An update and Europe on a Shoestring….our trip to Cologne, Germany

Fun Facts
To start this post, I thought we’d do a few stats for fun:

KMs travelled to date (approximate):     9000
Days in Europe:                                                    24
Countries visited (not only Europe):             8
Countries visited in 2012:                                  4
Cities visited in 2012:                                           9 (Robyn 9; Graeme 6)
Dutch words learned:                                           3 (Pretty much can only say please, thank you, and you’re welcome : D )

We’ll update the stats as we go along as we hope to meet the goal of 25 countries by the time we return to Canada! I think it will be possible since we plan on going somewhere new each weekend. If you  count the surrounding countries, there are at least 4 more within a 7 hour drive of us (France, Luxembourg, United Kingdom, Switzerland) and another 6 top spots on the list that are just a two-hour flight away (Prague, Czech Republic; Copenhagen, Denmark; Rome, Italy; Barcelona, Spain; Rijeka, Croatia; Gdansk, Poland) to name a few. That’s an additional 10, so we’re up to 18 and hopefully can knock off another 6 between July-August 15th when we plan to travel to Thailand/Malaysia. If we don’t get to 25, that’s ok as there are thousands of cities in between, all of which are worthwhile visits.  It’s good to have a goal though : )

Map of our Trip so Far
Also, we started this map on Google maps to give you an idea of all the trips we are making. Green is cycling, Blue is driving for fun, and Orange is my work trips. Hope you have as much fun looking at it as I had making it: Robyn & Graeme’s Euro Trip (the zoom function is a bit out of whack so you have to zoom in and out all the time to see each trip. I’ll try to fix it later).

Trip to Cologne, Europe on a Shoestring

So, the remainder of this blog is not for those who have wishes to travel in luxury, or even in style. Graeme and I have made a pretty determined effort to do this trip on a budget, while still making the most of it. If you think this may offend you as you prefer luxurious hotels, expensive mani/pedis, and fine dining, don’t read on : )

This weekend we decided to go to Cologne, Germany. Cologne is a very old city, with the first urban settlement in 38 BC by the Romans. During WWII, Cologne had significant Nazi influence, including a Gestapo headquarter, EL-DE Haus, where the Secret Police held torturous interrogations in the basement (more about that later). During the war, many of the historic buildings were destroted. The Germans bombed the bridge noted below when retreating from the Allieds. Since then, this historic bridge has been rebuilt and is gorgeous at night. Cologne has a ton of shopping, music, and history and is situated on the Rhine river.

Back to our story though. As mentioned, we want to do this trip on a shoestring so we come back to Canada fairly well positioned financially. To do this, we had to make some (in this case) drastic cost saving measures. While I was up in Oss for work this past week, Graeme started hunting for sleeping mats. After much searching, and even trying a mattress factory in town for spare bits, he found 6 mats for the very frugal price of EUR 3! We then proceeded to put them in the trunk of the VW Polo. We brought along our trusty Nuvi (GPS), our quilt and pillows, and a few Euros for the trip. Second, Graeme did some research on Germany and noted that you can see tons of campers along the side of the road via Google street view. Of course this made us excited that it’s fairly easy to camp on the side of the road. I got home around 6PM on Friday and we left about 830 for our destination. When we arrived at the Autohof just outside of Cologne we saw a ton of these campers on the side of the road. We were pumped because our sleeping costs were eliminated at this point!

We drove by the campers and noticed a few things…first there were pretty Christmas lights in them all. We thought, why would all these truckers from the Autohof (truck stop) have twinkly lights…? Second, they were all perfectly spaced apart with room for a car between them. We thought, why would you park here with a car and then go somewhere else? Third, they all looked pretty simliar…some with flat tires… So then we thought, ok, maybe these people are actually homeless.  After deciding that the people who were staying there would probably get peeved if we took their parking spot, we decided to pay the EUR 7,50 to park at the Autohof instead.

We did one more drive around to see if there were any spaces that looked free, and then we noticed something really interesting…These trucker guys all seemed to have pretty signs outside with names of women on them…and inside each of the campers was usually a girl too, but not any guys that we could see. Why would truckers park here, leave their scantily dressed girlfriends Lulu, Jessica, and Janna in the camper vans to wave to passersby………………………………..finally we had our ah ha moment, which I’m sure you guessed above. These were working girls. While it made our Autohof stay a bit sketchy, it also was actually pretty neat. If we had stayed in a fancy hotel, we would never have seen the grittier side of Germany. And, at the end of the day, this type of system is much nicer and safer than our downtown Eastside in Vancouver.

Well, just wanted to share that story with you because we had a pretty good laugh at how long it took us to figure it out. We had a great, undisturbed, sleep at the Autohof. Luckily, the 7,50 we paid to stay at the Autohof also gave us a credit at the restaurant, so we used it to pay for breakfast, had to pay in total EUR 3,00 to use the washroom (50 cents per time), and spent about EUR 5,00 for a giant beer, pictured below, and two koffies. All in all, a fabulous, very inexpensive, stay.

Pictures at the Autohof

Other travels in Cologne
We also did a few cultural things in Cologne. It’s a beautiful city with a ton of shopping, cafes, and history. We went to two really notable places: The Cathedral (#2 thing to do in Germany per Lonely Planet) and the Nazi Documentation Centre (#5 thing to do in Germany per Lonely Planet).

The Cathedral is right downtown Cologne and is one of the largest, most ominous churches I have ever seen. The number of stain glass windows was impressive and the overall size and intricacy of the inside and outside of the building was unreal. We took the tour to the bell tower (only EUR 3,00 each!). It’s 500 steps to the top and well worth the climb. See the pictures and video (produced by Graeme) below:

TheNazi Documentation Centre is also right downtown, just 5 minutes from the Cathedral (only EUR 14,00 with audio sets!). We spent about 2 hours in there, but given the amount of information and the # of exhibits, you could probably spend 3 days as an English speaker and close to a full week if you could read German. We got the English audio sets, but they only tell you a portion of what is written in each room. It was a really intense museum to go to as during WWII, the Nazi Secret Police tortured and killed thousands of prisoners in the basement for sadistic and illogical reasons (homosexuality, feebleness of mind (as they termed it), and going against the Third Reich). There are many cells which you can look into and they have preserved as much of the writing on the walls as they can. It’s so sad, sickening, and intense to see, but at the same time is such an important thing to remember and to honour the families that were impacted. One of the things that hit us both was that the individuals who were tortured in the EL DE Haus, but survived, had to return to the same building at a later date in order to receive their pensions from the state as it had been converted into a government building between the time of the war and when it was transitioned to a museum.

Other pics from Cologne

A bridge on the Rhine river

Bratwurst - Yum!We had a lot of fun in the Lego store

You can buy lego from these bins! So cool

Getting photo lessons

Statue store in downtown Cologne...Getting these home would be a feat!

Why would you want this?

Sooo many donuts and sweets in Europe

Cool statue in Cologne

Our home in the Netherlands
It’s funny that it’s only been a few weeks here, but it does feel more like home now. We have both started to relax into daily life and are focused on making the best of our weekends. While I was finding it pretty challenging in the first few weeks, I am feeling much more settled now, primarily thanks to Graeme for being such a rock.

We miss you all, but feel so blessed and thankful to have this exciting adventure together. We look forward to the many gmail chats and phone calls, and come August, the many visits and hugs.

Love you all, signing off – Robyn

Posted by graemeandrobyn on January 22, 2012

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