Cologne, Düsseldorf, and Bonn

March 15-18

I promised to write a blog entry about my trips, mostly because I know I'll forget about them, but I'm leaving for Berlin tonight, so here is a seriously abbreviated version (for real, guys. I promise).

Cologne - Day 1

• Kölner Dom (cathedral) -- highest cathedral tower in the world (not highest church tower--that's in Ulm)
• Tour of the Roman churches in Köln (btw, Cologne is just the English name for Köln)
• St. Andreas
• St. Mariä Himmelfahrt
• St. Ursula
  
• St. Gereon
  
• St. Aposteln
• Klein St. Martin
  
• Groß St. Martin
• There's 12 Romanesque churches, but I didn't get a chance to see them all.
• In between, I saw
• Remains of the former city wall
• Old Rathaus
• Rhein promenade (really really nice! It was such a nice day)
• Walked across the Hohenzollern Bridge
• Synagogue

Hmm, I feel like I'm writing an outline for a class. It was a really nice day and not cold at all, so I really enjoyed all the walking. Cologne is not really the most beautiful city, but it has a lot of history. It was a Roman city, or colony, or something, so it's really old. Of course, practically everything was destroyed in the bombing after WWII so a lot of it has been rebuilt, but it's still cool. The churches were surprisingly interesting. I expected them all to look the same on the inside, but they all their own unique character and I enjoyed looking around (which is saying something, considering how many churches I've seen by now).

Cologne - Day 2

• Today was rainy, but I had planned for that. I went to several museums:
• Römisch-Germanisches Museum (museum about the Roman and Germanic history of Cologne, actually not that large of a museum, and a little boring, but prob just bc I saw so much old stuff in Italy)
• Käthe Kollwitz Museum, which I had been really looking forward to. A fairly large collection of her work. Also not a huge museum, but I spent quite a bit of time looking around it
• Ludwig Museum, which was some kind of modern art museum. It was interesting, but really really big, and honestly, modern art's not really my thing.

• At the end of the day, I went to a Palm Sunday vesper service in the Cathedral, which was really nice. I thought it would just be ok since it was a youth choir singing, but I guess in the most-visited tourist attraction in Germany they don't do things halfway. Only downside: no heat. FREEZING.

Düsseldorf - Day 3

• I went to Düsseldorf with no map and not a clue what I wanted to do or see. Luckily the tourist information office is near the train station, so I got a free map there. I followed a walking tour it suggested on there.
• St. Andreas Church (nice, but eh. I've seen a ton of churches)
• Jan Wellem Monument in the square by the old Rathaus
• Schlossturm on the Burgplatz. A tower that used to be attached to the castle, except the castle is no longer there. Also saw a statue of a kid turning a cartwheel, and a rather creepy monument to the city history.
• Walked along the river promenade. It was really nice, except it was windy and cold. Needless to say, I hurried.
  
• Anna-Maria-Louisa-Medici Platz and St. Maximilian Church
• Königsallee, the "Champs-Elysees of Germany", or so they claim. Not as nice as I expected it to be--not enough high-end stores. But it had a big mall that I walked around in to get out of the cold, so that was good.
• Rheinturm and the Landestag. The Rheinturm is a 172 m high tower that you can take an elevator to the top of. Really cool. Also, the Landestag is right next to it, so that was cool to see from above.

Bonn - Day 4

• Also did a map-suggested walking tour here. Along the way I saw:
• Bonner Münster
• Rathaus
• Beethoven's birth house (really cool!!! even though Beethoven didn't like Bonn. Had a ton of original stuff)
• Rhein promenade
• Alter Zoll (old toll-collecting station along the river)
• Egyptian Museum at the University of Bonn (not that impressive...only one room of artifacts)
• University of Bonn (amazing. Why didn't I go there?)
• Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (House of the History of the Federal Republic of Germany), one of the most interesting museums I've ever been to. I spent 3.5 hours there, and that was with kind of skimming the main exhibit, which was huuuge. It traced the history of Germany from 1945-present. It was really interactive and had lots of stuff to look at, but it was just too much info. There was also a side exhibit about scandals in Germany from 1945 to present, also really cool, but by then I was too tired to look through it in depth.
• Walked past Villa Hammerschmidt and Palais Schaumburg, which were, respectively, the residences of the president and chancellor of West Germany, before unification when Bonn was the capitol

There you go, my 4-day trip written up in less than 4 posts. Impressive. I'm not sure if I'll get around to writing about Copenhagen before I leave tonight, but if I do, consider yourselves lucky!