Blogs from North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, Europe

Rest Day in Cologne. Sleep til you wake - any time is fine. Well, my body clock said 6am was fine. I lay in bed until 7:30am trying to get back to sleep and finally got up, had some breakfast and went to explore. Jeff still had some things to tidy up with his lost wallet. I love Cologne on a Sunday morning, this Sunday morning. There's a light drizzle, it seems to have cleansed the city from the Saturday night festivities the night before. All that noise and music of people enjoying themselves is the exact opposite of the calm, peaceful, empty streets I'm now walking. I walk in a preplanned direction soaking in all of the sights I had wanted to see. In the background the church bells are ringing, but now they are ... read more

Dear All Greetings on this my second and final blog entry on my lovely little mini-trip to Cologne and around during the summer half-term. This will relate my last two days on the trip, starting from a really wonderful second full day – while my first full day I devoted to Cologne, my second was to Bonn. After all, the airport I flew into was called Cologne-Bonn Airport, so I thought, why not do them both! In actual fact the city of Bonn always intrigued me as a child, as I'd always learned in the eighties that Berlin was the capital of East Germany, and Bonn was the capital of West Germany. I'd already been to Berlin on my 1999 Interrailing trip, and although it didn't feel it at the time, it was really not comparatively ... read more

We had breakfast at the hotel and boarded our bus with Robert, our driver and Anna-Lena, our tour director to begin our journey around Germany. Our group of 44 included individuals of various nationalities, ages and ethnicities. Our first adventure was aboard a river boat to cruise along a portion of the Rhine River, dotted with castles and small river towns along the banks, for about 1 1/2 hours. The weather was chilly and windy so the best location was inside the boat making photography more difficult, but definitely more comfortable. Reaching the end of our cruise at St. Goar, we once again climbed aboard the bus to continue on to Cologne. After a brief introduction to the city, we were free to explore until the beer tasting mid-afternoon. We have been to Cologne in the ... read more

We docked at a small town just outside Cologne first thing this morning. After breakfast, we walked about a quarter mile in driving rain to three buses for a ride into the city. Cologne is Germany's fourth largest city. The rain abated just as we started a "Cologne Past and Present" tour led by a gregarious and knowledgeable guide named Shiva who was from the Philippines. There is a story there but we did not get more than just a glimpse of it in talking to her. Nevertheless, she was dynamite: fun, smart and enthusiastic. The first thing about Cologne you learn is that except for the Cathedral, U.S. bombing raids during the last year of WWII leveled the town. Every structure was rebuilt from the rubble from 1945 to 1974. The great cathedral was damaged ... read more

Yes, today is actually Jody’s birthday! I won’t mention her age, but it’s still significantly less than mine, and she still looks great! After traveling through the night, we made it out of the Netherlands and entered Germany. I’m not sure whether it was always the plan, or whether it was detours for low water, but we ended up docking somewhere outside of Cologne at about 9:00am so everyone going on a morning tour could get on a bus and ride the 30 minutes into Cologne. The boat would arrive at the Cologne dock at about 12:45. We met up with our local guide, who gave his name before we had our listening boxes turned on, and never mentioned it again. In any case, he was great, and explained to us the rivalry between Cologne and ... read more