Cologne (Koln), Germany

Made it to our fourth country! And since we are able to use our ipad, I have punctuation again! lol

We found another cheap place to eat last night, thankfully not far from our hotel as it was pouring rain, and then we watched CSI (nothing like a liittle culture! lol. I can barely watch the show it makes me cringe).

We were up and to the train station for our 10:35am ride to Cologne, Germany. We took a super fast train, one that can reach speeds up to 300 km/hr!! I'm not sure we reached that speed but I do know that we were really booting it along the country side!

One of the neat features (and very different from home, ask anyone who has had a rough time at the border) of Europe is that you don't have to do anything to travel from one country to the next. We have no idea when we actually left Belgium and entered Germany, all we knew is that one of the stops we made was German :)

Once we arrived to Cologne we navigated our directions to find the hostel. It was so close to the train station which was awesome! No getting lost for us today! Success! Now, on the way to the hostel there was one heck of a magnificant site... The Dom. Oh my goodness, it is one of the most spectacular things I have ever seen in my life. It is a huge (HUGE) cathedral that shoots up into the sky so far you have to crane your neck to even conceive of seeing the top spires. It is one of the largest Gothic buildings ever built. It's so eerie and creepy and beautiful all at the same time. I can't even put into words the size of this thing and what it's like to stand there infront of it. We didn't just stand in front of it of course, we headed inside and enjoyed the vastness of this catherdral. The ceilings must have been at least 100-150 feet high and the archways and detail... And the stained glass. Wow. It was something to see.

I probably could have stood inside or outside all day just looking at it; it takes my breath away.

Now, speaking of taking my breath away... Jeff and I discovered the meaning of "Belfry" today. Belfry, a bell tower or a steeple that houses bells. Had we known that before following (and paying - although we got the student rate) the sign that said, "This way to the Belfry" we probably would not have climbed the 530+ steps (EACH WAY on a narrow winding staircase!) all the way to the top!! We were huffing and puffing something awful as we climbed. About halfway up (or what I thought was halfway and wasn't) I thought I was going to die... Me and a number of other people (including Jeff) who were crazy enough to climb all the way up! lol. It was sooo far and we were soaked with sweat by the time we got to the bells... And then had to keep climbing to get as high as you can go (any fantasy you may have or have had about living in a castle tower...let me tell you, a bungalow can be just as nice). After we cooled down with the fresh air up there, it was beautiful. We could seen for miles and miles and had the best view of Cologne. We questioned whether it was worth it as we practically ran down all the spairalling stairs (me yelling, "I'm not seeing Venice on crutches!) and getting dizzy, but since it's been a few hours and we have seen the cathedral on our way to dinner... Yes, it was worth it (even if all of the clean clothes I was wearing today now need to be washed by hand because they're smelly).

We also spent time this afternoon booking hostels for the next places we'll be going to. It was feeling pretty unnerving as everything we were looking at was booked but with some maneuvering of places and dates we managed to make something work.

We're taking a Rhine river cruise tomorrow to Bad Honningen, then staying the night there; we'll get up early and get the next boat that will take us to Koblenz. There was a hostel in a fortress we had planned to stay in but it was all booked so we're only staying in town for one njght, then we are off to Baden-Baden for a few days where I hear there are some hot springs and then to Heidelberg for a few days before heading to Munich for Oktoberfest. It's going to be a busy week! It's hard planning for one night in places but because of this boat cruise we have to... We don't want to spend €63 for one night when we'll only be there after 4pm and leaving around 7am - it's not cheap! But we will to make this work.

Anyway, we just got back from dinner - schnitzel, fries and a salad! It was pretty good and was a good price. We nearly left the restaurant after a man ushered us in and we took a look at the prices but then he showed us the deal. We may be tourists but we're backpackers too and that means budget concsious :)

We're tired from climbing somewhere around 1200 steps today (or more) so we're going to put our feet up and relax. I'm not sure when I'll update as we'll be on the boat but maybe there will be internet the place tomorrow. We'll see.

Chat soon!