Cologne, Germany

Saturday morning Curt and I loaded the car and headed about 3.5 hours north west towards Cologne, Germany. I had heard wonderful things about the 4th largest city in germany so we booked a night at the Black Sheep Hostel. The hostel was in the city center and a few subway stops from the main attraction – the Cologne Cathedral.

All tourist information for this city seems to be centered around this huge and beautiful church.

It is free to go inside but unfortunately a lot of the highlights were blocked off from our viewing.
The building of the church was started in 1248 but not finished until 1880. The structure of the church survived WWII for the most part.

The stained glass was taken to shelters and saved. Back then one of the stained glass windows cost as much two townhouses.

The windows and the pews were intricately decorated.

Tourists can pay 2.50 euro each and climb 509 spiral stairs to get to the top of one of the church spires. Your legs may be shaking by the end but the views over the Rhine river are spectacular.

And lucky for us we got a weekend with blue skies. On the way up the stairs you pass the blockenstube were 24-ton Fat Peter resides. The claim on Fat Peter is he is the largest free-swinging church bell in the world.

Cologne also claims to have the first pedestrian shopping mall in Germany on Hohe Strasse. We didn’t spend long here because Saturdays in a shopping area in germany feel as crowded as Christmas time.
Dinner was at Fruh am Dom which was a former brewery. They serve the traditional german fare with Kolsch beer. These beers are served in a small skinny glass but is very tasty. The waiter brings you more until you tell them to stop.

After dinner I took some photos of the cathedral at night. I was disappointed to find that it wasn’t lit up in colors like I had seen in photos during my research. But it was still beautiful.

We escaped the cold by heading to a theater that plays English movies and saw Australia. It’s a really great movie and doesn’t even seem almost 3 hours long.
In one day we hit the main highlights of Cologne so we will head home in the morning.