Day 6: Cologne, Germany

June 9, 2013

Our train didn't leave Lindau until 9:30pm last night. We switched trains twice, but finally got on the long night train a little after midnight. All the seats were taken so we had to pay a little extra to have a couchette (pronounced coo-sh-et) which is basically a cot anchored to a wall in a train car. There are 6 per cabin. We at least got to lay down and got more sleep than we would have gotten sitting upright between strangers, but with people coming in and out during the short 5 1/2 hours the sleep wasn't very good. We woke up at 5:30am and got off the train at 5:45.

The couchettes

We paused to eat breakfast (pop-tarts and granola bars) in the train station before heading towards our B&B. There were still people in the train station that were out from the night before. There seemed to be more American restaurants in this station than we had seen so far: Subway, Pizza Hut, McDonald's and Burger King. We moseyed along the Rhine River in the direction of our B&B and arrived there about 7:20am. Knowing we couldn't check in, we hoped we could store our luggage so we could walk around easier. Our B&B is on the third floor of an apartment building (with only 3 bedrooms for rent) that you must have a key for. We decided to wait around until 8:00am because we thought it would be less troublesome. However, no one answered our paging. We decided to go get some breakfast and come back in a little while. With it being early on a Sunday the town was dead! I remember from last year that all the stores and restaurants are closed on Sundays, but I didn't think it would be this dead in such a large city. We found a McDonald's to eat breakfast at. We found it interesting that even though they are a international brand, their menu is regional here: there are no biscuits, only croissants and English muffins. We ate a croissant with ham and cheese on it and had a coffee. We went back to the B&B at 9:30 and there was still no one answering so we decided to go exploring close by.

We were excited to find two museums in the same buildings that would lock up our stuff while we walked through them and were only 7 Euros ($9.07) each for both museums. We spent four hours looking at the two museums: Museum Schnütgen which housed medieval art and The Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum which had artifacts and facts from cultures around the world. The Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum was very new and had really cool features like interactive projection books and shelves that pulled out to show facts or triggered a video to play. The Museum Schnütgen was mind-blowing because most of the art was almost 1000 years old!

A historic rice barn made on an Indonesian island without a single nail!
Look at the guard by the door to get a feel for the size!

Large throne and burial casket used in Indonesian cremations.
The cow is the "casket" in which the whole thing is burned to cremate the body.

Medieval sculptures from the 1300s

This was engraved in a tusk! A tusk!

The white glowing thing on the platform was a plastic "book"
which would play a video each time you turned the page.

Each of the drawers at the bottom of the previous picture pull out to tell you the
orgins  of common things such as hammocks, guinea pigs, chess, etc.

Afterward 4 hours of "museum-ing" we decided we needed food and rest. We had a salami pizza (they don't put pepperoni on their pizza over here) at the only place we could find open (a Turkish run German "fast food" place that serves doner kebabs and pizza) and then checked into our B&B. While our room was being cleaned, I published yesterday's blog and Clayton read. Once we got into our room, we started looking up stuff that we needed to plan and then Clayton fell asleep. I called Mom for the first time since we have been here and then as he woke up and started looking up stuff, I fell asleep. We were exhausted and the nap (I say nap, but I woke up at 9pm) was great!

Tonight we are going to get plenty of sleep and get an early start at sight-seeing tomorrow! Tschuss!