Christmas Markets, Zumthor, and a really big Cathedral

Well this will probably be my last blog entry as I fly home this coming Monday.  It's been a wonderful few months.  This entry will tell of my weekend trip back to Germany, where I visited Dusseldorf and Cologne with my flatmate Maya.


We got up early on Saturday morning and bicycled to Amsterdam Centraal.  We got there on time, boarded the right train, and headed off to our first transfer point, a city in the south called Eindhoven.  The train arrived 10 minutes late to Eindhoven (about an hour and a half ride) which meant we were ten minutes late arriving at our next transfer point, Venlo.  That was a problem, because the only train going to Dusseldorf from Venlo that day had left ten minutes before we got there.  There are supposed to be trains every hour, but on that particular day the rest of the trains were cancelled.  After talking to a station employee, we were told to wait for 45 minutes for a bus from Germany to come pick us up and take us to a train station across the border where we could board a train.  Well that bus came 20 minutes late and was very full.  It ended up driving through a number of towns before ending up in Monchengladbach.  From there it was a short train ride to Dusseldorf, but the total travel time ended up at 5.5 hours, when a speed train can go direct from Amsterdam to Dusseldorf in 2 hours.

Oh well, we were in Germany (Maya's first time) and we met up with our Canadian friend Hugo who had just finished his fall internship at NATO in Brussels.  We dropped off our bags at the hotel (which was very nice for 30 euro/night) and headed out on foot to see some of Dusseldorf's christmas markets and city streets.  The markets were very busy (Saturday night + heavy road construction = some points where pedestrian traffic bottlenecked and stopped for about 10 minutes) but very festive and full of new sights, smells, and my favourite -> tastes.

I tried Gluehwein, a spiced hot wine (similar to mulled wine), Rostbratwurst (delicious sausage on a small bun with Dusseldorf's famous mustard), fresh brezel (right out of the oven), Heisse Maronen (roasted chestnuts), Raclette (swiss cheese rounds melted under burners until toasty and then spread on baguette), Candied Almonds (made right in front of you), and Delicious German Beer (can't recall the name, but best beer I've ever had - even better than belgium).

I had a great evening but we all got tired early.  Lots of people and stalls and walking and maybe the gluhwein added up to an early bedtime.  We headed back to the hotel.  Falling alseep I wrote these words in my journal: "I love Germany: the girls have nice accents, they have wonderful food, and they love Christmas!

Sunday morning came quickly and we enjoyed the upscale all you can eat breakfast at the hotel (surprisingly good for such low-cost hotel).  We hopped on a train and arrived at Koln (Cologne) Hauptbanhof (Central Station) just after 9:30.  Immediatly we were greated with the immense cathedral that calls this city home.  I've never seen a building on quite that scale and level of detail.  No wonder it took 600 years to complete!  We wandered through the sanctuary as people were arriving for Sunday morning mass and climbed up the 533 stairs to the top of the bell towers as they rang out to announce the start of service.  The cathedral offered beautiful views over the rhine and the rest of the city of Cologne.  We spent the rest of the morning finding the christmas markets sprinkled throughout the city while we waited for the 12pm opening of a very special museum - the Kolumba.  The Kolumba is a modern art museum built on/over/among the ruins of a medieval church that was destroyed during WW2.  It's architect, Peter Zumthor (Swiss), is a celebrity in the architecture world and it was a treat to visit his building.  He doesn't do very many projects, and most of them are in Switzerland so its a rare opportunity for a Canadian.  The museum (although not regarded as one of his best projects) was amazing.  The detailing was very zumthor: clear in plan, minimal intersections and connections, with a focus on materiality.  See some of the pictures to understand what I'm talking about.

The rest of the day revolved around exploring Christmas markets and the city, enjoying more gluehwein and treats and photographing.  I didn't take any pictures in Dusseldorf because I wanted to relax and experience it, so I made up for that by averaging close to one picture every minute for 10 hours in Cologne.  I dropped Maya and Hugo off at the train station around 7pm (they were headed back to Amsterdam) and spent my evening taking more pictures.  I stayed Sunday night in a hostel that was far more plain than the hotel the night before (but was incredibly cheap - 11 euros).  I shared a 5 bed room with an american couple who came back to the room about an hour after I went to bed and got quite a bit more frisky than one typically would with a stranger sleeping across the room.  oh well, i guess its an experience?

I woke up early Monday morning to try and get some sunrise pictures.  Unfortunately when I stepped outside after checking out, I discovered heavy rain and nothing was open.  I wandered the streets and crossed the rhine and eventually it dried up enough to get some pictures.  I headed back to Amsterdam around noon, planning to stop in Utrecht to see a building that is very famous, but because my knee was hurting (I guess from all the walking I had been doing?) and the fact that I slept through that stop, I arrived back in Amsterdam just four hours after leaving Cologne (I got some lucky transfers).

So here I am finishing up my second-to-last day of work and planning my last weekend in Amsterdam.  Tomorrow I'm going out with my office for a special 'Dutch' lunch and I hope to go to the Anne Frank House, the Photography Museum, and see a christmas concert in the Concertgebouw (its one of, if not the best, concert hall in Europe) on Saturday.

I'm happy to be coming home on Monday and seeing some familiar faces.  Thanks for reading my blog, sending me emails, and looking at my pictures.  Hope this was interesting for you (if it wasn't, why do you keep reading it?!).  It was a good method for me to write down my thoughts and share them with you (especially since storytelling isn't my strength).  Here is the link again to the pictures from Cologne.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Vrolijk Kerstfeest !

Champion's League

So last week Maya and I splurged and bought some tickets to an Ajax-Real Madrid game.  I had a blog post ready to go on Friday night but due to some technical difficulties, I lost the pictures and had to run to catch a train to Germany.  So here are those pictures, and also a promise of pictures in the next day or two from my trip to Dussledorf and Cologne where we visited 12 christmas markets in two days.


Soccer Game