Family Blog 2: Days 9 and 10, Germany--Cologne, Munich, Cathedrals, Marienplatz, Rheingarten, Trains, Mother’s Day

The next morning we got up early, checked out and caught a train for Cologne, Germany. Any travel in Germany you need a mask still.

On the train:

Leaving the hotel:

At the train station waiting to get on our train:

We made it to Cologne, Germany. We started walking to the front of the train station only to see the MASSIVE Cologne Cathedral right outside the train station. You can see it even before we left the station:

The Cologne Cathedral was HUGE!! The pictures don’t do it justice. It was very intricately carved and beautiful:

I never got a good picture of all of it from outside so I found this one from the internet:

It was too early to check in to our hotel so we dropped off our luggage at the front desk and walked back over to the cathedral to explore. We decided to pay a little extra for the chance to climb the stairs up into the spires. It was 533 stairs to the top. Most of it was on a spiral staircase which made you dizzy after a while--haha!

Towards the top they have a small section where you can walk around the bell part of the spire. It was a narrow stretch, but interesting:

The bells would chime every 15 minutes. The biggest bell never rang and so we asked the employee why. He said that the biggest bell is so loud it would hurt your hearing if it chimed while you were that close to it. The biggest bell only chimes for big events such as the death of the pope, etc. So we only heard the smaller bells chime, but they were plenty loud.

We didn’t time it right on the way up. The bells chimed as we were climbing up the stairs, but you can definitely hear them while we climb. I recorded this 10 second clip of them chiming as we climbed the stairs:

Finally we reached almost to the top, but we were TiRed!! We took a break for a few minutes before climbing up the last stretch of stairs.

Here’s the last stretch of stairs. The ceiling was pretty cool to see, though:

Inside one of the spires at the top:

The view was spectacular:

The top of the spire is still taller than where we were at:

The view of the Rhine river:

The gargoyles were cool:

After enjoying the views from the top it was time to hike back down a very narrow spiral staircase:

We were pretty high up. Here’s a view of the people on the ground from our vantage point:

We stopped again at the bell tower part and waited for the bells to chime this time. Here’s a short clip of what they sounded like:

When we got down to the ground we went inside the actual cathedral. A few facts about the cathedral are that it is the tallest twin spired church in the world and the second tallest cathedral in Europe. They started building it in 1248, but construction was halted in 1560 leaving it unfinished. They restarted construction around 1814 and finally completed it in 1880.

It was so big inside. The stained glass windows were pretty:

A view from the back all the way to the front of the cathedral. The ceilings were so tall.

A view from down the side of the church:

More stained glass windows:

There were two tombs inside the cathedral. One was for Gottfried IV Arnsberg who died in 1371.

The flooring was made of small mosaic tiles:

The other tomb was of Engelbert von Der Mark:

Down the stairs was a crypt:

While we were there they were playing the organ. I recorded a short clip of the organ and what the inside of the cathedral looked like:

Then we got to visit the cathedral treasury. It housed interesting religious relics that were important to the cathedral. Here’s some different coins that have been used through many years:

A few artifacts that I thought were interesting:

After visiting the cathedral we walked over to check out Stadt Köln (City Hall):

Here’s the Jan von Werth statue/fountain that was close by the cathedral:

There were some other cool cathedrals around as well. We stopped by to check out the Great St. Martin Church:

It was very quiet inside. Aaron and I were the only ones inside for a bit.

I think the ceilings all are interesting. I guess that makes me a bit weird, but I think they are cool:

Next we walked over and saw the church Kirche Maria Himmelfahrt:

Then we saw the Basilica of St. Ursula:

The history of this church is that it was supposedly built on a site that a British princess, Ursula, and 11000 of her virgin followers went to Rome, but were martyred by the Huns in 1155. Inside the church the bones of the supposed martyrs were put on the walls in the Golden Chamber of the church in different patterns. That was a surprise to see bones on the wall. Here’s what the Golden Chamber wall with the bones looked like:

The church was dedicated to the Holy virgin St. Ursula with her tomb by the front of the church:

After visiting some of the churches we did stop by and walk across the Hohenzollern Bridge also known as ‘The Lock Bridge’. It is where couples as a sign of their eternal love and fidelity, they attach their lock to the bridge and throw the key to the lock into the Rhine. There were a TON of locks:

On the other side of the bridge was a great view of the Cologne Cathedral:

For dinner we stopped by Peter Haus and ate outside. What we didn’t realize is that we sat in the Biergarten which is where the people who want to drink beer sit. So they immediately brought us two beers so when we said we didn’t drink, the server gave us the weirdest look. We didn’t realize why the weird look until much later on.....whoops! There definitely was a big language barrier. It was interesting because when we were in Belgium most people could speak English. When we got to Germany that was not the case. It was a lot harder to communicate because both Aaron and I only had high school German and that was.....let’s just say lacking. Anyway, we did manage to order something for dinner. Aaron got some sausage and potato salad with a coke to drink:

I got a pork schnitzel with a salad with a Coke Zero. They were both very yummy!

After dinner we walked around the city some more. We stopped by the Heinzelmannchenbrunnen fountain which is a fountain dedicated to the legend of house elves.

The rest of the evening we walked up and down the Rheingarten Park which is a park strip that follows along the Rhein River with a bunch of bike and walking trails. It was a pretty walk.

The next morning we ate a quick breakfast at the hotel. They had good sausages for breakfast which is what you would think to find being in Germany--haha!

We packed up, but had a few minutes to spare before we had to leave for our train. We decided to walk back over to the Cologne Cathedral to look around again. We didn’t get a chance to walk around inside the cathedral since it was Sunday and they were doing Mass. However, we did get to stand in the entrance and still take everything in.

We then picked up our bags and walked over to the train station to head to Munich, Germany. We only were in Cologne for less than 24 hours, but it was one of our favorite places to visit on this trip.

On the train to Munich things didn’t go as smoothly. From what we gathered there were some issues on the track so the train was delayed by two hours. We didn’t fully understand because all the announcements were in German and we didn’t understand them. We could only kind of tell what was said when our train neighbors, two older couples, would listen to the German announcements, sigh and then talk to each other in German, but you could tell they were annoyed. The countryside was pretty to see while we were riding, though.

It was supposed to be a 5 hour ride, but turned into a 7 hour train ride to Munich. Aaron and I sat across from each other during the trip in a train compartment with two other older German couples.

We ended up getting to Munich two hours later than what we had planned for. That made me a bit sad since that afternoon was what we had scheduled for seeing stuff around the city and now we didn’t have a whole lot of time to see the things I had wanted to see. Anyway, we made the best of what time we did have. We got off the train and checked into our hotel then headed over to the Marienplatz or the marketplace.

The Marienplatz was cool to see and hear. Its supposedly has been around since 1158. It was lively:

We stopped to the see the Rathaus Glockenspiel. It is a clocktower with different figures that represent events from Munich’s history. It rings twice daily, but we missed being there at the time it played. However, it was still cool to see:

We did get to see the inside court of the town hall:

We got to listen to the bells from the Frauenkirche or Church of our Lady. It was a tall church. We missed the chance of climbing the towers, though. Oh well it was still cool to see.

Frauenkirche inside. We did’t get to go further inside since Mass was going on, but it was still cool to see:

Towards the front of the church was the memorial to the great Wittelsbach:

I love the stained glass windows:

After walking around we stopped by to get dinner at Augustiner Klosterwirt.

They served traditional Bavarian Food that didn’t disappoint. All the employees wore Bavarian clothing, too.

It took a bit for them to find a server that could speak English so we could order. Aaron got sausage, sauerkraut, with shredded horseradish.

I got some more schnitzel. It was yummy!

After dinner we walked around a bit more and saw the Mariensaule or Column of St. Mary in the middle of the Marienplatz. It has been there since 1638.