Once upon a time...

...I went to Köln (Cologne), the fourth-largest city in Germany. (Sidenote: I have now been to three of the top four! Berlin, München, Köln. Next up, Hamburg? No, wait, I'm going to Munich next. If not to a tiny town in the Schwarzwald, but that's another story.) It was just for the weekend, and I kept having the feeling that I had no idea what Köln was really about. For some reason, we didn't use any public transportation, and walking everywhere got us pretty tired, pretty fast.

Not to mention all the museums. In Köln, I learned that I actually do like museums. I had a super long list of museums to visit, all of which sounded interesting, and in two days we saw four museums, which I think is kind of a lot. Especially if two days is all you have. That explains why we didn't see a lot of the city, or figure out how it all fits together. But I did get to know that cathedral. Our hostel was about six minutes from the train station, which is right next to the Dom, and we saw it by night, by dawn, by beautiful afternoon sunlight, by dusk, from the inside, from the outside, from across the Rhine, and during our layover in Köln on the way back home from Belgium, wearing my backpacking backpack.

Anyway, museums. And churches! Köln is full of old Romanesque churches. Everywhere you look, there's a steeple poking up in the distance. The Museum Schnütgen was a museum IN a church, full of medieval religious art. The tapestries and glass collection that I wanted to see were mysteriously not on display, but Maraia, Tabs, and I had a fun time looking at all the sculptures and things...although, godless heathens that we are, we didn't know what was going on a lot of the time. After three more churches, I realized I was getting sick of churchy things.

The first day, we went to a museum about the Gestapo in Köln and Nazis in general, and I learned that I was already getting sick of museums about Nazis and World War II and the Holocaust—and that was back in October. Mainly because it was an archive as well as a museum, and I couldn't read that much text auf Deutsch, especially not in that stupid blackletter font they used in the newspapers back then. (Edit: It's called Fraktur.)

Köln reinforced that waking up early to see the sunrise, although initially painful, is usually worth it. We walked into the cathedral before dawn and got to experience it almost empty and myserious in the dark. Waking up that early for trains, however, is not as worth it. Besides the whole not-missing-the-train thing.

I also learned, when I looked at Maraia's photos, that red tights with hiking boots look stupid.

After Köln was Aachen. There, I learned that gingerbread is delicious when you want to buy it, even if it has weird crunchy things in it. And things that look like they are covered in melted cheese are sometimes Reisfladen. And ordering four desserts for four people and sharing them is worth the disapproving looks from the waitstaff. Oh, and fancy mosaics are really, really cool. Also, there are a lot of pieces—no, little bits of thread—from people's loincloths in the most important ecclesiastical treasury north of the Alps. And by people, I mean saints. And gold! Lots and lots of gold!

On the way to Belgium, we hopped on a train heading in the same initial direction as ours, but leaving 40 minutes earlier. Why? I'm not sure. I got to use my terrible French and embarrass myself in front of everyone. But we still got to Bruges.

Happy Trees

It's supposed to snow in Freiburg tomorrow or Friday, I forget which. The month ends tomorrow (tomorrow is Friday in this context...). I feel like Maraia just pointed out to me that we'd been here eight weeks, but the ninth week is already over half done.
Classes are a lot of reading, which is a lot of work. There's also a lot to do, and a lot of traveling across the city. Tonight I decided to be social despite not sleeping enough last night, and then managed to miss the Straßenbahn by like a minute and therefore arrived home much later than I had planned. For some reason, now I'm updating this instead of reading/reviewing vocab/packing—tomorrow, after a four-hour block of class, I'm traveling to Aschaffenburg, where my aunt lives.

For now, I just wanted to reassert my existence and put up a few of my fall-y pictures from my trip from however many weeks ago, to remind the world that it's a little early for snow. Especially since my winter coat is with my aunt and I've been so cold! Life is good, but way too busy right now.

Photos: 1. View out the train over the Rhine in the Rhineland. I love trains.
2. In Köln.
3 & 4. In Bruges/Brugge, Belgium

Heading North

I wanted to write about Heidelberg, where I was last Saturday, but I haven't put the pictures up yet. I wanted to write about the excitement of how many options I have—travel destinations, classes...life. But it's 2 am in Germany and I have to be on a train before 8 am which means I have to be on the S-Bahn at 7:15 am which means I am going to be very, very tired.

Hopefully this all doesn't mean I'm going to get sick during my week of travel. Köln/Cologne for three nights, Aachen for a day, and then Bruges/Brugge (French/Dutch, and really it should be Dutch because it's in Flanders and they don't like French)...for four nights. I am so awake right now. Tomorrow I am going to be so tired. We're taking regional trains to Köln because they're a lot cheaper, but that means lots of connections and a long layover and an eight-hour trip. BUT!—

I'm going to the burial place of Charlemagne and the oldest major city in Germany and hopefully seeing old Roman stuff and then going to Belgium, a country I have never been to before.

The articles on the NYTimes talk about how Bruges stopped being important during the second half of the 15th century, when the river that connected it to the sea silted up. And since then, it has slept...until the first half of the 20th century, when its great potential for tourism was noticed. (But not until very recently for Americans.) One article said that, like Sleeping Beauty, Bruges awoke unchanged. And that what you notice is not exactly the past, but timelessness.

I guess I'm getting taken in by the Travel section trying to be poetic.

Fall and spring are apparenlty the best times to come, when the tourists aren't there. That article was written in 1986 so who knows if that's still true, but I'm hoping. And I want to follow the advice of another article...wake up early and walk the streets at 4 am, when it's totally empty and could just as easily be the 1400s. The article said that you would think Jan van Eyck was about to turn the corner.

The book I've been reading for the past month and a half (Niccoló Rising by Dorothy Dunnett) takes place primarily in Bruges, at the peak of its mercantile power, under the reign of Duke Philip of Burgundy. I'm halfway through the book, and my mom told me she wished I'd read more of it, so I'd have a better understanding of Bruges. Maybe after eight hours of travel I will have.

I'm setting another post to post sometime next week. I haven't decided when. And maybe I'll post from exciting places. At the very least, I'll be checking my email occasionally.

P.S. I just glanced at the Wikipedia link I put in, and saw the summary of this series. And I think I'm going to need more of them, pronto. He goes to Iceland! I wish flights to Iceland weren't so limited. With the super-low Icelandic Króna, now's the cheapest time to go. New Year's Eve?? In Reykjavik??

I am insatiable. Goodnight!