Day trip to Trier

After an unsuccessful attempt to buy tickets to see the newly-reunited Oasis this morning, I caught the train from Luxembourg to nearby Trier, the oldest city in Germany.

Stepping out into the second German city I've visited, the linguistic ambiguity of Luxembourg felt well and truly behind me - in fact the language I've seen most often here aside from German has been Latin!

Trier was the Roman Empire's most important outpost in the north of the empire - it was the seat of one of the emperors during the Tetrarchy and for a time was home to Emperor Constantine, the man who converted the Roman Empire to Christianity. The legacy of the Roman Empire is still very visible today in the sheer number of Trier's most prominent sights - the Porta Nigra, Kaiserthermen, Konstantin-Basilika, Barbarathermen and Römerbrücke are all Roman structures, many of which have been in continuous use to the modern day.

After the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, Trier maintained its prominence as an electorate in the Holy Roman Empire, and is also notable for being the birthplace of Karl Marx, whose former house is now a museum (which charges an entry fee, naturally!)

The city has a lively feel, particularly in the Altstadt. Like many cities in this part of the world, the streets are clean and dotted with public fountains dispensing drinkable water. There are plentiful green spaces and the city is filled with cyclists and pedestrians. For lunch I had a Zummerflammkuchen, a summer-themed twist on Flammkuchen. Literally translated as "pie basket in the flames", it's effectively a pizza with crème fraîche or fromage blanche instead of mozzarella, native to the Rhineland-Palatinate and Alsace-Lorraine.Read more