Germany

I spent just a few days in Germany visiting a friend in Bochum. Here I spent much time sleeping, eating, checking out the local area, and also managed a visit to Cologne.

The area around Bochum contains the remnants of a lot of industry, mostly mining. Some of which have been converted into parkland which makes for some quirky artwork such as this lightshow we visited...

Unfortunately my tiny camera flash couldn't capture much else :-(

Cologne is also a beautiful city surrounding a huge gothic cathedral with many, many tourists.

Another huge church! :-)

Hopefully all the stairs to the rooftop of the cathedral helped to work off all the cake, gelati, beer, chips and chocolate consumed throughout the day ;-)

Things that are awesome about Germany…

• The trains. The standard trains have two levels, are generally on time, and the high speed trains can get up to 300km/hr…nice. I caught one of these on my way to Prague :-)
• The beer. Enough said
• The cake. Europeans seriously know how to make cake, and black forest cake, in Germany, made me very happy :-)
• Knoppers - kind of like German tim tams :-) --thanks for the link Markus ;-)
• Laughing at random funny German stuff, such as this.

And no doubt many other things I have missed.

It is probably a good thing that I was only here a few days, as I could leave while my clothes still fit…just ;-)