August 7 and 8

On Saturday morning I got up early and made it to Koblenz by 8:00.  We went on a walking tour of Koblenz with the students, which was pretty interesting, though I had already seen a lot of Koblenz.  After the tour, we had lunch then headed to the boat we took down the Rhine to Köln.  The boat cruise was relaxing and gave us some good views of the Middle Rhine country side and towns.  We made it to Köln around 8:00pm, poked around the amazing cathedral there, got set in our rooms then headed to a restaurant for some food.  I shared a schnitzel plate and a cheese plate with Matt the Canadian J, which was quite delicious, and had some pretty good Kölsch beer with the students.  After that I headed back to the room, rather tired and with my leg still in pain, just to rest.  A lot of people went out and saw a bit of the town.  I guess the Gay Olympics were going on there, which made the place interesting.

Sunday morning we met at the Kölner Dom for worship.  Most of the students used their meal at the hotel for breakfast, but I saved it for lunch.  It was a fantastic meal and very much typical German fare, with plenty of meats and things to make Brötchen with (essentially breakfast sandwiches).  We hung around in Köln for a bit, visited the Chocolate Museum, walked along the Rhine, tried another variety of Kölsch then headed home on the train.  A pretty relaxing weekend.  It was really nice for Joe, Marc and I, because the trip fund covered our meal in Koblenz, the boat trip and our hotel room in Köln.  The hotel was really quite nice, they put us up well.  I also appreciated being able to hang out with some people closer to my age and from the States, as well as with Prof. Nielsen, who is always very engaging to talk with.  The group with Prof. Nielsen still had to take the train all the way back to Berlin though, so it was probably a pretty boring day for them.