Peter had a pin collection....

For two hours. My alarm went off on Saturday morning at 8:00am, and I didn't have the mental capacity to figure out why. So I just drifted to the shower, force of habit. By the time I had got back to my room, toweled off and dried my hair, I remembered why I was so rudely awakened. Cologne!! Erin, Cam and I made our way down to the station armed with half-hearted overnight bags, some trashy magazines, a guide book and determination to leave Maastricht. Well, Erin and I were determined. Cam, as usual needed more than a little convincing. She is lucky she has us, as she even says herself, otherwise she would just hang out in her room. "But I don't I get some credit just for getting to Europe?" Anyway, Cam needed fuel, so we stopped for a pastry and coffee for her, while Erin and I shared a granola bar. I wasn't ready for eating quite yet. Travelling is tough in Maastricht sometimes. We figured out the bus just in time and started counting our change for the fare. This annoyed the driver. He was also annoyed that Cam had fresh coffee and pastry and informed us angrily that "this is a bus, not a restaurant." He made her dump the coffee and I thought she might cry. We smuggled the pastry in though. Screw you busdriver. We bussed to Aachen in Germany and the first thing we did was miss our stop. We were so out of it, we all looked out the window and asked "is that the train station?" None of us knew, but no one wanted to ask either. So inertia made us just sit there. Then we clued in that it was indeed the train station and our bus was pulling away!! We asked the driver to please stop and let us out, terribly sorry, we missed our stop, and he refused (of course...he hated us.). He let us off at the next stop which was tricky because we don't know Aachen and were kinda lost by this point. We found a bakery, had a sandwich (always a good thing!) and continued to where we thought we'd left the train station, noting on along the way every German car that passed: BMW, Audi, Mercedes. We also noted some train tracks which was a good sign. We made it to the ticket booth without event, and the woman handed us our tickets with words "track 8, 2 minutes". AHHH! We literally ran through the station, and hopped on the train, and before we'd even got to our seats, we were on our way to Cologne (Köln).
the day before, I ran into our handsome German friend name Gundi, and since he is from Köln, I asked him for the scoop. The first thing he told me was to check out the Dom Cathedral. his words were '" you can't miss it". Let me tell you, when you walk out of the station, I think it would be more accurate to say you can't avoid it. It is a very very very impressive building. the kind that makes you feel like a little bug and wonder if maybe there is a god afterall. I think i would even use the word majestic. Anyway, I photographed the hell out of it...haha...punny...so look for the album in a bit. We went inside and felt very humble about it all. The Dom cathedral is home to the remains of the three wise men who visited Jesus all those years ago, so we eyed their box for a bit. It was gold and far away. It was the weekend's mission to touch it, however, I failed. that's ok. adds to the mystique. On one of the side altars, there was an elborate display of jesus and all kinds of trinkets in the shape of crosses of various jewels, rosaries, other symbols. Erin was lost for a lot of this church stuff as she comes from a Jewish background, so Cam and I did our best to answer her questions. But at this point I was lost and so we asked Cam if she knew the significance of the display. She said, "St. Peter had a pin collection. This is it!" Erin and I were awed and amazed. Then we felt really stupid for believing her. Honestly, who lies in church?! Did you know that "gullible" isn't in the dictionary? Besides the wise men, the size, and the pin collection, the other thing you do at the Dom Cathedral is climb the steeple. it is 509 steps up around a tight spiral staircase. We paid our Euro and began our ascent. It was grueling, and colder the higher we got. We came to a landing and had a rest and it looked like Cam and Erin weren't going to make it any further, so I went on alone for the view from the top. Again, hold out for the album, it is on its way. When I got back down, I was happy to see the girls had decided to go afterall. I took a picture of some tourists, thought about writing my name on the wall with the thousands of other tourists before me, decided not to, began to wonder about the other two, and then they appeared. We walked back down, which is arguably harder. By now, I was feeling ill with dizziness, vertigo and claustrophobia, Cam was in need of constant coaching and chatting from Erin, and Erin was doing a great job of distracting all of us with tales from her childhood as a Muskoka camp-kid.
Back on the ground, we checked the Lonely-Planet for hostel suggestions and decided on "The Station" which was only a couple blocks away. it was only 16E for the night, clean and friendly, so I would recommend it. there were two other girls in our room already so we made it our mission to be friends with them. It never happened, but such is life. Once we dropped our stuff, we hit the streets to see what shopping is like in Germany. Plentiful for one!! Expensive for another...
I talked to my mom for a little while which was nice. It is always fun to answer "where are you?" with a city other than where you are expected to be.
By now, it was raining a little, we were tired, hungry and starting to get nasty about it, so we stopped for some fries (WAY better in Germany than in Maastricht...) and KFC so Erin could buy corn on the cob. Too funny. Then we settled for "Authentic German food" for dinner over the other options of thai, or chinese. at around six, we found a beer hall with great atmosphere and a nice view of the cathedral. We ordered schnitzel, goulash, fries, soups, and of course beer and just sat there until around midnight. The conversation was great, the food borderline...both Cam and I had some bonus hairs in our meal which was met with a shrug from the waiter. He compensated with complementary coffees which was ok, but no need to make a stink. We went back to the hostel where I was pretty sure I was staying, since I was so sleep deprived i was half delirious. Best laid plans...
I changed my mind when I remembered the hostel had given us free beer coupons at the pub. Enter "Garth". Garth is an American boy we met in the lounge of the hostel travelling alone while on an internship in France. He kept making statements about how things are in Canada for mine and Erin's benefit and then making a big deal of being correct. when he was. He was mostly not. He made a big deal about how beautfiul Montreal is, and when asked about it further, he renegged and said he was actually only at Mont. St. anne (which is closer to Quebec city if I not mistaken...) and was there with his family...during the summer. I asked him what he did there, and he said Moutainbiking, which caught my interest, but it turned out he didn't know much about that either. Coming from me, that can't be good news for him. Also, he had this annoying game going on where he would [i suspect] pretend to have forgotten how to speak english. He was always trying to "remember" the word. I think we were supposed to be impressed with how worldly he is. or something. Anyway, we couldn't shake him, so off we went. The bar was a long cold walk away, but free beer is free beer. We arrived three minutes before last call. By now, I was at my wits end with fatigue, but I do remember that for some reason, they had a big screen projection of MTB videos including Downhill, and trials so I was quite entertained and left Cam and Erin to deal with the annoying American. That gave me a second (or maybe 8th wind by this point) wind and we headed to another beer hall where they played traditional german music, the beer flowed quite freely, and people of all ages danced on tables and such. It was cool. I gotta learn some drinking songs. Finally, it was time for bed.
The next day, we got up at 10 so we could go to the art museum. First things first, we went to a fancy restaurant for fancy people to have a nice breakfast. We ordered crepes/pancakes without maple syrop, and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. We even had mineral water. Aren't we hoity toity? We opted to have coffee second somewhere a little less expensive and found ourselves back a familiar cafe where we've stopped before. This was kind of hearbreaking, because honestly, although i am kind of embarrassed to admit it, I miss starbucks, and so do the others and we have SEEN the cups but couldn't find the place. Not that cafe ciabatta was bad...just a chai latté would have been really good. After our caffeine fix, it was off to the art gallery. Cam and I looked at the postcards and decided that was enough for us. I am not really an arty person. Erin is, so we left her there to do her thing and walked off planless and optimistic. We thought maybe we should walk by the Rhine for the view and such and did some ad libbing navigation in that direction when....STARBUCKS!! We were soo excited and it didn't matter that we'd just had an espresso not 10 minutes before. We went in and got tall cups of café americano (with caramel!!) and tchai lattés and chatted about our good fortune. Then we bagged the mugs as a souvenir and found our own adventure. As with city in Europe, Köln was once Roman. The old city wall can still be seen and also sewers and, as we found out from Lonely Planet (Really Ross, thanks for the book!! I use it all the time!) the praetorium, which I understand is a parliament building. We went in for a look around, only to discover that the hard-to-find exhibit was in GERMAN! I asked Cam, "how's your German"and it turns out it is as good as mine. Ich spreche nicht Deutsch. So we did our best, took in the sights which was mostly old walls and stuff, but we're both more into that than art, and when we got back to the beginning, I asked the museum staff if there was anything in English that I could look at by way of explanation. He handed me a pamphlet and said "50 cents". I started reading it, judged that it was probably worth 50 cents to me and reached into my pocket for change. I didn't have anything big, due to excessive espresso consumption earlier, and was down to nickels. I didn't think it would be a big deal to accept 10 carefully counted nickels, open your til and drop them in...it isn't like they were pennies...but apparently it is. He was a total dick about it and wouldn't let me buy the pamphlet. honestly!! isn't it easier to just accept a couple coins than to count change from breaking a 20? I was hurt actually. So I am not too sure about what Cam and I saw. But there were rocks, rubble and some walking through ancient sewers. Thanks Lonely Planet. Some people are just jerks I guess.
We hit up the souvenir store for some authentic "eau de cologne" and postcards and by chance ran into Marco (the Rasta), Franzie and Fabio. The meeting didn't go well...We were very worried because Marco had promised us a ride home and yet didn't seem that happy to have run into us. We analyzed the situation for about 40 minutes trying to decide if we should just take the train, or if we should wait, or what. Franzie was in Cologne to rent a car for her move home to Hamburg. We were under the impression they were also having a "closed" lunch for her goodbye and we didn't want to impose. Once we met up with them again, having decided to stick around for the ride, all was revealed. This was our first encounter with culture clash. It turned out we weren't the only ones evaluating the meeting. They had thought we were cold and couldn't understand why we weren't coming with them for lunch. Lesson learned. When you are not invited, it is no secret, otherwise, however un-Canadian it may be, it is perfectly ok to invite yourself. They wondered why we hadn't. We wondered why we hadn't been invited. Anyway, we all had a good laugh about the ridiculousness of the situation, which is still confusing to me, but live and learn right?
It was really great to have the ride home, so Thanks Marco! We made the trip in about 2 hours and passed all kinds of interesting things. Mostly wind farms.
I am sure there is more I would like to add, but this had been a long enough read I am sure, so maybe when it comes to me, I'll make a follow-up post. For now, stay tuned for the pics!
KL