Nothing Rhymes With Germany: Churches, Hustlers and Drunks

Drunks

And no, we weren't the drunks. But back to the start. Our trip started out on Saturday morning with the Fischer Family plus exchange student packing the car and hitting the road. After a grueling four-hour-no-stop car ride, we finally arrived at our hotel in Essen where I got pee (yes, I peed before we left). In the hotel, I was sad to find soap dispensers rather than the one-time-use shampoos that I like to collect. Another reminder that I'm in Europe, but no matter. From the hotel we took the train to the Velkins-Stadion or rather, the place where the Schalke football team plays. With every train we transferred onto, it became clearer and clearer that we were nearing a football game. Whether it was the ocean of blue jerseys, or the pre-drinkers singing away, we could tell we were getting close. But before we could even see the stadium, our train stopped and we were informed that someone had to be escorted off the train by the police and that it could be awhile. So we walked. Along the way we got to witness the consequences of pre-game drinking in the form of the entire side of the street becoming a free-for-all urinal:

posting this probably isn't legal

After getting patted down for explosives, we found our seats and sang the pre-game songs, no national anthem. The ocean of blue (Schalke) cheered on the blue players and the speck of green in the corner (Wolfsburg) cheered on the green players. Every time we scored a goal we got to high-five the people around us, which was pretty cool. It was also really funny to hear and watch the crazy end of the stadium chant and sing and clap the whole game. Where their energy comes from, I have no idea. After inhaling what seemed like a lifetime supply of smoke from the people in front of us, we ended up winning 4:1 and escaping before having an asthma attack.

As we trekked farther from the stadium, the crowds thinned and we got closer to dinner. We went to an oversized Italian restaurant that had oversized everything. And I mean everything, from oversized lamps, to pizzas bigger than the already giant plate, to what I ordered. It was relentless. I got an oversized calzone that I finished surprisingly (and regrettably) quickly:

But now to the drunks. The train back to the hotel from dinner can be described only as a tourist's dream experience. It was crowded, it was exciting, and it was loud. Apparently the drunk people from the game were still finding their way back home an hour after the fact. The scariest part wasn't the jumping, the singing or even the yelling, but it was that one of them was hanging onto the emergency brake like it was a handle. But luckily, (and to me and Joern's disappointment) nothing of the sort happened.

Churches

Our first full day in the Ruhrgebiet area started out with a ginormous breakfast buffet here at the Holiday Inn Express. It blew every hotel breakfast buffet that I've tried in America out of the water. From the fresh assortment of baked breads to the fancy coffee machine to everything else in between, we were stuffed and ready to go until dinner (besides the bananas we took shush don't tell).

After an hour train ride, we arrived in the southern-most Rhein-Ruhrgebiet city of Koeln (Cologne). As soon as we walked out of the Hauptbahnhof (Main station) we were greeted by the monster Koelner Dom (Cologne Cathedral). It is the fourth-tallest cathedral in the world, but much bigger than the Ulm Munster on the inside. In the Industrial revolution, the Rhein-Ruhr area had basically black air from all of the coal, hence the scary dark appearance of the cathedral:

The inside was GINORMOUS, let me just say and had tons of cool windows and what not else to see that one picture can not begin to capture so I'm not even going to bother.

From the Koelner Dom, we walked around the Alt Stadt (old city) which there isn't much left of anymore (thank you Hitler), but nonetheless it was still interesting. We saw the big famous bridge in Cologne that everyone likes to do the lock wish thing on like in Paris and I tried a new flavor of ice cream. We also stumbled apon another church (big surprise) that reeked of smoke on the inside. I think it was pine smoke, but it was palm Sunday so I'm not quite sure what it was. The church was cool I guess and I have no idea what denomination it was, nor do I care. I did appreciate; however, that it was far less crowded than the Koener Dom and was much simpler.

After seeing Cologne, we hopped a train north to the next southern-most Rhein-Ruhrgebiet city of Duesseldorf. There we found a nice bench in a nice park and made a nice little snack break. It was nice. We walked down the famous shopping street until we came to the Alt Stadt where, of course, we went inside of a church that had cool paintings on the ceiling. We walked around the Alt Stadt some more and then hopped a train back to Essen to find some Essen (food).

For dinner we found a cool mexican restaurant that had a bunch of really cool cocktails (alcohol free ones as well), but I opted for a beer as I forgot to try the famous Alt Bier in Duesseldorf (oops). After dinner we walked into yet another church (Essener Dom) where a choir was practicing and it was very nice. This was probably my favorite church of the day because it was not too bland or gaudy, it was empty, and it was quiet.

Hustlers

Nope. We weren't hustled; rather, we did the hustling. As I said before, the hotel has a wonderful buffet for breakfast, right? You know how it goes. In the end, the total haul was a couple ham sandwiches, a few bananas and some nasty gluten free cakes.

After riding what seemed like the worlds longest escalator (at the time) out of the subway, we arrived at the Zollverein coal museum place to find and even bigger escalator:

lame subway escalator

extreme coal plant museum escalator

The Zollverein and Ruhr Museum are about the Ruhr's history as an industrial capital. But with the coal almost gone (with the last mine closing in 2018) we are left with a wonderful museum about the coal that once was. Don't get me wrong, it was interesting to learn that the Ruhr area has sunk a whole 20 meters because of all the coal that was dug out and that all of the hills that we saw from the top of the plant were made from dirt dug out of the coal mines, but it was still mind-numbingly boring. Like it's good to know that coal was important to this area and that's why a lot of the old buildings are black, but I don't care how it was cleaned, sorted and burned. Nonetheless, that was our morning.

This afternoon we attempted to visit the villa of some rich guy that owned a big steel plant at some point in history. After riding the train a half hour to get there, we were bummed to find out that it was closed on Mondays. But we could have paid five euros per person to go in and walk around the park, which we didn't. We hopped back on the train and came out on the other side of Essen to see the houses that this rich-steel-guy built for his workers. they were pretty cool and, of course, grey from the pollution that once was. We got back to our station to find that the electric wires above the tram we took in had broke while we were there wandering about. We could have waited 25 minutes for a bus to come and pick us up, or we could have walked 20 minutes to the nearest subway connection. You can guess we chose the hard path. After 45 minutes of aimlessly following Scheiss google directions through forests, cemeteries and whatnot else, we finally arrived at the next train station.

We took the train back through Essen (yes, again) and came out the other side to a village called Kettwig. There, we found a place to eat for dinner and no sooner than we had arrived, found ourselves leaving.

It's been quite the day and tomorrow we leave the spaghetti-like Rhein-Ruhr area for the the hopefully much less frustrating Muenster and then Hamburg.

Here's some fun pictures from the past two days XD