Day trip to Köln

Nik had the day off, so we decided to head down to Köln for a day trip. It is about a 2 hour drive from Paderborn, so we (Nik, Danny and I) borrowed Nik's roommates car (the Honda he picked me up at the train station with) and headed southwest to the city that is known as being very liberal. It is like the San Francisco of Germany. Upon arrival into the city we could see this gigantic cathedral towering over everything. The cathedral is called The Dom, it was one of the only surviving buildings during WWII in Köln. The Dom was hit around 70 times by aerial bombs, but never collapsed. Today it is known as one of the best known architectural monuments in Germany. Construction began on the church in 1248 and took until 1880 to complete. It is one of the worlds largest churches and the largest Gothic church in all of Northern Europe. We walked the outside in aww of the detail and precision that was put into every single part of the building.

We then walked inside to find the inside was even more spectacular. The arched ceilings, the long corridors, the stain glass windows all seemed so magnificent. It truly was amazing to me that mankind was able to make something so beautiful. We sat for a while in a pew and just took in our surroundings. The pictures actually don't do The Dom justice.

We then decided to check out the surrounding area. Outside The Dom was a huge square with artists painting elaborate pictures on the ground, street performers painted in the typical silver and gold (a San Francisco reminder), a group of girls singing some good ole' english soul music and even a skateboard exhibition was going on.

We headed into a popular local brewery Früh and tasted some of the local bier. You could tell this place had been around for a very long time. Actually we were looking for the bathroom, which ended up being in the basement down a spiral staircase. Our curiosity then got to us so we explored the building a little then decided to sit for a minute to enjoy ourselves. This region is famous for its Kolsch biers, so (of course) we sampled a coupled. Not to much later we found ourselves along the Rhine River walking through a market and eating some bratwurst from a street vendor. Delicious!!! Walking along the river, tasting the local food and really absorbing the culture around us was my favorite part of the day. People were everywhere sitting in the outdoor restaurants enjoying the great weather and scenery.

There was a lot of little walking streets in the town that we discovered. Each one completely different from the last, but they all were lined with restaurants, hotels and amazing signage. I got a kick out of these streets because I had never seen anything like them in person. We wandered for a while and grabbed some ice cream before we headed to see a Nazi Museum. I had the hazelnut flavor (which tasted like Nutela) and have since decided I don't want to taste another flavor again. It was that good, nothing could beat it.

Trying to find this place that was an old Nazi Prison was much harder than we anticipated. The streets were very hard to navigate around and it was getting a little frustrating feeling like we were going in circles. We came to the conclusion we were in the near vicinity so we parked the car and decided to walk it. Right when we started to walk, I decided to look in the guide book to see how much longer the museum was open. Luckily I did, because it had closed 2 hours earlier and we could have wasted much more time than we already had on finding the place. I was a little bummed we missed it, but then decided it just wasn't meant to be. Lesson learned for the future travelers though, go to the museums early instead of later in the day (they close early) and almost all museums (at least in Europe) are closed on Monday.