Köln

Wednesday 11th

We had to get up friggen early to drive out to Hahn airport so we could catch the bus to Köln (Cologne). We got dropped off at the Bahnhof (train station) which was HUGE. There were people everywhere and lines upon lines of platforms! Crazy! We then made our way to the Kölner Dom which is the biggest Gothic church in Germany (i think). Unfortunately photos will never ever do it justice. The detail that went into that thing, I think it took (and rightly so) decades (centuries? - I'm not so good with the facts :s) to actually finish and still they haven't finished fixing it up and repairing it. Inside you loose where you are it's that massive and you spend so much time looking up at all the different heights of arches and the windows are amazing and the organ! Wow. I kept saying to Ingo, "they should let me go up there to have a look! and maybe play it!" but no, although I think they should have times where you can hear the organ being played because it was seriously magnificent (who even uses that word anymore?)

Der Kölner Dom 

So it might not look like it, but the left is at least 14 stories high (I think)

We walked around it for a wee while, but all the people (oh man all the people) were starting to get on our nerves a bit - I think they should make private viewing times for me so I can get that eerie 'this building is centuries old and so many ages have walked here before me' feeling, yep that's right - just for me! hehe ;) So we decided to go down into the crypt and then up the tower and then be on our way. 

The crypt was a lot newer, or maybe just a lot more repaired and I think is still used to bury some of the Bishops in when they die… The last entry was in 1980something and there was still room on the plaque for more entries so I'm not sure, but that's what it looked like…

Up the tower I got excited :D We had several options of how high up we could go, and I wanted to go up the highest we could so we set off up the flight of 533 spiral stairs! After 264 Stairs (I counted) We got to one of the bell towers and just missed the 11:45 Bells, but we figured the 10 minute wait till the 12o'clock bells was worth the wait so we leaned against the balcony and waited…. at 3 minutes past 12 I was upset :( looked like no bells! and we could hear all the bells in other towers and other churches going (there are about 12 churches in the city centre of Köln alone!) but then just as I was about to give up, one of the bells rung! The set up was one MASSIVE bell in the centre I think 2.5 metres high maybe? 2 going down in size on our right (you could walk right around the bell tower) and then 2 more slightly smaller ones on the left higher up with the 3 smallest ones underneath those. only the 3 closest to us on the left went, and not with their original construction instead, with a mechanical donger that hit them on the outside :/ and there were some Brits beside us who kept saying, "just wait for it, that big one's gonna be a beat when she goes" or something like that, and they were so let down when it didn't! (although I was sharing their disappointment ;) ) 

We didn't end up going any further up, Ingo claimed his knee was giving him grief :p hehe.

So we wandered around the city for a while and I continued to get more and more lethargic and exhausted! I had picked 3 sites that I thought I'd like to go see and all were on opposite sides of the city and we kept missing turn offs. But we continued our aimlessly wandering. It was hot and humid and overcast and my feet hurt and I was thirsty - all those wonderful things that come from traveling huh? Ingo also much to my frustration decided he hAD to go into globetrotter only 4 stories of outdoor gear :/ and when you're a little bit grumpy, a shop that's massive that you have to follow someone around in is not the most enjoyable activity ;) but it was an amazing interior :) 

We did manage to find a museum that had been built on old ruins but they charged a bucket load to go in and had absolutely no signage so we decided we could appreciate the combination of the new building built onto the old ruins much more from the outside anyway :) 

 So we sat down and had a minor nap in a park and watched a couple of children playing on the playground. It was nice :) and when we felt refreshed we stumbled upon an old Roman styled church that had only 2 other people in it so my eerie old church craving was satisfied! Ingo lit a candle and we wandered around, there was a crypt in this church as well but only open at certain times (which we'd missed because of my need for nap, but if we hadn't stopped for nap we may not have found it so them's the breaks) and only open for meditation and prayer so we wouldn't really have been able to go in snapping away anyway.

This church was perhaps a fifth of the size of the Kölner Dom yet it too had a massive organ up high (never to be used as there was an ordinary upright piano down at the side of the church :/) 

On our way back to the city centre we found a tiny pub called the Hänchen (I think) and it was so cute! there were fake vines all over the ceiling with fairy lights and dark wooden wall unit with blue and white kind of like delft tiles and we had a beer called Kölnesh which you only get 200ml in a glass (but it's cheap) and you can buy it by the metre or the metre squared, so that's 11 glasses of 200ml for a metre (based on the height of the glasses) or 121 glasses! phew that's a lot of beer! and people actually buy that much! Crazy! 

And then through the city we found a Lego shop which was awesome, and a Maggi store and cafe - entirely dedicated to Maggi! who would've thought?! Anyway I might have to get Ingo to fill in some of the gaps, I think from there we wandered back to the bus stop, and then were on our merry way… but memory is starting to fail me - we've just done so much! - So I'll leave it there for Mittwoch!