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Published: June 16th 2008
Travel Blog: Day 3 Cologne
Well, sorry I missed writing yesterday, it is actually day 3 here in Europe. Josh has joined me, but getting him into Germany was quite the adventure. He does not have a phone here in Europe, but I did bring mine. It costs a lot to use, but I thought it’d be useful when meeting someone. Well, it turns out that it could be useful, but only if someone takes advantage of it. I walked from the hotel in Frankfurt down to the local park/garden/lake and had lunch. I sat near the lake and read a book for over an hour, the wildlife was different from America and it was very enjoyable to watch. After lunch, I walked down to the train station, which was about 3 miles from the hotel, a hardy walk indeed.
When I got to the train station, I thought Josh was getting in at 4, like he told me he was… well I waited around and no one who I recognized got off the train at 4… I thought maybe he missed the train, so waiting for the 5:20 train from Strassburg, and he wasn’t on that one either… so I decided to head over to a beergarden which was nearby and wait for my phonecall. After about 2 hours, Josh did not call, so I decided to walk back towards the hotel and wait there. Well, on my way back, one of the roads I took to get to the train station had been shut down so I had to take an alternate route. That alternate route was south of my hotel, and I sorta knew where I was going, but the roads did not connect how I thought they would and I ended up going up and down the same road over and over again. I was getting tired when I walked by an Italian restaurant that I remember being recommended in one of my student info sites. So I stopped in and had some Gnocchi and some beer. The Gnocchi was excellent… when I’ve had it in America, it was always the potato dumplings with sauce… here it is the potato dumplings with the sauce, but it is baked in a dish with mushrooms, cheese, and zucchini. It was possibly the best Italian food I have ever had, it a very poor neighborhood in Southwest Frankfurt.
Well, it turns out that while I was eating, Josh had gotten in and gotten back to the hotel that we were staying at. He could only call me from the hotel, which was a good 3 miles from my fine Italian dining. So I started walking home. I asked a German guy on the corner for a shortcut or better route ( I was using a yellow pages map)… when I discovered something about Germans… similar to myself, they are willing to give directions even if they do not know what they are talking about. The German directed me north through a suburb( which is very different), and basically I got lost in a mess of gardens and homes, there was no way out to the north and I had to go back to where I came into the garden/suburb… 30 minutes wasted. I finally got back to the hotel around 9 local or so. I had walked roughly 12 miles on the day, and frankly was hurting. Josh and I watched the soccer matches and had a few local brews at the hotel restaurant/bar.
The next morning (today), we woke up and headed down to the train station to go to Cologne. We got to the train station and headed to the ticket office to validate our tickets… she said that a train to Cologne was leaving in 10 minutes, so we booked it to get on this one. Well, we hopped on and it was crowded.. Josh being a seasoned vet after being in France for 5 weeks said that we should hop off and head to the next car so we can have more room and put our bags in a safe place… I said, “well, it’s getting close to time, are you sure we are ok?” Josh said of course we were, they would blow the whistle 3 times before it took off… Well we stepped off the train and immediate the doors shut and it took off, we couldn’t get back in and were stuck until the next one…. I laughed at the situation, because what else are you gonna do?
So we saw that another train was going to Koln in about an hour, we decided to grab some lunch at one of the subway places. I had a turkey sandwhich with the worlds hardest bread that has ever existed… German’s may eat a good deal of meat, but not on their sandwhiches, because 90% of that sucker was hard tack bread. Eventually we got on the train to Cologne (Koln) and arrived in the city. After some difficulty finding the hotel, we landed, and I discovered that our hotel in Frankfurt (a courtyard by Marriott) was not the typical European hotel. I am now in a typical European hotel. Josh and I are sharing adjoining rooms (even though I booked a double), which share a central bathroom, it’s a lot like a dorm. The rooms are tiny, maybe 8 by 10 or so, 100 square feet max. The rooms are supposed to be the same, but in my room, I have no fridge (just a hole) where one should be, and I have no closet. While Josh has both of these, he has no airconditioner. Now, it only got to about 75 today, but I’m holding on to the fact that I got an airconditioner and he did not.
We hit some of the local Kolsch bars in town and had some very good food and beer. Cologne is known for its Kolsch beer, which is a very light ale that has some fruity notes at the end of it. They serve them in .2L glasses, which is about 8 ounces or so. You continue to get served more and more beer unless you place your coaster on top of your glass… they just keep coming without you asking. Fortunately I had done my research and knew all about this before I got here.
After hitting 2 Kolsch bars we started to head back towards the hotel, when we ran into an Irish pub… we figured we should check it out… turns out that there were a bunch of English people in there (who of course speak English), so it was really nice to be able to talk with people. I spoke with an older couple from Ireland for about 30 minutes and we had an excellent conversation that ranged from sports to jobs to politics. It was a little weird, but very nice to talk to someone from another culture who understood the words that were coming out of your mouth.
Tomorrow we are hoping to hit some museums and do a walking tour of Cologne. We will be here for 3 nights total, so we should get a decent experience. This is very different from Frankfurt, as Cologne is much more of a traditional city, while Frankfurt is very modern, and almost exactly like an American city. We are just north of the main Cathedral (which we will visit either tomorrow or Tuesday), and there are shops everywhere, whereas in Frankfurt, we were very isolated and only near homes. I have not learned much German yet, but I am actually starting to understand a little about what people are talking about when they talk with each other. They still go way too fast for me to actually comprehend anything, but the immersion in the culture has helped to understand it. Hopefully I will be able to write again tomorrow… not sure when I will get all this online, because I have to pay 5 euro per 30 minutes online, and that just bothers me. Hope all is well for those back in the US and other places abroad,
Ryan
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Cody
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Awesome blog so far
Keep it going man. I'm really enjoying reading it.