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Published: October 24th 2007
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Cologne, Germany was our destination following Munich. Now, some of you out there maybe scratching your head, thinking.... what´s there to do in Cologne? Well, Paris may boast the Eiffel Tower, Rome may have the Colosseum, but all pale in comparison to the fountain at An der Eiche.... a center-point in young Maya's formative years. That´s right, Cologne is the birthplace of the illustrious, world-renowned, Maya of Pipaya fame. Here, along with the help of some old friends, we gave Pippa (also of Pipaya fame) the grand History of Maya tour through Cologne.
It´s funny how much your perspective changes as you grow a little taller (even when this growth is somewhat minimal). I kept telling Pippa things like.... "and here we have coming up the hill we used climb up and play on".... then, upon turning the corner, Pippa would comment... "you mean that slightly raised mound?" Please see photographic evidence of said hill/mound.
Now, in several past blog entries we´ve noted our previous experiences with free walking tours (some legal, some not so legal). But none have matched the quality of Sanil's History of Maya/Cologne tour. So, if any of you out there ever find yourselves in the area,
we highly recommend contacting Sanil for said tour. You won´t regret it!!
Being in Cologne was wonderful - it was our vacation within a vacation. After spending all this time navigating ourselves through foreign cities, subsisting on cans of tuna and hering filets, and remaining in a constant state of sleep-deprivation due to sharing rooms with dozens of people, it was unadulterated ecstasy to have three full course meals a day, tour guides taking care of our entire itinerary, and 8+ hours of uninterrupted sleep each night.
Beyond that, though, personally, it was a really nice nostalgic trip seeing people and places I grew up with. (not to mention getting re-acquainted with Broetchen, Kinder Schokolade and other fine delicacies that I have been deprived of all these years) And, I´m really glad I was able to share this part of my life with Pippa. She was an incredibly good trooper.... having to deal with not one, but two foreign languages at any given time.
Departing from Cologne, we ended up at the train station with still a few hours before our night train to Prague. Being the consummate tour guide that he is, Sanil stuck with us till the end
and took us out to sample the local beer in Cologne called Koelsch. And....ummm..... we kinda missed our train. Now, we know what you´re thinking, how can you miss a train for which you showed up at the train station three hours early - but, no, WE DID NOT GET DRUNK!!!! (Frankly, that´s impossible because the glasses are too small and the waiters are too grumpy and slow to work up a buzz). We were simply very much enjoying the atmosphere and good company that we just sort of lost track of time. So, anyway at around 10:15PM we were still sitting at the beer hall when we realized our train was departing in 9 minutes, and we were about a 5 min. walk from the station, had not paid our bill, and our luggage was still in storage. Sanil ran off to fetch our bags while we ran off to the platform. Once there, we begged and pleaded with the conductor in several languages to wait just one minute for our bags to arrive. But being the ever punctual Deutsche Bahn that we were dealing with, he looked at us in disbelief and disdain and just said "Nein". And
off the train went... Pipaya-less. We ran to the Information desk to find out when the next train to Prague was leaving, at which point we were told we had 5 minutes for a train involving a changeover. Without any further details, we ran off, and jumped on the train, with an unfortunately hurried good-bye to our favorite tour guide (We LOVE you Sanil!!!) And then it went a little something like this.... jump off the train at Duesseldorf 10 minutes later, run to information to find out time and platform for connecting train, find out we have 2 minutes, run to platform faster than we have ever run, arrive at platform as train starts pulling away, Pippa comes face-to-face with same disdainful conductor from Cologne as he shakes his head upon seeing us, Pippa, this time, disregards his "Nein" and throws herself + bag onto moving train, seeing Maya still running Pippa pulls Maya´s bag onto train and falls backwards as Maya is pulled onto train by same disgruntled conductor. PHEW!!!
Relieved to have made the same train we were meant to catch in Cologne, we made our way to our assigned compartment. Our relief quickly turned to misery,
however, as we spent the next fourteen hours in the following condition: I found myself sandwiched between a large Sardarji, an even larger Afghani man, and his also rather large child ( I thought it was an eight-year old boy, only to later find out it was a four-year old girl - it was very unfortunate). She was a very violent sleeper, and both of us suffered her abuse. We kept waking up with random body parts on us as she thrashed around.
Anyway, we finally, somehow, made it to Prague. Which was great - beautiful squares, FABULOUS Roccoco architecture (now, we couldn´t quite discern which particular building was the touted greatest example of Roccoco design, but fabulous nonetheless), Charles bridge - by far, our favorite bridge - and, of course, great panoramic views, with some communist history sprinkled in. (For the Columbia-ites out there, I learned a whole lot about Vaclav Havel and his role in the Velvet Revolution - now feeling really bad I didn´t go see his talks while he was at Columbia). Unfortunately, we weren´t in Prague very long - we probably spent more time and energy trying to catch the train and fend off Afghani
children than we did actually in the city itself - but we highly recommend it!!
Pipaya
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moo
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oh my goodness
i love your adventures.