On one Weekend, myself and prasanna planned to go to Cologne, one of the ancient cities of Germany. It has an old Dom(church) which is a few centuries old, a chocolate musem and many othe museums, lot of bridges over the river Rhine and many more.
Bonn is another place which is close to Cologne which was the capital of Germany when Berlin wall still existed.Soon after we got down at the Hauptbahnhof, we went to the Dom which is adjacent to it.
We roamed in and around the Dom and also visited the Weinachtsmarkt(Christmas market) which was getting set up for Christmas beside the Dom. We also took some photoes of the beggars who were standing still like statues.
Since Prasanna had to do some shopping, we went towards "Saturn","C&A","Kaufhof". But he was not happy with the collections. This time, I directly went to the Kinder(Kids) section and got 2 more pullovers.For lunch we had Veg Doner from a Turkish shop and started towards the schocoladen(chocolate) Museum. We had got the printouts of the Cologne city map and we found it very easy to locate the places with the help of that map. We spent most of our time in the museum looking at the history of chocolate, preparation of chocolate etc. When we came out of the museum, it was 3.30PM and it was getting dark by then. We just started walking on the banks of the river Rhine. Took some photoes on the bank and the bridges.
Prasanna updated my GK by saying that it is the 2nd longest river in Europe after Thames.It was flowing very peacefully without any sound. I was really surprised looking at the river Rhine cos I am always used to Kaveri, Tunga-bhadra rivers which flow making melodious sounds(juLu juLu naada). Since there was no time left, we came back to the Hauptbahnhof to catch our train. However, we missed that train by just 1 minute and had to wait for the next train for another hour.
on one another weekend, I planned to go to Hamburg since my office junior colleagues Nagabhushan and Suresh were staying there. This time Prasanna did not accompany me as he had some training in stuttgart. By now, I was confident of travelling alone by train even if I had to change the trains in between. By now, the climate was getting really colder sometimes even below 0 degree and I was also prepared for that.My friends received me at the hauptbahnhof and we decided to first go to the place where the submarine was kept for exhibition. According to what they told, it was a Russian submarine that was used during World War II.
We went inside the submarine where almost all the machinery was exposed. Those 2 guys enjoyed it more cos they were able to understand so many things there since they were from Mechanical background. I was simply wondering about the technology at that time!!
After that we went to Langdensbreuke on river Elbe. There were so many huge ships. I was very impressed cos that was the first time I was seeing a ship. We took a ride on the boat for about an hour and was able to see the ships from very close.
It was amazing. It was really cold, but still we were enjoying the boat trip. The wind was blowing at a high speed that I was unable to balance myself on the floor. But it was fantastic!!After the boat trip, they took me to an Indian Restraunt (probably the name is Badhshah) which was managed by a Punjabi who was married to a German lady.His wife and kids were also there in the restraunt. It was really funny to watch the kids, who looked more like Germans, calling him as "baba" and their mom as "maa". We finally had chole batura there and moved towards Alster lake. There was weinachtsmarkt set up there also.
Roamed around there for sometime. When the climate becomes even more colder,my friends said, the entire lake would be frozen and people sometimes even played ice skating on it. Returned back to my Hotel t Round 9.30PM with loads of memories and photoes. But most of the photoes are all shaken cos our hands were shivering without gloves.
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