Alright, so Cologne was pretty good. Not as good as Barcelona, but still alright. Flew in late Friday night, found the hostel alright and then was kept up by some pretty horrific snoring. Got up early and met Jen at some place whose name escapes me. The whole point of the trip was to meet Jen as she is on a 6 week tour of Europe, so mission accomplished. After an hour of chatting, her brother finally woke up and joined us. First things first, it was time to visit the Cathedral, which apparently is the most visited one in Germany. The idea was get that out of the way and plan the rest of the weekend from there. So we went to the Cathedral, after walking along the river bank (which was nice) and had a wander around. It was about this time I realised I was completely over seeing old buildings. Really. I've seen a lot, don't think I need to see that many more to be honest. What was good though was the climb up the spire. It's 509 steps around a windy spire, but luckily there was a bell loft halfway up. I went down to have a look just as the bells went off, and I must have jumped a mile. Unfortunately none of my photos from there turned out well enough to put up. Anyway, from there it was all the way up, up! We'd gotten there early ( I don't think Europe likes to do anything on a weekend before 11 ) so there was no traffic to overtake. Jen is crazy fit, so she powered ahead and left Tom and I behind. Eventually got to the top, and the view was pretty spectacular. Worth the effort I feel. Then it was all the way back down again! Not that bad, particularly funny coming across people down near the bottom who were complaining about the length of the trip. I'm sure they weren't more then 50 steps up...if only they knew the pain that was to come!
After the Cathedral, Jen had discovered there was a Lindt Factory in the town. Not strictly true according to the tourist shop man, but after getting a few leaflets for our other activities (bike riding) we headed down to the chocolate museum. Which was sadly not open till 11 (still very early) so we headed around, and carefully avoided the kid show and headed to the cafe. Where we each had a hot chocolate. Even Jen who is lactose intolerant. Very very nice. So then we had a nice little walk through the chocolate museum, where the nice people gave us lots of chocolate, and we watched the factory making lots of chocolate. Apparently it's really small as it only makes 400kg a day....I guess just enough to feed the tourists! Really very interesting, I liked watching the chocolate get put into molds and the whole process there. And the old style vending machines, very cool. Sadly, there was only so much chocolate we could watch, so we headed off to find some lunch. And I discovered why I shouldn't travel with backpackers, because Jen and Tom both decided to eat at a fairly expensive place. But it was so worth it, we each had something different (Jen had Deer, I had Lamb and Tom had...something else) and it was great. Apart from getting rained on, even though we were under a tree it still wasn't comfortable! To finish off the afternoon, we went on a cruise up the river, nice and relaxing.
So after having a brief nap at our separate hostels (theirs was better then mine) we met up to go have something to eat for dinner. On the way we saw a whole bunch of people watching music and drinking on the street, so we thought we'd go through the middle of them. After getting in about 10 metres we realised what was going on. It was a gay festival, but feeling adventurous we ploughed right on through. Unfortunately Tom didn't have the knack of maneuvering through crowds, so he got stuck at a road block. And I got stuck in front of a big fat guy who was getting far too close for my liking....
Eventually we got through (Jen (surprise) shoved on through) and headed back to a street we found earlier. Found a nice looking pub and headed in as there were no seats outside (smokers). When the waitress came, I managed to use my rudimentary German to order drinks, until she asked one question too many and we had to admit we didn't know German. Which was fine as we got English menus. The meal was alright, nothing on lunch, and after a bit of a chat (and wait for the bill) headed back to their hostel and an early night.
Sunday, the plan was to hire some bikes, have a nap and then watch the Euro final and cheer Germany on. The bike ride was a brilliant idea, and I wish it had been mine. Instead, it was a guy from the Aussie Rules club, so I'm going to claim it. Jen worked out that we rode over 50 km, but it didn't feel like it. It was such a good bike compared to the one I own....I really wished I could steal it and bring it back with me...but that wasn't going to happen. Jen, being a triathlete and a mountain biker of course didn't think much of them as she's used to much better. I think Tom shared my opinion of the bike though. It's a great way to experience a different part of the country then usual. Plus I think I hooked Jen on the idea of hiring a bike everywhere, simply because the bike tracks are so good there...every main road had a bike track next to it, and we could have cycled all the way to Dusseldorf if we'd wanted to. We out-voted Jen on that one! Had a great pizza at Manheim ( I think that's what it was called ), and the waitress there had put a stone in her tooth. A fake diamond or something...I'd never seen anything like that before, was a bit freaky. Good talking point for the 3 of us though. Apart from a slight detour through some bushes the bike ride was great, highly recommend taking a hat though.
So after a nap, I headed over to their Hostel to meet up before the game. Their Canadian room-mate (Zac) was saying their was a big screen set up in a park, which sounded like a good idea to us. Just before we left from the bar where we had a pre-drink 2 other girls came down to look for somewhere to watch the game, an Aussie (Renee) and an American (Katie). I really like the American accent...it's a weakness of mine. So we headed off, drinks in hand (it's legal to drink on the street in Germany) to find this park. Unfortunately, they were relying on me to get there and I didn't have a map, so I followed the crowd. Instead of the park we found a street of pubs, which was still pretty good. Watched the first couple of minutes then headed off for the park, where we discovered that there was no big screen, just a big pub with lots of screens. So we watched the game there and started chatting to some German guys we met. Was a great night, and it would have been so much better if Germany had won. Understandably they weren't too keen to celebrate after their team lost.
I then managed to get home and to work on time, which I thought was quite impressive given I'd had possibly 2 hours sleep and was hung over.
Alright, that's one trip out of the way...I will get around to more information. A couple of travel tips for Cologne though
1) Hire a bike. So worth it
2) If you don't ask for the bill you won't get one
3) Further north seems to be the better part of town....
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