The Epic Eurotrip--Chapter 6: Mein Kampf (Germany--Cologne, Rhine River, Loreley)

Sadly, we didn't get to go to Berlin. It's located way too far to the east (then again, we went to Vienna......) The first stop in Germany was Cologne. Cologne is known for the famous Cologne Cathedral. This Gothic style cathedral was built in 1248......or I should say they started building this in 1248, stopped at around 1473, and restarted in 19th century. It took them over 600 years to finish this. Chinese people would laugh at them ("We Chinese so good. We finish build in 20 days. Europeans stupid.") Okay I'm just joking here.

One of the churches you have to see
when going to Europe.

When I saw this building, the first thing that came across my mind was: "You. Are. Fucking. Beautiful." Seriously, it's such an awesome building. It looked very majestic and holy. We should get one of these in California. Due to my crappy camera (and space between me and the cathedral) and the height of this building, I couldn't snap a photo that covers the entire facade of the building. Nonetheless, this picture should give you an idea what this thing looks like. We got there on a Sunday, which is church day. Local people came to church for service while the tourists took pictures in the back. I mean, wtf?! They actually allow people to do that. I would be really pissed if I were actually attending the service. In the cathedral, you can donate (every church has donation boxes around. Some even charge you for going into the church.), take pictures, walk around, stand there and enjoy the service, or buy some postcards (again, every major church has this.) I stayed inside for around 20 minutes only. Couldn't help. After a while it got really crowded inside, and I felt like there was not enough air.

This is a shopping center for local people.
They can buy H&M here......

The plaza in front of the cathedral is pretty big, and there are apparently many pickpockets around (although I didn't see any.) I heard many stories about pick-pocketing on the bus. Many of our members were paranoid (we actually got robbed in France. Europe is dangerous. Make sure you look like a poor student and hide your important belongings when you go.) You would think this place is full of ancient stuff, judging from the look of this place, but no, it's not true. The street next to it has all the modern stores, like Gamestops and H&M (again, Europeans fucking love H&M. It's everywhere.) It's a very modern looking street with a lot of people. Normally, many stores wouldn't open on Sunday in Europe, but almost all the stores were open here. I guess it's the difference between a shopping center and a normal, suburb town (thinking of San Francisco vs. Fremont.) On this street, I found one of the things I must try while in Germany, the wurst!!!!!!

How can you not try this when you're in Germany?

I don't know how legit that wurst was, but it was tasty. I got it in a small wurst shop (using the Chinese logic: the smaller and dirtier a restaurant is, the tastier the food is. It's true in Asia.) They served in hot dog style, with ketchup and mustard. It doesn't look that big in the picture, but it was gigantic. This one wurst actually got me full for six hours (it's bigger than a Costco hot dog, just for comparison.) There's something they added in this wurst that created a tea-type smell (only a hint.) I gotta say, whoever thought of this was a genius. I tried to ask what they put in this wurst, but they wouldn't tell me. I'm not sure if it's their secret ingredient or they simply didn't understand what I was saying (sorry I don't speak German.)

Side view of the cathedral.

After lunch, I headed back to the church, and I saw the side view of this place. Again, really beautiful. In Europe, you see several things everywhere--church, painting, sculpture, and castles. These 4 things are what tour guides would take you to see. Since there are SO MANY of them, you started losing the feel after a while. If you only want to see 2 or 3 churches, this one should be one of them (another being St. Peters in Vatican City. Even the Notre Dame in Paris is kinda whatever.) Then I realized that there's something else around the church. i went downstairs and saw a museum of when and how this place was built. There was also a ticket booth that grands you entrance to the bell tower (one of the two tall, pointy towers) for 3 euros. Of course, I went up.

The climb wasn't pretty, though. The stairs were very narrow and very steep. They also winds up (the diameter of the tower wasn't really big. The one is Pisa was much bigger.) What was worse was that going up and down share the same stairs. Wow, it was pretty insane that they didn't do crowd control for this place. People could have tripped and died.

The damage tourists have done.

There's something I want to talk about here. I've seen it throughout my trip. I got really pissed seeing these things. Tourists bring in money, and they also bring destruction of a place. This cathedral cane be dated all the way back to 1200. That's hitting the 800 year mark. Yet this is what happens when tourists show up--leaving traces and signs that show they were here. I've seen some Smiths, some Browns, some Lee's, some Tanaka's, and some European names that I couldn't read. I mean, come on, people! This is history! This is something that shows the past, and you're destroying it like this? This is a blurry picture because I took it in a hurry (people were behind me) but it really shows what kind of damage tourists can do. It's a dilemma. Do you want money, or do you want to preserve the history? It's really hard to do both, or else this wall wouldn't look like this. People, please don't be assholes when you go on trip. You can take pictures of a place, and that already shows that you were here. You don't need to draw or write something on the wall like "xxx was here" or "love this place! -xxx" No one cares if you love this place or not, and no one cares if your name is Samantha Love Brown (seriously, love is your middle name!?) Speaking of taking photos, some places forbid you from using flash, including Louvre and Notre Dame. Unfortunately, TOURISTS DON'T GIVE TWO SHITS!!!!!! There was a big sign in front of the gate of Notre Dame that says "no flash" with a giant picture of a camera with flash being crossed out. Now if you start counting from 1 after you see flash. You will never get to 5. That's how ignorant tourists are. You can't even use "I don't understand local language" as an excuse. The sign has a picture, and it has messages written in multiple languages (including Japanese and Chinese.)

Okay, enough of the rant. The tower took me 15 minutes to climb up, and, being so out of shape, I was so tired when I get to the top. You don't really get a view from the top since everything is pretty much enclosed, and you can only see things through small windows. Still, I climbed this. It makes me feel awesome.

After Cologne Cathedral, we went for the tour on Rhine River. This one was in the mountains, and the weather changed so frequently. It literally went from sunny to rainy (pouring) to sunny (few clouds) again within a hour. It made taking photos really hard. I managed to take some though. Rhine River is really long. It goes across multiple countries and is considered one of the most important rivers in Europe (river brings food and nutrients, which bring people to build villages, which then become cities and nations.)

The river tour took about an hour and only traveled in one section of the river. This river has its wide parts and narrow parts, and we went through the narrowest part of the river. The reason it's so narrow (it actually is still pretty wide, in my opinion.) is because of this giant rock called Loreley. This rock blocks the majority of the water and made the river narrow. Because it's narrow, the water speed goes up. Back in the old time, many accidents happened at this spot. Therefore, people started telling legends and myths. One of them is that there are seven girls who got turned into stone, and apparently you can see 7 stones lying near this rock when the tide is low. Also, when the wave hits the stones, you can hear 7 echoes. Thus people say these echoes are from the 7 girls. We didn't see the 7 stones, and of course didn't hear the 7 echoes. The second one is that there used to be a blonde girl standing on this rock singing, and people would get distracted and crash (much like a Siren story). This band called Blackmore's Night even made a song for this lady (for crashing the ships.....? I gotta say it's really catchy......).

Loreley statue

The actual "Loreley"

A painting that shows the story of Loreley

One of the castles. I think this one is Cats castle

Besides the Loreley, we also saw many castles on the hills. These castles used to be the watch place for the outposts or customs for the ships (collecting taxes and stuff.) This river is known as the main river for traveling around countries, so many merchants used to use this river. For the landlords, it means income. Throughout the hour we were on the boat, we saw at least 4 castles. The names of the castles are pretty weird. There's a Cat Castle, and there's a Mouse Castle. This is one of those trips that make you feel "Oh man! I wish I had a better camera or at least a better lens!" Too bad, this is the best I could do.

It's not that great.....lol

The day didn't end there. We then went to the restaurant right across from Loreley. They served pork knuckles!!!!!! Another must-have thing in Germany. We also had German Beer here. Honestly the knuckle was not that great. I'm not sure if it's supposed to be cooked this way, but the skin is way to tough. You couldn't even bite it off with one bite. Also, since there was no salad to go with it (there was only some kind of pickled veggies) it got really dry after a few bite. Beer definitely helped.


Next stop: Heidelberg, Germany, and we're entering Switzerland soon!