After sleeping in yesterday morning, our alarm going off at 7 am was a rude awakening. Thoughts of our Globus tour in Italy sprang to mind as I reached for my phone to stop the alarm. I could hear Simonetta, our guide's voice, as I struggled out of bed. "This is a tour, not a vacation." Yeah, yeah, yeah....
As a reminder, any links in blue will open in a new window. You won't lose your place here. Clicking on a photo will display a larger version of it.
Today would be a long day, since we were making a day trip to Köln (aka Cologne). Before we left home, we had already purchased tickets for the cathedral and the ICE train segment. Much like airline tickets, we found that the price for the ICE trains was cheaper when purchased ahead of time. Buying an ICE ticket on the actual travel day would be much more expensive. We already knew what day and what time we'd be going, so why not buy the tickets, right?
Kölner Dom
The front desk arranged for a taxi to pick us up and take us to the Wittlich train station. From there, we'd take a regional train to Koblenz, then an ICE train to Köln. We paid a little extra for reserved seats, since demand was expected to be high. We figured we'd be eating lunch and probably dinner in Köln, so we didn't bother with breakfast.
Wittlich train station
While the morning started out cool and foggy, it would gradually get warmer as the day progressed. These mornings were perfect for us! After such a long, hot summer, both of us were eager to soak up these cool days.
Our train arrived on time and we settled in for the ride to Koblenz, typically about an hour. We traveled this route a few times, and I never got tired of the view. All the vineyards on some really steep hills, and it seemed like there was a castle on a hill in every town we passed.
A ten-minute transfer to the ICE train in Koblenz, and we were off to Köln. By now, all the morning fog had burned off and the sun was shining. This ride was also about an hour long and soon enough we arrived in Köln and were ready to explore. We had only a few main objectives: tour the cathedral, experience a Kölsch in the traditional way, tour the chocolate museum and factory and squeeze in a little geocaching as time and location permitted.
The train terminal was huge! It was just a very short walk from the cathedral, which dominated the skyline. Get lost? No problem, just look up. You'll see the cathedral from just about anywhere.
Easy to spot anywhere
Thirsty? We are! I'm also ready for some lunch. Our whole trip was powered by research. We looked for points of interest, wine tastings, restaurants, geocaches and all sorts of things. All of this went into a multi-tabbed spreadsheet that we prepare for every trip. Type-A Traveler? Yep!
Armed with all this knowledge, we knew that a popular Brauhuas was right around the corner. Let's go!
Gaffel Am Dom is a popular place for both tourists and locals. While we were there for lunch, we saw workers from the nearby cathedral, locals and tourists. Köln is the birthplace for Kölsch beer. We picked this restaurant because the beer is served in the traditional manner by a server called a Köbes. Kölsch is traditionally served in a 200 mL (6.8 oz) glass called a Stange. There's a specific rule to follow when drinking this beer: The Köbes will automatically refill your beer as soon as it's empty, until you place your coaster on top. This signals you've had enough. Until that coaster goes on top, though....
Notice the coaster?
The Köbes are known for being direct and having a dry sense of humor. Just like our server. The first thing he said when I ordered our beer was, "Do you know the rules?"
Prost!
Now that we were in Germany, and having had many people tell us, "You must really try the currywurst when you're there." "Oh, make sure you try the currywurst. It's a street food and really good!" With all these endorsements, how could I not?
Another "culinary first"
OK, I have to admit: I loved it! That slightly viscous, spicy-sweet red sauce was delicious! A light dusting of curry on top complemented the sauce. Now I understand why so many people were urging us to try it. My only concern, though, is that after having authentic currywurst in Germany, it'll be like the authentic pasta arrabbiata I had in Italy. After that, the local variants just won't meet those standards. I'm very glad I tried it, though. We shared a cheese plate, too, which was nicely plated.
Nice presentation
True to form, our Köbes kept bringing refills until I placed my coaster on top of my glass. Three was the perfect number....for now. We'll have to see what happens later in the day.
With lunch done, we headed to the cathedral for our tour. Along the way, we found two more virtual geocaches. I can see why there were only virtual caches here, given how many people were always milling about.
Virtual cache
I won't divulge any spoilers here, but the virtual cache was very close by. Once we knocked out these two virtuals, we showed our tickets to the attendant at the cathedral's entrance and went inside.
We've toured the Vatican and while obviously it's different than this cathedral, the overall "look" and "feel" were similar. Even the Painted Churches of the Texas Hill Country had that feel, although on a much smaller scale. Giving it a little thought, though, and one could make the connection.
I used to carry an actual camera, a digital camera, when traveling. For the past several years, though, I've relied on my phone's camera. It takes much better photos than any dedicated camera I used to carry. Some of y'all already know where I'm going with this. Between using our phones for the digital train tickets, Google Maps, Translate and now taking photos, we had to watch our battery usage carefully. We had no hard copies of our train pass, so it was essential to save enough battery power to use our phones to display the QR code when the DB Ticket Inspector showed up. For some reason, Cindy's phone didn't charge the previous night, so she started the day with only a partial charge.
With that in mind, I limited the number of photos I took in the cathedral. Below are several I thought were the best. Much like in Italy, the photos do absolutely no justice to the real thing.
Our next priority was to place our customized "love lock" on the Hohenzollern Bridge. I ordered a customized lock online and even made sure to keep it in my carry-on bag so it wouldn't get lost. As you'll see in the photos below, there are so many locks on this bridge already that it would be impossible to place ours on the bridge itself. I did a little research, and the most common figure is about 500,000 locks on the bridge. For my lab friends, that's "dang near 6 logs of locks."
photo by Cindy Newman
Placing our lock
The GPS coordinates
Lots of locks!
Bridge selfie!
Hey, there's another virtual cache on this side. Cool, another German smiley. We'll take it. There wasn't a whole lot to see on this side of the bridge within a short walk, so we went back to the other side and made a detour on the way to the Lindt Chocolate Museum and Factory.
Several years ago, I read a fantastic non-fiction book by Adam Makos called Spearhead. It detailed a tank battle near the cathedral in March of 1945; an American tank and a German tank fought a duel that was captured by a combat cameraman. You can see a clip of it by clicking here. After doing some research, I narrowed down a location where some of the action took place. Of course I created a waypoint for it on our GPS and walked to the spot.
History, right here!
From what I could find, the photo above is where the German tank fired on an American tank and disabled it. To actually stand on the very spot of history? Wow! We'll see more of this in later installments when we explored Bastogne and Point Alpha, near Fulda.
From here, we then made the lonnnng hike to the Lindt Chocolate Museum and Factory. I mentioned earlier that we had to conserve our phone's batteries, so unfortunately neither of us took any photos of the museum or factory. Thanks to YouTube, there are many videos that take you inside. In fact, I found one video that you can watch with a simple click here. And yes, they are generous with their samples.
Our ICE train was scheduled to leave in just over an hour. We could make it, if we hustled, but this being a big city, Uber was available. I booked an Uber and we made it back to the train terminal with plenty of time to spare.
Only to discover our ICE train to Koblenz would be significantly delayed.
Crap!
The DB ticket office was helpful, though, and re-booked us on a regional train to Koblenz. This meant missing the original bus from Koblenz to Wittlich, though. Ugh! This is getting complicated, not to mention putting us back into Lieser much later than planned.
While I could text and access the internet on my phone, I couldn't make voice calls unless connected to Wi-Fi. I know! I'll just email the hotel and ask them to rebook our taxi.
They ended up having to rebook our taxi twice more, since the regional train was late and the re-booked bus was going to be a late as well. The last email from the hotel front desk said they advised the cab company of our situation and the cab would wait for us. HUGE shoutout to the front desk staff at Schloss Lieser! They truly helped us get back.
Another subtle, yet helpful thing the rail system does, at least in the train stations we used, had a printed route on the floor guiding people from the train station to the bus station. That was pretty cool!
True to their word, a cab was waiting for us at the Wittlich train station. We finally made it back to the hotel at 10:30 pm, 14 hours after departing.
Long day!
Minimum steps: 10981
4.75 miles
Coming up next, our final full day in Lieser, and another wine tasting.
The previous installments can be found by clicking their links:
Until next time....
carpe cerevisi
