Diary of Rob Szumlakowski

So first thing in the morning, had my last breakfast at the hotel, and headed to the train station. My suitcase was starting to get pretty heavy with souveneirs, and I had to pull it carefully through the streets.


The land between Berlin and Cologne was fairly flat, except for the Harz Mountains, which the train passed by. There was some cool things that I saw along the way.

A wind power generation farm just outside of Berlin:


A cool looking Volkswagen tower that I saw in Hannover:


And the Harz Mountains, in the distance:


The train was comforable, after all... I was in first class. Many of the seats had television screens in the back of them. They had two channels... both in German... and both boring.



I was awesome and missed my stop in Cologne. I was in the bathroom when the train pulled into the station, and it did not stop as long as the travel plan said it would! I had to get off at the next stop, which was only 15 minutes away, the Cologne Airport. While I waited for a normal city S-Bahn train to take me back to Cologne, I had a snack.



So, eventually I made it into Cologne. It took me about 5 hours to get there (including my slight detour at the airport). As always, I found a hotel (recommended by my Lonely Planet guidebook) near the train station.




So, I headed out for dinner. I had a döner kebap! Mmmm... I continued my walk and found myself in front of a HUGE cathedral. The Cologne Cathedral was once the tallest building on the planet. It took 600 years to finish building it. Its towers are 157 metres tall. You can see the twin towers from so far away... they are the landmark of the city. I walked around inside the cathedral, too.




I walked around the shopping streets near the cathedral for a while and bought some souveniers.



Continuing on, I found the Rhine River... it flows through Cologne. I walked over a bridge and took some pictures of the centre of Cologne with the sunset.






I walked across the bridge and walked up the waterfront for a while. There are boat cruises that travel up and down the Rhine river that disembark from Cologne. One of these boats happened to be docking as I walked by. I didn't take a cruise though.




I started to make my way back to the hotel. On the way, I passed by the cathedral again. The sun was shining orange-coloured light on the structure, and it made it look different!


I got back to hotel, dropped off my backpack, and decided I would go out and find people to hang out with. I left the hotel, crossed the tiny parking lot, and found people right away! There were some people drinking on some steps beside the street right in front of my hotel. We started drinking. They suggested a convenience store near by where I could buy some beers. The beers came in half-litre bottles and cost only ONE EURO!. The local variety of beer, Kölsch, was pretty tasty. These people were from various parts of the U.S., but one of them had been teaching English in Japan for several years. I'm sorry, I don't remember their names! They suggested I go on a walking tour of Cologne the next day at 6 PM. I said that that would be a good idea. Anyways, after a while, a really creepy German guy sat beside us and started mumbling. I'm not sure if this guy was drunk, or crazy, or both. Anyways, the creept guy kinda killed the mood, so we parted ways.