How much do you think we can see in 10 hours?

May 3-A Whirlwind of Germany: After arriving at the airport (No security guards searched me this time), we picked up the car and started driving towards Koln. Well, as it turns out, driving from central-ish Germany, to Belgium, to northern-ish Germany, and then starting to head south again on one tank of gas is kind of risky. Soo... we were driving on the autobahn, and the car starts flashing that we will soon run out and.. there's no gas station in sight. Enter panic. Haha.. eventually, we found a station, but just in time. To make matters worse, the pump wasn't labeled, and my friend had pulled up to one that was for filling diesel trucks. Well, we were only driving a diesel car, and so the volume of gas that came out at once kicked back and got all over him. I mean, looking back it's kind of funny, but at the time, I was like what the HECK are you doing?

So eventually, it all worked out and we made it to Koln. This was the quickest trip yet. We literally parallel parked, walked to the cathedral, read a little about the history, took some pictures, walked back to the car and left. The short background is that contruction began in 1248, and took more than 600 years to complete, but it has the largest facade of any church in the world. It was hit by something like 12 bombs in WWII, but stayed standing. That's a pretty nifty church.

Our next stop was Bonn, the former capital of Germany. As whirlwinds go, this was also a pretty quick stop. We got to the city and the first thing we visited was Beethoven's house. We didn't have time or money to take the tour, so we checked out the foyer, the courtyard and then jokingly took a picture of a poster so we could tell people we had been inside. Then, we grabbed some quick lunch at a little kiosk. This was another chance for me to prove to Germans that while I have the blond hair and blue eyes, I speak about 5 words of German. None of them enable me to order a bratwurst and beer. From there, we decided to head off to the next city, but discovered a problem. We couldn't find the car. Oyvey. We wandered around for 20 minutes before a stroke of luck led us back to where we had parked.

Then, we had probably my favorite part of the little trip to Germany. We drove along the Rhine river, looking at castles and beautiful forests the whole way. Eventually, we made a bee-line for Trier: the oldest city in Germany. It was founded at the latest in 16 BC. In the first century, it was conquered by Romans, and so most of the architecture there looks pretty similar to my pictures from Italy. The entrance to the city, Porta Nigra, is one great big stinkin' cool arch. There's also roman baths, an old amphitheater, and other ruins that made me question which country I was in. Without overloading you on history, a couple other interesting sites were the Constantine Basilica, the Trier Cathedral, and the Palace of Trier (Don't ask me who the guy on the steps is. I don't know). Finally, it was back to Belgium for me.