Europe - Germany

Rhinefalls


From Switzerland, we travelled into Germany, but stopped at Rhinefalls (still in Switzerland, nearing Germany). Apparently, this waterfall is just 2nd after the Negara Falls in terms of water flow (ie: cubic metres per sec). The park was another nice place to sit with a cuppa steaming coffee and sandwich, and to relax.

I wasn't in that good a mood initally though. Had too much to drink in Lucerne in an attmept to shit (in case you were wondering, no I had not shit at all since I came to Europe), and was nursing a mini Rhinefall of my own. Good thing I didn't wet my seat in the bus - I held the water in for a good 2 hours, until my back ached. Yuck.

After a short stop we headed on to Titisee in Germany, where the view along the way was breath-taking. Slight reflection in the pics as they were taking from the bus.



Thought I'd share something interesting with you all too. The toilet bowl has a self cleaning mechanism. When you flush, the green box thing whirls the toilet seat a full round and apparently cleans it. A cool mechanism that can also be implemented in Singapore. The only thing I'm bushuang about is that toilets costs 50cent Euros! So much lor! Plus you know I have a weak bladder and like to drink a lot of water... SIAN.


Whirling in process

Titisee

Here, we ate lunch, consisting of chicken soup, grilled pork knuckles, black forest cake, and german-brewed beer. The pork knuckles was seriously meh, the ones I had in Bangkok with Seok and Shiyun, or even in Singapore tasted much better. This one was a bit soggy, and I couldn't really cut through the fats. In Germany, pork knuckles can be fried, grilled or braised. The one I had was grilled, but the ones we normally eat are fried, which could explain the difference in standards. I like the fried ones!

The black forest cake, however, was very yummy, there was some rum/liquor in the cream, and it was way too small a slice for me. Beer was very smooth, but I don't know what happened to me, besides turning red like I normally would, I actually broke out into cold sweat later, and could not see anything in front of me for a while. Heng there was Qianyi who held onto me. When I could see very faintly, I realised I needed to shit. So hurray! Maybe it was the beer that helped, or maybe my constipation made everything go dark, dunno. Anyhow, it wasn't the best of experiences - from the morning with my mini Rhinefall to the blackout in the afternoon.


The cuckoo clock making demo was okay, its very intricate and they even have little people who will ring the bells (or in one case, the woman hitting the man) to make the clock chime. There are special instruments to make the bird go "kukoo" too (haha my sentence sounds funny)! A little pricey though, the clocks. A small (size of an A5 book) one that makes the original "kukoo" sound instead of the cheapo "tweet tweet" noise costs 99 euroes. My mini blackout resulted in few pictures from both Qianyi and me. Sad.

Quick shopping later, and then we proceeded to Rhineland for the night.

Rhineland


Nothing very memorable here initally, spent a lot of time travelling actually. We saw a castle (pic above) at the top of the hill and an old bridge. Rhineland got its name cos of the 2 banks on either side of the River Rhine. We all know the geography about River Rhine being the longest river in Europe, flowing through Swizterland, Germany, France and the Netherlands. Rhineland was also briefly involved in WW1 though I can't really recall the details. Go google it if you are interested!





The next day at Rhineland was slightly better, we travelled to Loreley and saw many castles along the Rhine River. Very pretty. If you look at the last pic in the collage above, you can make out 2 castles (white and black) seperated by a wall. They belonged to the "Warring Brothers" who went to war and killed each other. We had cheesecake and apple crumble - the guide told us the cheesecake here was famous but the apple crumble was actually yummier! Good thing I'm greedy and wanna eat more, if not we wouldn't have had the best apple crumble ever.


See? The other dishes pale in comparison. Haha.

Cologne


Cologne is the 4th largest city in Germany and I will never forget it, simply because it was 35-f**king degrees when I got there. WTH! The cathedral was dedicated to St Peter and Virgin Mary, and is Cologne's most famous landmark. Its greyish due to the pollution and there were some attempts to clean it - see how it shines in white? That was the original colour. I like the pollution ridden look of the cathedral more though, gives it a surreal, majestic feel.



The interior of the cathedral is very cool. High ceilings and pretty windowns. Light shines from the outside, through the stained glass windows, and thats how you see the images them. The images depict teachings from the bible and have to be read from bottom up, right to left. The floors have intricate designs/patterns too.



There was some free time for shopping but it was freaking hot and Qianyi couldn't find any place selling Braun Buffel. Weird, considering its a german brand and we were in Germany. It was some public holiday in Cologne as well, and we chanced upon a civilian band putting up a public performance - they were singing and playing songs. It seemed so spontaneous that I wanted to hum along too. Infectious!

We went into a bakery and bought some pasteries.



See, I bought this custard bread (among other breads) that was so huge! It looks like apple crumble but trust me, its custard bread. There were apple crumble bits at the top though, making it look so deceiving. It was yummy but we couldn't finish it, even after 3 days.

Thats all for Germany. I know I haven't seen most of it yet, but I don't really fancy going back there just yet. The place just didn't do it for me. :/