Colonge: Pleasant surprises

Sometimes, the best things in life are unexpected. Just look at my trip through Germany with Faeth. When we first started out, we had two main goals: Munich and Berlin. Along the way, we also hoped to see our relatives. In the end, Munich was fun, Berlin was nothing special (sorry to all my German friends!), and the week we spent with our distant cousins was the best time of our whole trip so far.

Cologne was another special surprise.

Faeth and I knew we wanted to see the famous Rhine River when we traveled through Germany. I can’t really say why it’s famous—I’ve just heard of it a dozen times. It was easily on the way to Munich, too, so we decided to take a day’s detour in Cologne. When Gerda and Christoph heard our plans, they suggested visiting the city cathedral as well, which they had done some years before and considered breathtaking.

We arrived in Cologne after about four hours on the train. We had no hostel waiting for us, so that was a bit nerve-wracking, but we were blessed to find one very near the train station. As soon as we’d dropped our stuff off in our room, we hit the streets, heading towards that famous Rhine River.

The famous Rhine River

In order to reach the best walking path along the river, according to our receptionist, we had to cross a huge bridge, and that’s where we stumbled onto our first special surprise. This bridge spanned the whole Rhine, so it was hundreds of feet wide. All along the bridge was a fence that covered the inside and separated the walking path from the trains that also used the bridge. And all along that fence were thousands of locks, each with initials or names carved into them. The story behind the locks might be sappy to some, but to me, it was incredibly sweet: couples would bring a lock with their initials to the bridge, lock it onto the fence, and throw the key into the Rhine to symbolize their everlasting love. Some of these locks had been there for years, while others were only days old. We even got to see a couple loving stick their lock on the fence and throw the key into the river.

A couple puts a lock on the bridge.

When we reached the path along the Rhine, the river wasn’t quite what I expected. It was a muddy brown color, and it honestly didn’t smell that great. In fact, it looked a lot like the good ol’ Hudson back in Wisconsin. But walking along the Rhine with my sister filled me with some sort of indescribable happiness. For the first time, we were on our own, together, in Europe. This was the real start of our European adventure. As I looked at the young woman walking next to me, I was overwhelmed with joy that we could share this experience together. Despite our occasional personality clashes, there is no one I’d rather travel with than my sister Faeth.

But the fun didn’t end there. After we walked along the Rhine, both enjoying the view and enjoying the extreme relaxation of having nowhere else to be, we visited the city cathedral, also known as Cologne Cathedral. It’s huge, and it isn’t even done yet! It’s been in construction for centuries: started in 1248, halted around 1470 and continued in the 1800s. It’s the largest Gothic-style church in northern Europe and has the second-tallest spires and largest façade of any church in the world… and before we showed up in Germany, we hadn’t even heard of it!

The Cologne Cathedral--one of Germany's best-kept secrets!

The inside took your breath away: so much wide, open ceiling, so many glittering stained glass windows, so much intricate stone carving. I understand why some people feel closer to God when they’re standing in giant cathedrals. If you wanted to really push yourself, you could climb the nearly 500 steps to the top of the bell tower. Gerda and Christoph had done it, and we decided if they could, we could. Climbing up the cramped stone tower felt really claustrophobic, but the view of the city was spectacular. We also got to walk around the many giant bells, including St. Peter’s Bell, a gigantic 24-ton bell that’s the largest free-swinging bell in the world.

Looking back over our time in Germany after we left the relatives, I think our visit to Cologne was my favorite part. I guess the moral of the story is: Sometimes you need to be open to surprises. You never know when you’ll find something truly special.

New connections in the Old World

For the past eight years, my sister Faeth and I have dreamed of going to Europe. We always said we’d do it when we were both out of school and had no obligations. Well, this year I graduated from MSU and Faeth graduated from high school, so we had a whole summer to spend abroad. After paring down our plans from three months to a bit more doable six weeks, we packed our backpacks, bought two tickets to Amsterdam and started our grand adventure.

Neither Faeth nor I have ever traveled to Europe before, so we really had no idea what we were getting into. Just making it to Europe was an experience. We were up at 6:30 a.m. Wednesday to make our morning flight, where I almost forgot my lucky sweater, then had to kill five hours in Philadelphia waiting for our connection. Finally, after an 8-hr flight, we arrived in Amsterdam. While it was 8 a.m. local time, we had just gone through a 7-hr time shift, and it was very difficult trying to make my brain admit that it wasn’t 1 a.m. anymore.

From the Amsterdam airport, we took a train to Groningen, a city just outside the German border. During our 2-hour train trip, it finally started to sink in that we were actually in Europe. We could see hundreds of windmills twirling above picturesque fields of sheep, long rows of brick houses and signs everywhere in Dutch. We would have been a bit worried about the language barrier, but we were meeting someone at Groningen. Thankfully, we still have family in the “Old Country”—that is, Germany—and they graciously offered to let us stay with them for a few days. You can’t imagine the relief we felt when we arrived at the station and saw Cousin Ralph waiting for us.

Ralph took us across the border into Germany. We got to ride the Autobahn, one of the to-do’s on my Germany list, with Ralph pushing his car up to 220 kilometers/hr. just to give us a thrill. After another two hours of driving, we arrived at the place we’d be staying: the house of Ralph’s parents, Christoph and Gerda. Gerda is the daughter of my great-grandfather’s sister. I’m not really sure what that makes us, but Faeth and I were just happy to be with someone we sort of knew.

 

Gerda and Christoph were kind and generous and spoke about 30 words of English. “Perfect German?” they asked hopefully as soon as we’d met. I understand why they’d think that; every generation of my family has spoken German, and even my parents are fluent. But I chose to study Spanish, and Faeth is studying Russian, so neither of those was much help. All I had was one year of German I’d taken five years ago in high school. But we were able to communicate with an odd mixture of German/English mixed sentences and lots of hand gestures—and constantly flipping through our German-English dictionary.

During the next few days, Gerda and Christoph showed us places from our family’s past: the church where my great-grandfather Henry was baptized, the home where great-great-grandfather Deiter lived, the school Henry had attended… They even had pictures and letters written by long-ago generations a hundred years ago. Holding Christmas cards written in my great-grandfather’s hand was something special. It was a link to my family’s past and part of my own identity. I started to better understand why my great-grandfather had been the way he’d been and what his life had been like. I hadn’t known him very well, but standing in his childhood house made me feel closer to him. Suddenly, I was able to form a more complete picture of the man who had emigrated from Germany with nothing as a young man and died a millionaire landowner in Iowa, who mixed newfangled ideas with deep-rooted values and love of family.

This is Great-Grandpa Henry's school house

 

The three days we spent with our family were filled with love and laughter, despite (and sometimes because of) the language barrier. You don’t need words to tell someone you love them. When it was time to go to the train station, Gerda made sure we had bagged lunches for the trip and Christoph hugged me close and whispered, “Ich leibe dich.”  I hope we can meet again someday—and maybe next time I’ll actually know some German! I have a feeling though, that whatever the obstacles between us—different languages or thousands of miles—we’ll always have a special connection based simply on love.

me, Christoph, Gerta and Faeth

 

Europe, here we come!

Hi all! My name is Grace Webb and I'll be your tour guide during this trip :) I just graduated from Minnesota State University Mankato and decided to take this summer to travel Europe with my little sister, Faeth, who just graduated high school. Consider it a graduation present to ourselves--eight years in the making! My blog will follow our travels as we stumble across the continent and make lasting memories. There will be sure to be some hiccups along the way, but that's all part of the adventure! So, pack your bags and follow us!