Western Germany (Deutschland) 4-19-17

Hello Everyone,

 

This post will be about my travel through Western Germany which include Düsseldorf  and Koln (Cologne). I took a train from Hamburg to Koln and boy buying trains tickets in Germany is complicated. Everything is in German so I was being put to the test of my German knowledge. I somehow managed to get all of my tickets correct. Most of Germany’s population is located in the west and there are extensive autobahn networks throughout these cities. I wandered around Cologne and the city has lots of old architectural masterpieces. There are these Gothic looking cathedrals that looks like a haunted castle. One thing that I have noticed in Europe is that almost every country has a large amount of cathedrals with these abstract designs. I always wondered how much would the maintenance cost would be for these buildings. Another similarity that I came across is the statues of a man riding a horse which I have seen countless times in Europe. I am not sure if that is supposed to represent their past imperialism raids or just some famous military person.

My handy dandy German book from class.

 

 

 

A typical breakfast that I had in Cologne. It was some type of pastry.

 

There is a famous bridge by the Cathedral that has million of padlocks on them because it is supposed to represent some type of romance wish there of being in a long lasting relationship. I made a romance wish there and its been a year and a month later and it still has not been fulfilled! Or maybe it has because I have a long lasting relationship with myself.

Later in the day I went to a strange museum called Museum Ludwig. I do not even know how to describe this museum but it was a pretty popular museum. I will  let the pictures speak 1000 words.

 

The next day I decided to go to a water park that was in the outskirts of the city called Aqua Land. Man let you tell you I was not ready. First off this place is an indoor and outdoor water park and I some reason thought it was a good idea to go. It was no warmer than 60 degrees Fahrenheit, 289 Kelvin, or 16 Celsius. People were all outside swimming in the pools and tanning in the sun. It was a sunny day but it was still cold. I was in disbelief I have never swam outside if it is below 80 degrees Fahrenheit or 27 Celsius. When I went inside the water park they had the swimming resort and the spa and hot pool resorts inside. The receptionist heard me order in my terrible German and realized I was American and gave me a warning about going into this place. I was told that I would have to be naked inside and I looked at them like what? I am sure many Americans travelling here probably had problems with this policy to where she felt she needed to directly tell me. I have so many stories that I will talk about in future post of me going to spas in Asia and having to go butt naked and the people staring at me and stuff. Anyways I went into the spa naked and had nothing but a key tied to my ankle and a small white towel. I remember there were kids, parents, in there, and old grandmas and grandpas in there naked. It was uncomfortable for me at first, but then I realized nobody really cared too much. I guess nudity in Europe is a casual thing. I remember staring at some of the people and thinking wow this is weird and people are hairy. I could also feel people somewhat taking glances at me time to time because I was the only black guy in this whole park. I spent probably 4 hours in this place and I did the hot steam room and the hot tub at first.

I remember there was this one steam room I found in the back of the place and we were supposed to rub salt on our bodies but I did not understand I just asked the women in the room with me about what was the salt for. So one of them grabbed a handful and told me its supposed to be rubbed into my body, and started rubbing it all over my body. It was very funny and awkward.  After that I went into this yoga dry heat room and  Yoga class was being taught. I remember walking in and everyone was looking me up and down I could feel their eyes all on me. I did some of the class with them with my terrible German and ended up leaving early to go to the water park side of the building. I went to play in the waterslides and saw that they had slides that went inside the building and outside the building. A lot of people were outside on the slides and tanning and I stayed inside and slid on the indoor slides. They were pretty large like on the level of Kalahari in Sandusky, Ohio. There was this one slide I got on this one slide that you have to stand on on and the floor just drops you down. I did not realize that this floor would open up and the slide had like a double loop on it. The guy operating the slide would push the button when people are not ready and my fell and I felt like I was falling upwards and then eventually I came out so fast that I was skipping across the pool like a rock.

 

 

 

After the pool I decided to go out drinking because beer in Germany is cheap. I went to some bar area and stumbled across a E-Sport bar which was amazing. The Engineering nerd side of me came out here. So with Germany people can go to the bar at 16 years old and drink. I was shocked because these types of bars attracts people from ages 16-25. I wish the USA had lax drinking laws like Germany. Most USA people drink the most between 18-21 during the undergraduate years. Haha by the time I turned 21 I did not even really drink nearly as much as before I was 21 during my years in Arizona. I made some really cool friends there and we played a variety of games starting with Mario Party 5 and you know I choose my main man Yoshi and beat everyone badly and maxed out my coins. Some of those minigames on that games are torture especially the ones where you have to rapidly and repeatedly push A or B.

Next time you play a game like that have someone take a picture of you all pushing the buttons as fast as you can and I bet you all will look crazy.  We next played Smash Bros and I do not remember who won that one probably was not me. After that I was ordering beer after beer and went to the PS4 and was introduced to Rocket League and I instantly fell in love with that game. My friend and I wanted to play a rates M game but the place would not let us do that until it was midnight because they said that the people under 18 could not be there later than midnight. Haha the irony with this Germany allow teenagers to drink in bars but they cannot play rated M games while in the USA a 13 year old kid can go to game stop and buy rated M games and drive at 15, but we cannot drink until 21. I remember my little cousin was playing some crazy witch game based in the USA where all of this scary messed up stuff would happen in the South and the objective of the game was to get through it without dying. The game did not allow you to shoot or be able to kill anyone but they could torture you it was crazy and I asked my little cousins where did they get this game from? I do not even remember the name of the game.

 

 

 

I went to that bar every night that I was in Koln and I had a blast. After the bar I would go eat kebabs which are everyone on the corner stores just like taco shops are here in California. I had a hostel that I was staying in that was the worst ever experience at a hostel. So the first night was okay I was in the top bunk with like 5 others in the room. The second night people switched around beds so I had to lay in another bed and I had a hard time sleeping because my back was itching like crazy. I turn on the lights and analyzed my bed and realized that that whole bed was infested with bed bugs!! I was so mad and told the people that I kept getting bit and they kept telling me that I was crazy but I showed the little bite marks and they still would not believe me. So I found another bed and went to sleep and left Koln the next morning with little sleep. I ended up taking a train to Brussels, Belgium. I also went to this random bakery that was famous Called Vio I think. I had a waffle with chocolate, banana, and strawberries on it which is a heart attack waiting to happen. Its funny how everyone spells my name some crazy way.