After probably about 9 months it was time to go back to Germany. Afterall, that is where my working holiday visa is for. It was Cologne that I was first going to. A town which I didn't really know anything about, nor know what there was to do there. Basically it was a major city close to the Netherlands border which is why I chose it. Well mostly why I chose it anyway. There were a few other places in the area I was tossing up between, so I did do a little research (and some hostel pricing) before settling on Cologne.

It's most notable features are a gothic cathedral and an iron rail bridge. Both were interesting without being mind-blowing. The kinda things that had I seen in my first month or so would have been amazing, but were now just kinda cool. I will say though, the padlocks along the bridge have now surpassed the one in Paris in terms of sheer number and density. This bridge was far larger than the one in Paris and was still just about as packed with locks.

I actually really did enjoy my time in Cologne though, mostly because I met and hung out with some cool people. I think if there is one thing I've really discovered in the last 10 months of this trip, is that amazing places can seem rather boring and otherwise boring places can be amazing depending on who you're with. There are certainly advantages to traveling alone, for one, you can do and see whatever you want without having to consult anyone. Two, you get to meet plenty of new amazing people. One of the main problems with it however, is that you don't always get to meet plenty of new amazing people. So every now and then, you find yourself in a place which could be amazing, only to come away from it thinking it was kinda meh. But this wasn't one of those times, this was the opposite.

The hostel was a rather small one, the kind which I have learned is definitely my favourite. It had a little outdoor area with chairs that people would often hang out in to smoke and drink. And it was doing just that (the drinking, not the smoking) that I got to meet people. There were a couple of Germans, some Americans and Canadians and an English girl. It was the English girl, Michelle and an American guy, Levi, who I spent a couple of days with.

Before meeting these guys however (which was on the the first night) I had spent a day just lazily wandering around Cologne. As I said before, there wasn't whole lot to do, basically I headed straight in to see the cathedral. It was good, but not great. It really takes something for a cathedral to make me go 'wow' these days. There was also an old roman tower, but I can't really say much about that other than it looked pretty cool.

The first day that I spent with Michelle and Levi we had originally planned to go to the zoo. But the plan was changed to go to this park which apparently had some kind of high wire course thing. Long story short, after a 45 minute walk to get there, it didn't seem to exist. Actually that wasn't really a long story short, that basically was the story. However the park it was suppose to be in was nice, and huge. It also had an awesome rope playground obstacle course thing, which we figured was the next best thing to the high wire thingy. It was a hot sunny day and we were exhausted and very sweaty by the time we were done with that. So we went and got an ice cream. It was a very childlike day. That was until we went and grabbed a beer and sat in the sun drinking for a while.

That evening when we got back to the hostel we discovered that it had been overrun with 12 year old girls. They were a soccer team from somewhere up north in Germany. Not the type of thing you get use to when staying in hostels. Some of them were however rather excited about practising their English. I guess they were at the age where they were only a couple of years in. Already though they could speak better English than I could German. Turns out that Michelle was also a dance instructor back home, and these girls were even more excited to learn some dance moves, so that provided some entertainment for a while; it also had the added benefit of tiring the girls out so they weren't running up and down the hallway all night making a bunch of noise.

The next day was a Sunday, and was a very lazy one. I slept in until past noon. Then we headed down to a smaller (though still large) park not far from our hostel. It was gorgeous and had a big lake in the middle with paddle boats. THe park was packed with people and families sunbathing and having barbeques and some playing sports. When the good weather comes out the Germans are definitely quick to jump on it. So we joined them. We just laid in the sun and talked. I took my Kindle and got in a bit of reading (Catch-22, which by the way is an amazing book, though I've not yet finished it). We did want to do the paddle boats, but when we got there the line was too long.

After that we went back across the river to a tower which had a viewing platform at the top. It was priced the same as the cathedral tower. We chose to do this one instead however as we figured the cathedral was one of the things you'd want to be able to see. The view from this side of the river also allowed looking back over to the old town on the other side which surrounded the cathedral. It also had a lift whereas the cathedral just had 500 steps. That night was just spent with more drinking and chilling out in the outside area. Nothing that I can remember of and great note happened. We were all leaving and heading our separate ways the next day. Myself, I was heading south to Germany's oldest town, Trier.