Wow, long time span here.
Trip Start
Mar 19, 2008
1
7
61
Trip End
Jul 01, 2008
Cologne,
Germany
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
March 26th
After buying my train ticket for Cologne, I loiter around the station for quite a while. I decide to head down to my "track" about 15 minutes before leaving; after taking a seat, I became a little confused, thinking that I had bought a ticket for an ICE high speed train, and sitting at the terminal was a slow ass local train being clean out by a worker. I let it slide, thinking this train would leave, and mine would show up soon. With three minutes to spare, I finally asked a station attendant if this was my train. Oh of course not. So I booked up and down a couple flights of stairs, BARELY jumping on through the doors before they closed up; I was within seconds of missing it. Damn French ticket vendor told me the wrong gate; bah. Oh well. I had two transfers and 5 hours of trains ahead of me. It took about 15 minutes of wanderings, confusion, and hopeless asking of Frenchmen to finally get on my first transfer train. Unlike the slow ass local trains, the ICE train tickets actually give riders designated seats and train cars. I did not know this. Luckily, I somehow wound up on the correct car (out of 30!), and after more questioning; I deciphered the damn ticket and found my seat. During the ride, I got brief glimpses of small French towns, and many, many abandoned Nazi bunkers, scattered all throughout the countryside (I think that's what they were). Apparently, it's too much work to destroy them, so people just live and work around them. I get to my second transfer just fine, hop into my car and am approached by a pretty damn cute German girl, asking her to help me figure out the ticket (apparently the freakin French couldn't help her either). And what do you know! We wound up sitting next to each other. Awesome. We talked for much of the way to Koln (where she would later transfer to Frankfurt, sad). I got lots of good advice on Germany, Koln, and travel. I did get her number though, so maybe I'll meet up with her in Frankfurt sometime. After arriving in Koln, wound my way outside and was immediately blown away the Dom Cathedral sitting just outside. It is, simply amazing. I didn't take any pictures, hell; I'll be here for three months, what's one day? I went out to the TI office, got a map of Koln, and was told which underground station my hostel was near. Unbeknownst to me, there are 18 Ubahn, and Sbahn lines in Koln. I took 5 minutes of head and ass scratching to figure out the chart, and I boarded the tram, got to my hostel and just threw down all my crap. I was tired of hauling stuff around. All I did that night was go into town for a bite to eat, met a German student staying in my hostel, and slept. Oh, and I did the laundry. Their dryers suck ass. I put a load in for 2 hours, and still had to hang my clothes up to dry.
