European Tryst: Part Two! Yay Europe!

After Paris we headed for Strasbourg....well, I headed for Strasbourg. After some train troubles, I ended up getting on a train an hour before theirs since Eurorail only has certain openings. I thought all would be well though and they would meet me there. However, I get a phone call when I am almost there that began with 'So....I hope you have fun in Strasbourg by yourself....' no good! They missed their train! So I spent the day wandering by myself, which really turned out fine! I did have a bit of drama trying to figure out what to do that night. My aunt and uncle live in Stuttgart, Germany so my plan was to just head there for the night and meet my friends in Berlin. Our cell phones weren't working well and we hadn't made plans for where to stay in Bonn, our next stop. I made my first collect call and sent a ton of emails and had finally arranged to take a train to Stuttgart when amazingly my friend Stephanie got online! She was participating in the A&M study abroad program in Bonn and she offered for me to stay at her house and even said she would meet me at the train station! So lucky! So I spent the day in Strasbourg and continued as planned on to Bonn.

the lovely town of strasbourg....they had a really modern train station but i can't seem to find my photos of it! hopefully they are still on my flash drive....

the astronomical clock

the hospital

the winery underneath the hospital

the older part of town

the dam

When I arrived in Cologne (easier train station than Bonn) Stephanie was there as promised! She snuck me in to her host family's house. Luckily, she has the whole basement floor to herself so they never had to see me. They are fine with guests but she didn't have time to warn them. It was just easier. I then went with her to the Bonn train station sent my friends a text with Steph's phone and told them I would stay in the train station until they arrived. Rami finally showed up a couple hours later and we took a taxi to the hostel they had found. The hostel was interesting. We are pretty sure it used to be some sort of hospital or psyc facililty or rehab center. The layout was such that there were long corridors with rooms and Beca and Rami accidentally took the elevator down an extra floor and said they said hospital rooms. It was just a strange feeling to be there.....hard to explain. The breakfast tasted good at least. Despite the fact that Bonn was the place we went to visit the kids studying there we didn't get to see them at all! Communication and poor planning issues. We did get to go to the house that Beethoven was born. There was a great interactive exhibit there that feature his only opera. Each of the 4 characters was a different 3D visual and was attached to a different motion control that sort of match its shape (a rotated ball when the character was a sphere, etc.) We all wore 3D glasses and could control where the characters went and their voices moved with their position. It was very neat! A great new way to experience music. We ate some gelato, walked around a bit and hit the hay. We did say we were just napping and would wake up to go out, but I tried to wake them up around 10 and they were not going anywhere....story of our trip, haha. Everyone knows you're supposed to be exhausted when you travel! The next morning we headed to Cologne, popped out of the station to see the Dom and then caught a train to Berlin!