"A Blog of Mayo": Cologne, Heidelberg, and Munich... Germany!

The next stops we made were along the rail line to Heidelberg. What's neat about the rail passes in Europe is that you can get off the train at any town, and get back on the next train that comes through. On our way to see Jess and Derek in Heidelberg, we stopped in Cologne to see the Cathedral ( "Dom" in German). The Gothic Style cathedral is right next to the train station, and we strained our necks upwards from the train to see it. It was the tallest structure in the world from 1880-84, until the Washington Monument passed it. Construction began on the cathedral in 1248 and took over 600 years to complete! It is amazing!

We hopped back on the train to head to Heidelberg, and decided to hop off and see Oberkassel along the way. Oberkassel is a small town along the Rhine River, with a population of only 17,000 people. We stopped and got some cheesecake and hot chocolate at an awesome bakery in the town and walked around in the snow. At this point in the trip, Hil was so glad to be in a slow-paced, small town that she declared it as her favorite stop on the trip so far! I thought it was an awesome little town as well, but I had to give all my love to Brugge instead. Hil was so happy to be in the snow that she could'nt contain herself......!!

After waiting for the train for about an hour, making an Oberkassel handshake, and talking about how many times I have been slapped by someone.....we hopped back on the train to go to Heidelberg. We had some trouble finding the right train station in Heidelberg, but finally arrived to be picked up by Jess and Derek, Hil's friend Jess is a friend from high school, and Derek is her husband, who is stationed in Heidelberg to serve for the Amry band. Heidelberg is a small city, with a population of about 150,000 people. Below is a view of the city from the castle. It is a beautiful little city.

Here is a picture of the castle, which sits on a small mountain above the city.

Below is not my picture, but you can see the detail more clearly.....

Our rail pass allowed us to travel for up to 8 days, and we had only used 4.....so we took advantage of our awesome opportunity to travel, and went to Munich! It took about 3 hours to get to Munich, which is the city in Germany that makes BMW's and Audi's!

Munich has a little over a million people living in the city, and the residents refer to it as "the village of a million people". They are proud of the feel of the city, I was immpressed as well...it did feel like a big village, I suppose. We didn't get lost, at least! But when Octoberfest rolls around mostly held in September) they city fills with up to 6 million people!

We went to the famous beer hall in Munich, the Hofbruhaus....(which is where Hitler spend a lot of his stupid time trying to rally and promote his ways).

We also visited the first concentration camp opened in Germany during Nazi rule, Dachau. The Nazi's started by sending political prisoners and then people with Jewish decent. The camp was built for 6,000 prisoners, but at one point was there were over 50,000 prisoners living there. Below is a picture of the sleeping barracks......(They crammed 1,600 prisoners into each barracks, which were designed for only 250 people).