Heidelberg and Cologne--July 7,8

Street in Heidelberg: There is just something charming about the streets here in Europe, especially the ones in which cars are not normally allowed to be driven down. I have to say though, that there were more tourists and english being spoken here in the city center in comparison to any other.



3 gals in Cologne: Me, Renate, and Lauren headed to Cologne to take in the city and visit a few art museums. We simply have a blast traveling together.



Spiderman by the catherdal in Cologne: So, I mainly took this photo for Andy, but I thought I would still post it. In many tourist spots in Europe, you can see 'human statues'...they range from spidermans to people that actually look like statues--painted gray and all--well, once you put a coin in their bucket, they come to life!



The castle in Heidelberg: I visited the city with my German class a couple years ago...since we went up to the castle then and we were limited on time this particular day, my friends and I decided not to go up there. But, it was still neat to see again of course. (In fact, when Mark Twain came to Europe to write, he lived in a house in this particular city square...)



The Cathedral (dom) in Cologne: In an earlier blog, I posted photos of this Dom...but, I wanted to post yet another because the light worked out better. Everytime I see this cathedral, it blows me away. You walk out of the train station and it simply towers above you. Even more remarkable, is behind the altar, the remains of the 3 kings rest.

**To get to Heidelberg, we took a train from Trier through Saarland directly to the city. The train station was some distance from the city center, so we were able to see quite a bit on our way there. Besides walking all around the city center, we visited a museum (which was incredible...art and many artifacts--it actually had the jawbone of a 600,000 year old man and the remains of romans, creepy, but interesting) We also were able to visit the former student dungeon at the oldest university in Germany...this student dungeon (krazer) was used for unruly students from the 1700s to just before the first world war. Interesting to see all of the graffiti from years gone by. We also did the european thing and sat at a cafe, visited and people watched.

**The next day, I traveled to Cologne with 2 other friends and had a fabulous time. We went inside the cathedral and then had a quick bite to eat at a street vendor. We spent the rest of the afternoon in 2 different art museums...one for art from the middle ages up to impressionism (my favorite!) and the other was for modern art. The train ride was also nice because it went directly north through the heavily wooded Eifel region.