My Travel Adventures

By the time my last full day in Germany came around, I had run out of cities to visit in the neighbourhood of Cologne. Therefore, I decided to venture a little farther out and took a train to Münster. This German city is best known for its centrality to the Peace of Westphalia: It is where negotiations began in 1641, taking almost seven years to reach a conclusion. One frustrated participant reportedly paraphrased Shakespeare’s Tempest , remarking that “Hell is empty, and all the devils are in Münster.”

I started the day by eating breakfast at the Cologne Main Station, which was a source of immediate annoyance. Why, I thought, would a bakery put pistachio cream on top of a croissant, only to then cover it with a sheet of wax paper and throw it in a bag? Do Germans think it is normal to eat their pistachio cream croissants by biting into the pastry and licking the cream off the paper?

Riding through the Rhine Valley offers very different views to my previous trips on this journey. While the area between Cologne, Düsseldorf, Essen, and Dortmund is a more or less contiguous suburban expanse, the Rhine south of Bonn has very few settlements until the 50-kilometre distant Koblenz. Unlike the stretch between Aachen and Maastricht, for instance, the landscape there is hilly, with an occasional fort or palace nestled comfortably above the river.

The title of today’s entry deserves an asterisk, as Maastricht obviously is not in Germany. However, Maastricht lies less than an hour’s train journey away from Aachen, which is itself about an hour’s journey southwest of Cologne. The journey to Maastricht would be much shorter, too, were it not for an awkward semi-circular detour through a series of suburbs.

It was supposed to rain all day so I decided that from my base in Cologne, I would visit some of the less interesting areas in the region. I started the day in Düsseldorf, whose main claim to fame is being the capital of North-Rhine Westphalia. This fact is somewhat meaningless, though, considering how interconnected the whole region is. In fact, I took the suburban rail all the way from Cologne to get there. Similarly to Cologne, Düsseldorf has a silly name, as “Dorf” means “village” in German, and Düsseldorf is definitely not that.

Perhaps the silliest thing about Cologne is its name. When the Romans founded the city, they called it “Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium.” Rather than shortening this name to something descriptive, later generations chose to fixate on the most generic part: Colonia, meaning colony, from which we get Köln and Cologne. To me, that sounds as silly as calling a city “City” or a town “Town.” Throughout history, Cologne was a very important commercial and political centre, as betokened by its membership in the Hanseatic League or its status as a Fortress of the German Confederation.

If the combination of Bayreuth and Würzburg seems a little strange, then congratulations on knowing a lot about North Bavarian geography. Snark aside, I do admit that had this combination of destinations been planned, it would have been a silly plan indeed, especially seeing as Bamberg (which I visited yesterday) lies right between the two cities. It would have made much more sense to visit Bayreuth and Nuremberg on one day, and Bamberg and Würzburg on the other. However, I got myself into this situation entirely by accident: I toured Nuremberg and Bamberg much faster than I thought I would, leaving myself a whole day to fill somewhere else.

Not long ago, I decided to stay in the UK while looking for a new job, which has allowed me to finally check an item off my bucket list: to make a rail journey from Prague to London. Sketching out a list of places I wanted to see, I decided to cluster my journeys around two centres rather than sleeping in a different city each night. The first of these centres was Nuremberg, which serves as an ideal base for exploring Upper Bavaria. After finding out that rail connections to Nuremberg are quite a pain, I immediately ditched my initial resolution and took a direct bus instead.

Having walked far too much in Brussels, I came back to Paris completely exhausted. I decided to spend my weekend in a leisurely way, seeing some of the major sights on Saturday morning and spending the rest of the day in Louvre. I ate an almond pain au chocolat for breakfast in front of the glamorous Hôtel des Invalides, which lies only a short walk from the Eiffel Tower. There was much construction work going on that day, either because of the upcoming marathon or in preparation for the Olympic Games, and I found the tower obstructed by tall metal barriers.

My second day of job-hunting in Western Europe took me to Brussels, where I was welcomed by rather unwelcoming weather. It rained in short bursts until the afternoon, and having forgotten my umbrella in London I frequently took refuge in doorways and niches. My first stop in Brussels was the Gate of Hal, a strange remnant of the city’s erewhile battlements that was clearly renovated in the nineteenth century without much regard for its original form. From thence, I continued to the Palace of Justice and the Royal Palace of Brussels before escaping the bustle of the city at the Parc du Cinquantenaire.

As part of my job hunt, I decided to make a trip to Western Europe and tap into my network in a few cities. After staying with some friends in London, I went on my first train ride through the English Channel Tunnel and spent the rest of the week at another friend’s place in Paris. I cannot yet say that the trip was very productive, but I did meet the people I set out to meet and saw quite a few sights along the way.