Cologne Day 2

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Travel Blog Day 4 Cologne
Quite the day/night in Cologne yesterday. We started the day off by heading down to the Am Dom Cathedral, which was pretty neat… we just missed the English tour, but went on our own mini-tour with myself as the guide for Josh (since I am Catholic, a lot of stuff is universal). The Cathedral was beautiful with a lot of very interesting sights and the extravagance of it is amazing. This Cathedral actually took about 600 years to build instead of the standard 100 or so, because of different wars and trade barriers that prevented its completion. The highlight of the Cathedral though was the tower. There was very large spires on each side of the Cathedral, and you had to pay 3 Euro to go up into one of the towers… now I’m not really sure why we paid to walk up all those stairs (over 500), but we did and walked on up. The view from the top was quite nice, as we were able to see the entire city from up there. The Rhine river cuts the city into 2 with the main side being on the West, were we are, but we could see everything from up there, including things that I was hoping to go to, which helped us to get there. The streets in Europe don’t always have road markers, so being at that vantage point really helped to explain the city map.
I took many photos of the Cathedral, which I will post at some point. Internet costs by the minute here, so I have not been posting photos. I have been writing this in MS Word and then just copying and pasting in order to try and save as much time (and money) as possible.
After the Cathedral, we went on down near the Rhine. I should say one thing though, it was amazing how exhausted we were from the walk up the tower. Josh went up into Notre Dame and told me that when you got down your legs would be shaking… well I thought I was stronger than that, but sure enough, my left knee shook hard after the decent. After about 2 hours the stress and fatigue went away, but it tells you a bit about how high we went there.
So we sat near the Rhine for a while and just watched the people and things that were going by us. Germany is similar to America in many respects, but the people are much warmer towards each other, especially in public. They are very affectionate with each other, and even with us.
This can be better explained by the soccer game. It was Germany’s match yesterday, and they needed to at least tie the game in order to move on to the round of 8. Well, they ended up winning the match 1-0, and when they scored just after halftime, the German’s were crazy excited. I walked back to the bathroom and one woman threw her arms around me and kissed me on the cheek. I did not know this woman or ever talk with her again, but this is just how Germans are I suppose.
We went to several Kolsch bars that we were unable to go to the day before and tasted many of the beers that have made this city famous. It was hard to rank a favorite, but I still think mine was the first one that we had, which was Fruh. I have had Fruh before, but it tasted much better here.
While at the brauhauses, we met some very interesting characters. There was an American and some British guys at one that we went to and we spoke with them for about 2 hours and went to another bar with them. There was general discussion, similar to America… we were told to avoid politics, but people here really want to talk about American politics, so we did. Josh and I are both rather conversative, which we thought could be a problem here, but people were willing to listen to you and understand your point of view. I really must say that I am impressed with the German’s… they are extremely friendly and very interested in what you have to say… they also speak English very well.

After this, we went down to another place that the guide said was very good and it indeed was. We met some native German’s that spoke perfect English and hung out in more of a bar/disco with them for a while. It was strange though, as there were 3 girls and one guy, but they were all 19 years old. Now, I remember 19, and was around a lot of 19 year olds in college, but it is very strange to see them in the beer houses. They were extremely friendly though, and had come to town for the soccer match. They lived about 20 miles out of town, but really wanted to be around the other people during the soccer match I suppose. After making quick friends with them for a while, we decided it was time to head home because we had 2 major things to do today.

First, we are going to go to the ELDE Haus, which is basically the only museum that is not a concentration camp that actually recognizes that World War II happened and that in 1933-45 not all Germans were on vacation. I am looking forward to this, as it is my main focus in history. After that we are going to do a walking tour of the town, which will include several sites and the breweries. I am hoping we get to go underneath the town and see the underground, but I am not sure yet. It should prove to be very interesting though, and I will attempt to report on what I see. We are in our last day in Cologne, and I could honestly spend the entire trip here. The city is just very warm and friendly and I find myself looking around like a tourist, but it doesn’t bother me. I will be taking video today instead of photos, and I am hoping to place those online as well, but I plan on waiting until we have free internet access so that I can figure out the entire process without paying out the nose for it. Thanks for reading and have a great day in America.
Ryan

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