Our train Thursday was well, slow, with an hour outside of Augsburg spent sitting waiting for a stuck train switch to open up. Finally got to Koln (we call it Cologne) and found our hotel to be great, a nice steak dinner before bed, nice room, Mom was very happy, and then we awoke on Friday morning to dark damp and drippy. That didn't keep us from the Cathedral, where we went to what was called 'Hi. Mass' in a side chapel in the Koln Dom, a little chapel with very hard wood pews and kneelers, a Mass where the priest faced the altar with his back to us, there was music and an organist, and all of Mass was in German, but that's OK.
We spend some time afterwards touring the Cathedral under less than optimum lighting conditions, raining and darkish so the stained glass windows only looked kinda ordinary. Pictures to follow.
Wait, I forgot to say that before we went out there was a great breakfast buffet and Mom pretty well....yay! Bacon and eggs and more British kinds of breakfast foods, must be the influence of the Channel Tunnel and more Brits coming over for business and fun.
After touring Cathedral back to hotel in the rain, then back to the Cathedral and the shopping that's right outside, and more fish for lunch at the local Nordsee (if you ever come to Germany the Nordsee for a chain is a real find, if you like fish that is!). Did some more bumming around in the rain before making it back to hotel to fetch the bags, then to the train station.
I can remember when all European train stations had legions of baggage carts and they were all free, then they started to charge for their use, but you got your money back if you brought the cart back. Koln, no baggage trolleys, and with two big bags and two smaller ones we needed one. Decided to 'check' the bags for 2 Euros a load in an automated baggage checker which really worked sweet, then went to the DB infopoint to ask if there were any baggage carts. Well, there were, and I had to surrender my passport to be able to use one of them, the person there told me they had many until two years ago when people who needed money were stealing the carts and having them melted down for the scrap metal value! Anyway, navigated the maze of the Koln station on a Friday afternoon and got on this train, Mom's had a piece of chocolate cake and a Diet Coke and I've had a mini-size beer and we're off to Paris!
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