Mini Germany Adventures

 For this week of this study abroad, we had two one-day excursions to German cities. One excursion happened on Wednesday and we went to Cologne and the other excursion was on Thursday and we went to Koblenz. On Wednesday, we had one regular lecture, but afterwards, everyone from the group took a train to Cologne to see the Cologne Cathedral and the Romano-Germanic Museum. The train ride was actually quite pleasant and quicker than what I was expecting so the trip was already had a great start. When we first arrived in Cologne and we all exited the train station, we immediately saw the Cologne Cathedral and it was beautiful! The massive church looked fantastic from every view point, so I was extremely excited to view the church from the high points later during the day. Before we went to the Romano-Germanic Museum, we had a spontaneous cathedral tour since our tour later on would not include the beautiful bottom floor of the church. The church inside was very pretty with all of the colorful glass windows and I particularly like the modern glass window because I think it looks spectacular. This is a picture of the modern glass window.

 We also saw the golden tomb of the three wise men which caused this cathedral to be famous world wide. After the quick tour inside the cathedral, we went inside the Romano-Germanic Museum. The museum had a lot of old artifacts and somehow, I was surprised how some of them were still intact after hundreds of years, especially the glass ones. One famous piece in the museum was a floor mosaic meant for parties and it was massive! No wonder the museum was built around this one piece of history. Dr. Wasser gave us only a little tour around the museum because he wanted us to explore the museum later on. His tour was lovely as usually and I think everyone loves his little facts that he adds into the presentation. During my own exploration of the museum, I found something that immediately caught my eye. It was small metal devices that looked like spoons and the little chef in me took over. These metal objects had fancy handles, but still looked functional for the action of a spoon. One of the 'spoons' looked like it had dolphins on the handle! After researching what Silberne löffel meant, which was the description for the metal objects, it turned out to be silver spoons! I knew I had to blog about the silver spoons after that. (P.S. - as a side note - one of my favorite songs is called silver spoons so that was a plus for me)

After the museum visit, we went to the Cathedral for the next tour of the day. This tour was beautiful and it gave me a new insight on how determined people can be. The Cathedral itself took hundreds of years to be fully finished and I am surprised but happy that the human species can have that level of determination. I even posted some pictures of the cathedral since it was so beautiful.

After the two lovely tours, a group of us stopped to get gelato before we headed back to Bonn. I have to say, the gelato in Europe does not disappoint. On the Koblenz day trip, we visited an opera house and a Prussian fortress. The Opera house tour was really cool since we were able to see different rooms of the establishment, like a carpenter's shop, that people usually don't think a performance building would need. The Fortress was fascinating since we were able to see many of the little details that makes a fort sturdy like the cut-outs in the wall for soldier to stand in to the holes in the wall for the cannons. After everything this week, I am glad to finally take a break from traveling since we have to be ready extremely early in the morning on Monday. I just need to finish my paper since it is due tomorrow. I hope everyone had a wonderful week like I did and good luck on the paper and weekend travels.