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Trains trains trains trains trains trains. Trains.
We never slow down here! (That’s the opposite of a problem.) When we’re not in class, we’re on a train headed toward some group or individual excursion. It’s unbelievably easy to get around. This past week, we spend our Thursday afternoon on a group excursion to Cologne, our Friday on a group trip to Dusseldorf, and our Saturday on an individual journey to castle ruins 30 minutes outside of Bonn.
Cologne was my first real experience with breathtaking church architecture–we took a short walking tour of the Old City district, and then took a rooftop tour of Cologne Cathedral. It was a bitterly cold day, but the biting wind and shivering was worth it to find yourself more than 70 meters in the air on top of a structure whose construction occupied around 600 years of the city’s history. Our journey to the roof took us up an elevator and into what seemed to me to be the bowels of the church and its ceilings. We got a peek behind the scenes to see the steel frame and the antique tools that were once used for maintenance. In fact, our tour guide was a stone carver employed in the cathedral’s preservation workshop and was able to give us a lot of specific facts and details about the structure. After an uncomfortably long trek up several stone spiral staircases–in which I got a more than a little claustrophobic–we reached the first level of the roof (around 45 m from the ground). After getting acclimated to our new altitude, we traveled further and climbed another spiral staircase (this one was iron and from the 1800s) into the South Tower (around 70 m from the ground). The view from up here was absolutely amazing. Positioned right behind the two spires, our platform gave us a panoramic view of the entire city at sunset. The entire experience was borderline life changing, if I’m speaking honestly.
We never slow down here! (That’s the opposite of a problem.) When we’re not in class, we’re on a train headed toward some group or individual excursion. It’s unbelievably easy to get around. This past week, we spend our Thursday afternoon on a group excursion to Cologne, our Friday on a group trip to Dusseldorf, and our Saturday on an individual journey to castle ruins 30 minutes outside of Bonn.
Cologne was my first real experience with breathtaking church architecture–we took a short walking tour of the Old City district, and then took a rooftop tour of Cologne Cathedral. It was a bitterly cold day, but the biting wind and shivering was worth it to find yourself more than 70 meters in the air on top of a structure whose construction occupied around 600 years of the city’s history. Our journey to the roof took us up an elevator and into what seemed to me to be the bowels of the church and its ceilings. We got a peek behind the scenes to see the steel frame and the antique tools that were once used for maintenance. In fact, our tour guide was a stone carver employed in the cathedral’s preservation workshop and was able to give us a lot of specific facts and details about the structure. After an uncomfortably long trek up several stone spiral staircases–in which I got a more than a little claustrophobic–we reached the first level of the roof (around 45 m from the ground). After getting acclimated to our new altitude, we traveled further and climbed another spiral staircase (this one was iron and from the 1800s) into the South Tower (around 70 m from the ground). The view from up here was absolutely amazing. Positioned right behind the two spires, our platform gave us a panoramic view of the entire city at sunset. The entire experience was borderline life changing, if I’m speaking honestly.
