Germany part 1

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On Friday I spent most of the day traveling on trains. I stopped at Lake Constance for a few hours to walk around and take a ferry across the lake before I got back on another train to head to Stuttgart. I arrived in Stuttgart Friday night but didn't hav much time to do anything in the city after getting settled into my hostel. Saturday morning I had some time to walk around. It's a pretty neat city. There was a viewing platform 10 stories high at the train station that allowed me to take some nice pictures of the city.

I then took a train to Cologne (Köln). It was supposed to be a 2 hour and 15 minute train ride on a high speed train, but it ended up taking over 4 hours because there was a fire at the Frankfurt airport, which was one of the intermediate stops. After the train had been stopped just outside of Frankfurt for about 20 minutes, the train attendant said something in German over the speakers (and of course I didn't know what he was saying), everybody on the train rolled their eyes and exited the train to smoke cigarettes. Clueless as to what was going on, I was able to gather from another train attendant who spoke English that there was a fire at the Frankfurt Airport and they had no estimated time of arrival.

I eventually arrived in Cologne at around 4:00 in the afternoon. As soon as you leave the train station, you are right in front of Dom, their giant cathedral which took 600 years to build and has towers over 500 feet high. I walked around the cathedral for a bit then headed to my hostel. I was able to meet up with my cousin Tim, who has been working in the city since January. We enjoyed some schnitzel and Kölsch, and he gave me a great tour of the city.

This morning I started to walk back over to where the Dom was (about a mile and a half from my hostel) to take some more pictures and it started to drizzle. Fortunately I brought my umbrella. Unfortunately right when I opened my umbrella the main umbrella shaft snapped at the part where it connects to the rest of the umbrella. Drizzle turned into light rain, which turned into heavy rain, which turned into hail. Disappointed, drenched, and half way in between my starting point and intended destination, I took a cab back to my hostel.

On the bright side, it allowed me to find this internet cafe that allows me to upload pictures, so I'm going to try to upload some of the pictures I've taken so far.

I'll be off to Brugge tomorrow, then Brussels the next day where I'll be meeting up with more friends I went to school with

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Comments

[Wrobel]

Cologne
Cologne is the only city I've ever been to in Germany, but I loved it! best trip I've ever taken and the Dom is breathtaking. Try to see a soccer match if you can somewhere, because they're nuts over there. I hope you're having a great time.