Köln, Germany

Day 28:

Back in Germany, away from the unbiasedly offensive Dutch language to the mildly angry sounding German language. Yes, you read that right, German sounds less abrasive the Dutch.

At Amsterdam Centraal, we knew what train we were going to take, and what time it left. But while waiting at the track, we noticed a little message at the bottom that translated to surcharge train. We decided that we would go get reservations, just in case. But since reservations technically aren't allowed to be last minute, we thought we would have to go on the next one 2 hours later. The lady at the desk told us she could put us on the one that was leaving in... 4 minutes. On the complete opposite side of the train station. And she said, "you're young, you can do it. And its the last car, so it'll be easy". So we jet for what we took to be the last car that would be easier for us to catch. Turns out we were at the wrong "last car". So it was an adventure walking through thin aisles with our massive bags on. After that, we had a painless train ride of just under 3 hours. But just as we were approaching the city... you know the clouds that come over Pride Rock after Mufasa gets killed, Scar takes over and Simba goes away? Pretty much those exact clouds completely covered the city. After that ominous experience, we pulled up to the train station, got out expecting it to be bitterly cold. Nope, perfect temperature. Oh, and we were also greeted by the tallest twin spired church in the world. Absolutely our favorite church so far. We were stopped in our tracks for a good 3 minutes. We thought St Petri in Bremen was going to be our favorite, but it just lost its top spot.

While on this trip we haven't done too much on travel days, and this one was no different. We made dinner at home and, being in the home of the Kölsch, picked up a local beer. We also made a new friend and subsequently named him Meeko because he has a racoon tail.

Thunderstorms are expected for tomorrow, so fingers crossed that we can still make it around to see the sights. I see quite a bit of potato soup in our future!Read more