Koln - 7/21/07

With a heavy heart, I started the day by departing Utrecht. The city was a great home for six weeks and I already miss the canals and twisting roads. And the daily room service. I was excited for my first ever foray into Germany. For the first night in my blitzkrieg of western Europe our destination was the city of Koln.



Relying solely upon our tour guide book for things to do in Koln, our first stop was the Shokolade Museum. Sponsored by Lindt chocolate, it was a source of knowledge and deliciousness. Located on prime real-estate on the Rhine River, it also was a spectacular piece of architecture.





We then ventured north up to the Dom. This was by far the largest Cathedral I had seen. Intimidating in size, it was well worth the two euros to scale the belfry to gain a view of the entire city.

Finally, we made our way down to the heumarket area to get some nice bratwurst.



I will leave you with a mobile bar that is powered by patrons’ pedaling while blasting techno music.

Plzen - 7/15/07

This was one Soviet day. Allen, Dan, Mike and I decided to leave the tourist trap of Prague to try to get a true Czech experience. Despite the train station being in plain site from our apartment, it still took us nearly 30 minutes to find our way to the front entrance. Inside we were confronted with some truly Soviet trains. Rusted compartments with stiff seats and no AC, these were a far cry from the accommodations that I had become used to in Western Europe. They were more Amtrak than ICE.



The Czech countryside itself was surprisingly scenic. The train tracks ran parallel to the Berounka River for most of the trip.



When we get to Plzen, the town was…abandoned. It was partially due to it beint a Sunday – but I think we accounted for 20% of all non-Plzen residents in the town that day. After a quick bite to eat we took a tour of the underground storage network that had been in Plzen since the 14th century. It was neat how the entire tour was in Czech, leaving us to share an Engrish transcript of the tour to try to figure out what we were looking at.

After this we decided to check out the world’s third largest synagogue. While it was impressive in stature, it was sad to see the poor condition it had been in. Occupation by Nazi and Soviet forces hadn’t been kind to the local Jewish population, so it had fallen into a state of disrepair since there was nobody left to use the synagogue.



Following the synagogue we went to the Pilsner Urquell brewery to relax and spend the remainder of the day in Pilzen. It was nice running into a group of Chinese tourists there, reminding us that we weren't the only foreigners in town.