Cologne & Aachen
Roommates woke me up at 7 AM, packing and bathroom. But Gregor didn’t mind and slept until 10:30 AM. We’ve done checkout at 11 AM. Next, it was a challenge of car rental. I didn’t do reservations upfront while it was open how the trip will continue. Tried 2 “rent a car” shops. They didn’t have a car on disposable. In 5h time it would get released for a hefty price and without winter tires. So it was time to stop and see what to do next. We went to Starbucks, tried making a reservation online and it failed, so I started calling, finally got a car for pickup in 2h at the place where they didn’t have a car before. We had to fill in some time so we went for a beer in the city 22 €. We came to pick up the car at 14:30, but with their inefficiency, we started a trip after 15h. We rented Fiat Panda 92 € for 3 days, but insurance doubled the price. The first ride was to Cologne. In the Netherlands, roads were full of traffic but were big enough so there was no traffic jam. Interestingly, there were at least 15 pieces of roadkill, birds, fox, hedgehog. In Germany problems started. First, we lost 15 min just standing in a line, exit to center of Cologne was closed, so few more loops were made. In Koln, we searched for parking, after we found it we went to the train station and met Nejc.
We went to Gaffel am Dom brewery for dinner (steak, big sausage), beer Kolsch served in their specific glasses, 82 €. On way out, I bought 2 beer barrel as gifts, 13 €/pcs. It was time to go to Aachen, but when we stepped outside it was snowing and we didn’t have the right tires. I was driving behind trucks and it took some extra time to arrive. In the city, snow was covering roads, so it was slipper until we parked. Stefaan and Oli greeted us at his place, 6th floor with no elevator. Before going out we moved the couch from the hall into the living room.
At the first bar, we had few beers and one more friend that knew about Slovenia joined us. We explained to them the game – guessing artist or song title in a bar. We continued at Domkeller pub from 1658 near the cathedral. We returned back to flat after closing. We had some chat until 5 AM, talking about trees for 1st of May custom (Maibaum, close but still different to Mlaj in Slovenia), …
