A Day in Cologne

Sorry this post is a day late.  I was exhausted yesterday and would rather read for two hours than write a blog entry. :)

Yesterday morning I biked down to Aldi, which is kind of the German equivalent of WalMart, except smaller and awesomer.  I wanted to get some scarves that their magazine displayed.  It took me a lot longer than it could have.  I found the scarves I wanted right away, but then I was sucked into being an old lady's fashion consultant. :) I had been wearing a cream and white scarf that I had gotten from Aldi last year, and an old woman asked me about it.  She was looking for a neutral scarf like it.  She kept asking me to open the scarf boxes so she could see the scarves better and also asked my opinions.  I guess I did a good deed. :)


Then I took the bus with my grandparents to Cologne, a big city a little ways outside of Leverkusen.  Well, actually Leverkusen is a little ways outside of Cologne, seeing as Cologne is the bigger city.  Cologne gets a lot of tourists, so you don't hear everyone speak German, and English is more common around there.

Some of the bigger busses here have accordion-like things in the middle to help them go around corners.  I don't know if there are busses like that in America, but I wanted to mention it just in case, because I find them cool. :)

From the outside

 From the inside

When we got off the bus, the first thing we did was walk to the Kölner Dome.  (Köln is German for Cologne.)  The cathedral is kind of the icon of Cologne.  To get there, we crossed the Rhein river on a super cool bridge.  The bridge has railroad tracks in the middle and pedestrian paths on the sides, and the grate thing between the two is covered in locks.  The bridge is long, too, and the whole thing is filled with locks.  It's really cool.  You might have seen something like it if you've ever been to Paris, but this bridge is longer and has more locks.

If you don't know anything about the locks, on any bridge, here's how it works: if two people are in love, they write (or have engraved) their names on a lock and lock it onto the bridge, which confirms their love and "locks" it.

The bridge with the cathedral in the background

Believe it or not, this is the empty side of the bridge.  It gets really full more to the left.

Then we walked around inside the cathedral.  It's a Catholic church.  I personally think it looks a lot like the Notre Dame, not in shape but in Gothic style.  I have no idea if it's supposed to be in Gotohic style or not.  Who knows.

 Out of everything, I was most impressed by the floors, mosaics made out of tiny tiles

After thoroughly examining everything in the church–okay, not that thoroughly–my grandpa and I decided to climb the cathedral, just like you can climb up into the Notre Dame.  My grandma stayed while my grandpa and I went up an endless spiral staircase.  In case you're wondering, here's the information (yes, they had it in German and in English.)

Dang it, I only counted 512 steps!

While climbing up, we stopped to look at the bells, and then continued all the way up to look out from one of the cathedral's two spires.

The second spire with the Rhein river in the background

 

That was fun. :)  After, we met up with my grandma and went to a really pretty, old restaurant with delicious food.  I had schnitzel with onion sauce as well as herb rice and a salad.  It was yummy!

That's the ceiling.

Our stomachs filled to the bursting, we checked out the shopping street.  The street itself is old, from the time of the Romans.  Now it's a really busy shopping street that's long enough to have four H&Ms.  No joke, there are four: One mostly women, one men, one called H&M Amor, and one for bathing suits and underwear.

I found absolutely nothing.  It was really disappointing, but I guess I don't really need any more clothes anyway.  But still.  We didn't even get through all the stores because there were so many!

Overall, it was a pretty good day, even if it ended with a headache and utter exhaustion. :)

German word of the day: Ausflug.  Pronunced OWS-floog.  It means 'outing,' or 'excursion' if you want to get fancy. :)

The Sunflower Project: Since the sprouts are finally getting pretty big, I decided to be efficient and take a picture of the entire bin instead of each individual pot.