From Cologne to Home

Up at 6:00 am, we shower and pack for the trip home. A little last minute shopping and some breakfast at the airport and we are on our Continental flight. Similar to the trip in the other direction we are experiencing good service and a small plane. From Newark airport we will fly to Boston and then home to Phoenix. It was a busy trip but a good trip. We could have surely spent more time in Brussels and Cologne but we knew that when we booked our trip. We have all commented that one of the nicest feeling on the trip home is while going through immigration. The person checking the passports will always say “Welcome Home”. And as usual, we had a great time during our travels, but it is good to be back home.

Cologne - Last full day

For our last day in Cologne we spent the day doing the information gathering for writing a children’s walking tour of the Dom cathedral. I do not know if it will be a successful attempt, but it was only intended to be a learning experience. We spent the whole morning there taking pictures, asking questions and gathering information. Ideally we would do this as an iterative process where we would then do the research on the areas we found interesting and then return to fill in the details. I am expecting that this first walking tour will be somewhat rough when compared to the detail we should be able to supply for the walking tours of Beijing attractions. We climbed the 507 steps of the Dom tower, saw a ladder going even higher, and restoration workers hanging from the Dom's scaffolding. We then descended back down to see the crypt, the treasury and cathedral we stopped a contemporary German restaurant, a couple of shops and a Glockenspiel on our way to our main destination for the day: Circus training at Zaxs Zirkus Wibbelstetz. We were able to do some spring jumping, tight rope walking, and Kirsty taught us all to juggle as well. What a cool experience! Afterwards we saw a very nice sunset and went to the younger and more trendy University section for a dinner of potato pizza (yumm. potato crepes with pizza toppings, really very good, despite what you might imagine. We then progressed to a bar for drinks passing an empty Indian Hooka bar on the way. While we drank and our daughter slept at the bar Kirsty interviewed us about traveling as an American family for German radio. I think that she may need to do some clever editing to get an interesting broadcast. It was quite late, 12:20am or so when we parted ways with Kirsty to return to our hotel and our early morning plane flight. We will really miss her and hope to see her again some day. She is always welcome where we are.


The Dom


St. Peter's was the largest of the many bells in the clock tower. The smallest of which was just a bit larger than the liberty bell.



Cool job, but nobody in the family wanted a job application.



At a more modern German restaurant



cologne in cologne. Its made locally of course.



A glockenspiel with music and animated figures



This building is still pockmarked with the remnants of allied bombing.



Zaks circus school



Learning to juggle


Learning to walk on the tight rope. Notice the circus trailer in the background. A whole caravan of these were parked outside.

This is perhaps the only restaurant in the world making potato pizza. It was very good.

Cologne - Side trip to Bonn

We walked through the town center to meet Kirsty and take a day trip by train to the place of Beethoven’s birth and home of the Beethoven Museum: Bonn. Before the tour of the home we got to attend and interact with a new media experience of the Beethoven opera "Fielellio". The characters of the opera were represented as 3-D graphical images which could be manipulated by computer controls placed in the room. While the controls occupied the children’s attention adults were able to enjoy the opera without many of the typical distractions and limitations. We took the tour of the museum in Deutch, which Kirsty translated for us. We then took a nice stroll along the Rhine, passing the Kennedy Bridge. While we all are familiar with Kennedy's famous "Eich bein Ein Berliner" speech, it was Kirsty who had to inform me how Kenney was highly credited with the reconciliation between eastern and western Germany. It was today that I put many pieces of our trip together (Europe's long and rich history, modification of people's names as they departed Ellis Island, and the Indian wars up in Canada) to come to a realization on how short changed we are in our teaching of American History in our public schools. In short, we do not teach American History. We teach only the history of the colonization of the United States by Europeans. The greatest span of our history belonging to native Americans who's history is (or was while I was in high school) largely ignored. . We saw some Magnolia trees in bloom as well as several of the former embassy buildings. We then took the tram to a small town on the Rhine for a nice lunch on the river. These cigarette machines were everywhere. This one was particularly interesting to me as it was stuck in the middle of someone’s front lawn! There were more smokers in Germany than many places we have been. But I think that even in Germany smoking has begun to pass its heyday. Of course at lunch we get to have more German beer. What is not to like about Germany!! We then took the tram back to our hotel in Cologne passing several large industrial areas along the way.

Arrival in Cologne from Brussels

We took the Thalys train back into Cologne from Brussels. Along the route we saw more stereotypical German countryside. We took a taxi from the train station to our hotel where we had an excellent lunch at our hotel restaurant. We then contacted our friend Kirsty who took us on a tour of the local chocolate museum. We had a hot chocolate at the museum cafe and took a walk along the Rhine River to the shopping area near the Dom cathedral. In this area we were fortunate enough to see some street performances from some local artists as well as getting a quick look at the Dom again. We then had dinner at the Fuhr Brewhaus which served some very traditional German dishes as well as the Fruh beer.

Brussels - Last full day

One our final full day in Brussels we went to the small town of Waterloo where the famous battle with Napoleon took place. A huge mound of dirt has been placed there in memorial with the blood soaked soil. The panorama exhibit was very good. The climb up was fairly steep. You get a great view of the battlefield from on top of the monument. Here is the proof that when you put someone on a pedestal, it is hard to measure up. We stopped at the African museum on the way back to the Goffarts' where we had a perfect lunch of the best proccuito, cheeses, wine and beer. Also there was something called prepared American which they assured us was quite common. After lunch we went in search of Leffe beer glasses and found this statue. We don't know who he is but suspect that he is someone important to the history of Brussels. With the clothing and posture we decided that he was most likely the patron saint of adult bookstores. We also saw these racks full of rental bike. For a small fee you get the use of a bicycle with a lock and basket. The machine to rent the bicycles looked very convenient. Diner again was wonderful with pork and a blended vegetable sauce with celery root. And of course beer. Except this beer had a plastic twist cap.