had a Gluhwein there, which is a really hot wine drink (in English I believe it's called mulled wine). It's really good. I also made my first visit in five years to see the Koeln Cathedral, one of the largest in the world. Here you can see the top of one of the Cathedrale's two towers. The picture doesn't show the massive size of the Cathedrale, rather only a small part of it. 
I climbed the 509 steps up the South tower to get a great view of the city. Here is the view looking across the Rhein (Rhine) river. 
Here is the view looking South. 
Finally here is the view looking North. 
Next to the Cathedrale was another Christmas market. I took this picture looking down on the market from up above in the tower. The little red round things are booths selling anything from crafts to cookies to gluehwein. 
On Friday night we celebrated Andreas' birthday with about a dozen other friends in his appartment. We celebrated with Koelsch and had a great time. On Saturday morning I crawled out of bed and took a four hour train further North to Hameln, the Pied Piper city. Near Hameln in a little town called Hessich Oldendorf are my aunt, uncle, and cousins. I stayed there for the next two days. On Saturday night I went to a bar with my cousin Eike; on Sunday the two of us went hiking near some cliffs for another great view. I was happy to eat good food for once (instead of eating like a student) - my aunt made some kick ass dinners. She also gave me an advent basket, kind of like an advent calendar but instead it was a little basket with 24 little gifts in it, most of them individually wrapped chocolates or gummi bears or something like that. In case you have never heard of the Pied Piper, the story, in a nutshell, goes like this: Around 1284 (in the 1200's anyway) the town of Hameln (in English Hamlin) was supposedly full of rats. Along came this dude with a colourful outfit and a flute. He told the townspeople that he could rid the town of rats if they paid him. They agreed, so he started to play his flute, and all the rats followed him out of town. He led the rats to the river Weser where they all went in and drowned. He came back to collect his money, but the town refused to pay him, so he started to play his flute again and head out of town. This time all of the town's children followed him - about 130 in all - and he led them around a mountain where they disappeared and where never seen again - all except for two, a deaf kid and a blind kid who couldn't keep up with the rest. They came back and told everyone what happened (one could tell what he saw, the other what he heard). Actually, while we were hiking on Sunday we came across a really old stone cross, about 500 years old, indicating the spot where some guy was supposedly killed by a wild boar. You've gotta be pretty lame to be killed by a pig, but that's the story. Back to the Main Page - Zur�ck zur Hauptseite |