The trip to Gemund.
The trip to Cologne (I'll be using the English spelling because, frankly, I hate hunting for umlauts) was actually pretty uneventful. The 8 and a half hour overseas flight was pretty painless overall. The movies United had were kinda lame and you get really thirsty about 5 hours in, but it went ok.
Not being able to sleep was kinda lame though.
Still, we got into Frankfurt and spent an hour or so putzing around and eating in the mall under the airport (seriously, the airports in Munich and Frankfurt had fully fleshed out malls in them, it was kinda psychotic). Then we got to hop on the train for Cologne!!!
The train ride was kinda nice. We sat across the table from a middle-aged German couple and got to see a large amount of the German countryside between Frankfurt and Cologne. It was there that we were first introduced to the face that Germany is covered with Rapeseed Flowers (major crop this time of year, they produce a lot of Rapeseed Oil for biodiesel).
(Photo taken from a car a few days later)
Along the way we were still able to see shelled out buildings that seemed to have been standing since the bombings and just hadn't been demolished or rebuilt (we would also see anti-tank barriers on farms between Cologne and Aachen later that week). When we finally pulled into Cologne the first thing we saw was the Cathedral. This is apparently intentional, they want it to look like the train is about to head right into the Cathedral before veering to the right. It's not a perfect effect since you have to be in the front of the train to really enjoy the full value of it, but it's a nice thought.
We found out way to Tourist Information and got some information on the Cirque du Soliel posters we'd seen in the station. We also picked up some information on Rhine boat trips and a map of Cologne. Then we made our way back to the train station and hopped on a local train to the airport. There we took a solid tour of the facility attempting to find the Hertz desk. They rented us a Peugeot 207 3-door diesel which I thoroughly enjoyed for the rest of the week. I think I've been driving the Camry too much and I forgot how much I really really like driving small cars.
After that it was just a matter of getting our GPS up and running and then it was off on the hour long drive around the Autobahn, through the Cologne industrial district, across the countryside and into the mountains to get to our resort in Gemund. Once there we checked in and went down to the town grocery to get some food. Wound up with some frozen pizzas (they don't seem to believe in pepperoni over there, it's all salami, but I found out that a pepper-crust salami pizza is pretty decent). After that we went back to the resort apartment and sacked out for the night. We were both pretty dead exhausted and fortunately had already resigned the next day to rest and recovery from the trip over.
http://picasaweb.google.com/timswar/01SaturdayTheTrainAndThePeugeot207#
(This is the photo gallery for Saturday, the other 4 galleries are also in my picasaweb account if you want to go ahead and look at them).
Not being able to sleep was kinda lame though.
Still, we got into Frankfurt and spent an hour or so putzing around and eating in the mall under the airport (seriously, the airports in Munich and Frankfurt had fully fleshed out malls in them, it was kinda psychotic). Then we got to hop on the train for Cologne!!!
The train ride was kinda nice. We sat across the table from a middle-aged German couple and got to see a large amount of the German countryside between Frankfurt and Cologne. It was there that we were first introduced to the face that Germany is covered with Rapeseed Flowers (major crop this time of year, they produce a lot of Rapeseed Oil for biodiesel).
(Photo taken from a car a few days later)
Along the way we were still able to see shelled out buildings that seemed to have been standing since the bombings and just hadn't been demolished or rebuilt (we would also see anti-tank barriers on farms between Cologne and Aachen later that week). When we finally pulled into Cologne the first thing we saw was the Cathedral. This is apparently intentional, they want it to look like the train is about to head right into the Cathedral before veering to the right. It's not a perfect effect since you have to be in the front of the train to really enjoy the full value of it, but it's a nice thought.
We found out way to Tourist Information and got some information on the Cirque du Soliel posters we'd seen in the station. We also picked up some information on Rhine boat trips and a map of Cologne. Then we made our way back to the train station and hopped on a local train to the airport. There we took a solid tour of the facility attempting to find the Hertz desk. They rented us a Peugeot 207 3-door diesel which I thoroughly enjoyed for the rest of the week. I think I've been driving the Camry too much and I forgot how much I really really like driving small cars.
After that it was just a matter of getting our GPS up and running and then it was off on the hour long drive around the Autobahn, through the Cologne industrial district, across the countryside and into the mountains to get to our resort in Gemund. Once there we checked in and went down to the town grocery to get some food. Wound up with some frozen pizzas (they don't seem to believe in pepperoni over there, it's all salami, but I found out that a pepper-crust salami pizza is pretty decent). After that we went back to the resort apartment and sacked out for the night. We were both pretty dead exhausted and fortunately had already resigned the next day to rest and recovery from the trip over.
http://picasaweb.google.com/timswar/01SaturdayTheTrainAndThePeugeot207#
(This is the photo gallery for Saturday, the other 4 galleries are also in my picasaweb account if you want to go ahead and look at them).