Dinner in Cologne

  Cologne, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany
Thursday, September 25, 2008

'Woo-hoo' Blur - Song 2

We made it to Germany!

On the day that the dude flew accross the channel with what was basically an

Sign

airfix kit and an engine, we completed our own little challenge and got across on the only slightly more conventional Eurostar.

Due to the fire our tickets were valid for any train during the day, so we decided to get to St. Pancras as early as possible and checked in for the 9:28 train. 'yeh we've got space' said the man at the counter, 'no-one wants to go to Brussels'

So that was that, after tearful fairwells to our families we were through passport

Front of the Eurostar, if you like trains!

control and into the big wide world. For all it's shiny-new greatness, alluding to the glory years of cross channel train travel (when the orient express would steam out of London for all of an hour of so before you'd get kicked off onto a ferry) St. Pancras only has one platform where your friends and loved-ones can see you off.

Fortunately, our train was on that one platform. Unfortunately, every silver lining has a cloud, the East Midlands express to Leeds was obscuring our carriage and in our newly mobile-free state we had no way of conveying this information.

Just as we started to pull out and no more than a few minutes after those lucky people set off on their way to Leeds, there were Sarah's Mum and Brother, and my Mum and Dad, who had blagged their way throught the ticket barriers and were running down the platform waving furiously. So there we were, waving back, whilst the rest of the carriage were presumably wondering why these people were running down the platform waving furiously as two grown adults departed on the long and perilous journey to.......Brussels!

Sign 2

The journey passed without incident, as per the ticket man's information not many people did want to go to Brussels, they all got of at Lille. But after a couple of hours we were in 'Brussels Midi'

Midi as in 'middle of', or so I thought, but in fact this was midi as in 'sort of'. We had 4 hours to kill so dumped our new back-breakers in the lockers and set off to see what we could find.

We found very little.

The 'Midi' area seems to be roughly comparible to Croydon, in the sense that it has trams, and a sky-scraper, and isn't very close to anything very interesting. It was hot though, so after a fruitless hour wandering past computer shops and not a lot else we went back to the station and did the only thing that seemed

So it's a giraffe drinking beer, and?

reasonable, sat down, drank Belgian beer, ate Mussels!

And that was that, four hours killed, second country visited, we departed for Cologne Hauptbahnhof.

Hauptbahnhof as in 'central station' and indeed it was, just outside is the quite amazing cathedral which sadly isn't lit up at night, but it still looked great and with night just setting in we had the obligatory photo call.

Having seen the cathedral we went back to the station and did the only thing that seemed reasonable, sat down, drank German beer, ate Bratwurst!

Giraffe eating Bratwurst

And that was Germany, and that was day 1 down. At 10:30pm our sleeper train to Poland rolled in, we got into our bunks and reflected on a hectic but thoroughly enjoyable first day of this travelling lark!