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For Dec. 4th, 1999 I actually had planned a trip to Luxembourg. It would be a new city and a new country (both with the same name) for me. It isn't too far so as long as I leave early in the day and come back late at night, the visit can be done in one day. I left early that morning with an Ethiopian friend on my floor and a friend of his, another Ethiopian. We left for Trier, an old Roman city in Germany near the border with Luxembourg. Both Luxembourg and Germany are EU (European Union) countries, so we expected to get in and out of the country quite easily, without passports. Well we were wrong. Sort of. It turns out that although there are no more border crossing passport checks between EU countries, it is still possible to be checked for your passport when you are NEAR the border. I think the problem is that all the cops who were former border check cops now have no work, so instead they patrol train stations checking to see that people are in the country legally. The idea is that someone might be in one EU country legally, as a non-European with a visa, but might not have the right to enter another EU country. So although it is possible to cross the border without any passport check, the passport police might still ask you for your passport when you get off the train at the station. For me, as a European, this is not a problem. Even without my passport I can still travel through EU countries. But for Ethiopians, who are obviously foreign, it is a different story. Would you believe, that on that Saturday we NEVER LEFT the country and yet we were asked for our passports (which we oh so wisely left at home in Karlsruhe) THREE TIMES that day??!! Each time they just told us to have our passports next time and then they left. I talked with one of the cops about this, he was very polite and helpful and explained to me why the checks are done, and simply recommended that in the future that if we were going to be travelling to border cities like Trier, that we should have our passports, even if we are staying within the country. They never gave us a hard time. I asked the guy if he thought it would be wise for us to go to Luxembourg (once in Trier we were really close) without passports, since technically we could still cross the border without them. He told me that it would be a big risk for the two Ethiopian guys (not for me), and that if we happened to be checked in Luxembourg that they might have a hard time getting back in Germany, that they might be stuck for a few days. Since at this point we had been checked twice, I figured that we would probably be checked again and we decided to stay in Germany and just visit Trier instead. So my trip to Luxembourg was postponed for another day. Trier itself is really cool so it was no big loss really. The city is the oldest in Germany and one of the oldest in Europe. In fact it is about 2000 years old, as it was first a city of the Roman Empire long long long before it ever became a German city. There are still a lot of really really really old very very very cool Roman ruins there, including a system of baths, some old catacombs and tunnels, and even an amphitheatre. So the day was not a loss. Trier was actually planned to be the third largest city in the Roman Empire, although I don't think it ever achieved this status. It was for some time the residence of the Emperor himself, and has the second largest set of Roman baths anywhere in the world (Rome likely having the largest). The Roman entrance to the city was the Porta Nigra (Black Gate). 
The building of the Kaiserthermen (the Emperor's baths) was started in the third century; the work was at one point halted and then resumed sometime in the fourth century. Here you can see my fellow travellers in the Kaiserthermen ... 
... and here you see yours truly in an archway of the Kaiserthermen. 
Trier also features an authentic Roman amphitheatre. In the top of the picture you can see one of the main entrances. On the floor of the theatre itself are two entrances to an underground system of tunnels and rooms which can be visited by tourists. The little squares on the floor of the theatre are modern mini-skylights to allow people to find their way underground. I looked for lions and tigers and bears in there but without success. 
This is definitely not a Roman building. 
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