Had a
couple of days to fill in between visiting Anne and heading to Nadja’s place,
so I jumped on the net the day before to search for a hostel in Stuttgart. They were all full.
Never mind,
I thought. I’ll head to Frankfurt
instead. A few of Anne’s friends had
told me how great Frankfurt was, so it seemed like a good choice. Except that all of the hostels there were
full, too.
Finally, I
decided to check out Cologne (Köln), since it was near Nadja’s town
anyway. Finally, I was in luck, so I
booked 2 nights in the Pathpoint Cologne
HI hostel. Which is a really nice
hostel, and really close to the centre and the main train station, just in case
any of you ever need a hostel in Cologne.
The next
day, I took the train to Cologne, which was no mean feat, since I had to change
about 4 times. I was pretty pleased with
myself for achieving that. In fact, my
main problem was when I decided to use the station
loos in – Mainz, I think – and couldn’t get my (massive) suitcase through
their wonderful barriers. Ended up
having to go back out, then a nice man helped me, and I had to duck through a
gap to avoid paying for the second time.
(Hate paying for toilets. Grrr.)
Found the
hostel really easily, and then set out for a random walk around the city. The hostel had even given me a free map, so I
didn’t have to worry about getting (too) lost.
It was at this point that I made my great discovery… the Rhine. I love being by water (that’s what growing up
on the coast in NZ will do to you, apparently), so I spent a lot of time
wandering the banks of this river.
Headed across the bridge to get some cool views back towards the centre
of town (ie the Dom cathedral).
In the evening, I did a massive walk. Partly because I could, and partly because I
was trying to find an internet cafe. I wandered for about 45 minutes, and was on
my way back home (probably about 5 mins away) when I found one. Anyway, it was worth the walk to have seen
the city! I was waiting in line to ask
the man the dealio for using the net, thinking to myself that I was going to
have to be obnoxious and ask him to speak English, or speak some terrible,
terrible German, when (praise be) I heard him speaking French to a man in front of me.
Damn, it was nice to speak French again, and it felt so comfortable after having tried to
play the German game.
