Cologne & Bonn & Trier, Germany / Maastricht, Netherlands
February 21-24, 2007

On Wednesday afternoon Heather and I decided to take a couple of days off and go skiing. Unfortunately this spur of the moment idea had already been well planned out by the rest of the Europeans and we could not find a single resort that had space to accomodate us. So instead we got in the car Wednesday night and started driving towards Cologne and Bonn, Germany. On the way we decided to also visit Maastricht, Netherlands as well as Trier, Germany and to stop by and visit some friends that live near Ramstein Air Force Base. We drove the first night as far as Linz and stayed in a comfortable Landzeit room that had 5 beds! The next morning we drove to Bonn and drove by the old American Embassy where I used to work. Things are very different now. They have torn down the library, movie theatre, the American Cafe (Burgers and Baskin-Robbins ice-cream) and the American grocery store that were across from the neighborhood of embassy apartments. It's a little sad, but since the German capital moved from Bonn to Berlin, obviously there was little need for these (although it took them a while as it looks like they were just recently demolished and they were there in 2000 when we last visited, although vacant). The neighborhood has been sold back to Germans now. We had a hard time getting across the river. Our GPS was guiding us to the address I remember of the embassy and we were driving along the Eastern side of the Rhein River when it told us to get on a Ferry boat. We decided it was easier to drive to the next closest bridge.
From Bonn we drove to Cologne (Koeln) and visited the Cologne Cathedral, the second tallest Gothic structure in the world (second to the steeple of the Ulm Munster, also in Germany, although not nearly as impressive since it is mostly just the steeple that provides its claim to fame). Although construction began in the early 13th century, it took over 600 years to complete, finally finished in 1880. At the time it was the tallest building in the world, until four years later when the Washington Monument was built.
Only about an hour from Cologne is Maastricht, in the Netherlands and a small medievel town. It sits right at the Belgium and German borders so its history has been probably more heavily influenced by those countries than by the Dutch. It was the site of the signing of the Maastricht Treaty which effectively formed the European Community/Union in 1992. We found a nice hotel to sleep for the night in the middle of the town. The weather was still very nice so we took a short evening stroll. Since it was Thursday night, like many European cities, this meant that the shops stay open until later into the evening, so the town was still very busy. We decided to leave the stroller in the hotel room and allow Ashley to walk, which was probably a mistake. As many who read this blog will notice, most of the pictures of Ashley have her strapped securely in her stoller, as that is the only way to contain her. During our walk through the town she had a mind of her own and didn't want to have anything to do with us. At one point she just decided to sit down in the middle of a store entrance and suck on her lollipop, oblivious to the fact that we were tired and wanted to get back to our accomodations and go to sleep.
We woke up the next morning and toured the city some more. I particularly enjoyed getting out before anyone else was up and before the city awoke, walking the deserted cobblestone streets, taking in the medievel scenery around us. We ended up getting lost in the maze of buildings split by the cobblestone walkways (at some point everything starts to appear the same) until we finally arrived at a recognizable point of the town and found our way back to our hotel. We checked out and headed for Trier.
We drove through Belgium and Luxembourge, stopping for a bit in Luxembourge capital. We hadn't planned on going through this city, so we didn't research anything prior to our visit, and thus didn't really know what to see. But I must admit that the gorge that separates the two sides of the city is beautiful to drive across and we look forward to making a more deliberate trip back to the city in the future.
We arrived in Trier by about midday and really had an enjoyable time meandering the old town. It claims to be the oldest city in Germany and the Porta Negra (The Black Gate), built around 200 AD, is the largest Roman city gate North of the Alps and guarding what was the Northern point of the Roman city of Augusta Treverorum (City of Augustus in the Land of the Treveri). The city has an interesting walking district, particularly the path from the Porta Negra to the Trier Cathedral to the Trier Townhall. I found it interesting that throughout the city are giant replicas of Constantine's foot. We spotted four or five of these scattered throught the city. I am not exactly sure why they would have so many, but Katie at least enjoyed playing on one of them. The weather was great, even

JUST warm enough to warrant eating some gelato and although the cities Roman influences were obvious, the bratwursts were great.
From Trier we drove another hour to visit Chrissi Richards and her family who live in a small German town (Jettenbach) just outside of Ramstein Air Force Base. We spent the afternoon with them and Katie and Ashley had a terrific time playing with Chrissi's three girls, Rosie (6), Vanessa (4), and Caroline (3). Rosie told us that she was going to call Katie "Katelyn" because Katie is a little girl's name. They were having so much fun together we decided to just spend the night with the Richards before making the 8 1/2 hour drive back on Saturday morning. We thought about stopping in Heidelberg and visiting the castle there on our way home, but at this point it had started raining so we figured we would save that visit for another trip.