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It was dark when I left Paris for my grand adventure in Germany but the sun rose about the time the train crossed into Belgium.
The countryside through Belgium and Germany appeared idyllic in the morning sunlight.
I caught flashing glimpses of many small villages.

After I met the family and settled in, my friend took me back into Köln to see the Cathedral. It is a very impressive structure, both inside and out, and built in largely memory of the magi who presented gifts to Jesus.

That night, before picking up Elias, we wandered the streets of Köln. It has a lot of streets for pedestrians only, making it a fantastic place to go shopping for any ladies who are reading this and maybe someday going to Germany.

The next day we visited Maria Laach, a monastery in the middle of a dormant volcano crater.

It is located on the edge of a beautiful forest overlooking the volcanic lake.

My cousin and I. Notice the snow at our feet and in the other pictures. We were excited about the snow. Maria Laach was at a high enough elevation that they still had a little snow. It had melted everywhere else.

Afterward we went to a volcano museum. It described the volcanic activity that occured thousands of years ago in the Rhein river valley in Germany. They had a virtual newscast about the Maria Laach lake erupting and destroying Germany that I found marvelously interesting and entertaining, especially since I had just seen it from the monastery. As we traveled in the car I kept marveling at the cute little villages out the window. Also at the castles, which seem to be everywhere.

Then we went to Koblenz, which rests on the "German Corner," the intersection of the Rhein and Mosel rivers.

This castle used to defend the corner. Now it is a hostel.

This castle stands on the Mosel bank, if I remember right.

On the tip there are several country flags. The US flag was conveniently near the end, so I just had to take a picture with Koblenz in the background :-)

In Koblenz we visited my friend's dad and one of his brothers. It was really cool to me because my grandparents, aunt, and uncle have all visited that house long ago, before I was born. I felt like I was visiting long lost relatives.

Tragically, I didn't get any pictures of Bonn. We spent an entire day there but I left my camera in the car (silly me!). We spent at least 3 hours in the birth house of Beethoven. That was super interesting. Yay for English audio guides! Bonn used to be the capital city, so it has many, many official buildings and historical sites of interest. That night we hung out with the younger brother we had met the day before. That was fun; he loves France and goes there often so he and I got to speak some French.

The next day we went back to Köln and did the Cathedral the right way. We were there for several hours, looking at all the different windows and artwork, visiting the treasury (lots of shiny stuff) and climbing the tower.
Apparently the Cathedral was heavily damaged during the war (as was all of Köln) but it looks pretty good now. In most of the towns I visited there were very old buildings clustered next to buildings from the 1950s. The survivors and the rebuilding.

Many of the original windows are gone. This one is quite new.

The peak

I took a mini-pano from the top.

We weren't sure what this thing was, but my cousin challenged it to a fight.

On the last day we visited Aachen. It has a small but very beautiful cathedral which houses the tomb of Charlemagne. If I remember right, it has been frequently used for coronations.

All that glitters...

Here is the view from the outside. See the balcony for addressing the throngs?

Aachen was a very pretty city. Like Köln it had a lot of pedestrians and not many cars in downtown. Here is a panoramic photo that took me way too long to edit :-)

After that we drove to Dusseldorf to drop my cousin off at the airport and went back to the house. I got to goof off with the boys for a while, playing Wii and around the world (ping pong). I am the master of playing ping pong while dizzy. Or maybe not...
Then more relatives came over and we had a lovely afternoon of food and conversation in three languages. Hurray for one of my new friends knowing French! She and I got to use it a little bit while I was there and hopefully we can keep emailing back and forth in French also. So we had German, English, and French going on at the table, sometimes all at the same time. Such fun! Then I had to say goodbye, which was sad, so I'll spend minimal time on that point.
The train ride wasn't uneventful. We were stuck in Belgium for about 40 minutes. I didn't mind, actually. When I first got on the train I found that I was in a seat facing two other people rather than the normal seating arrangement. So I had to be polite and avoid eye contact with three people instead of just the girl with whom I was almost touching elbows. Such work! But when our train broke down (or whatever it did) it broke the ice and we all started chatting. The couple across from me spoke French, so I spoke French to them. The girl next to me was German, but she spoke really good English. The couple got off in Belgium but my seatmate and I kept chatting. She works for 3M, which is a remarkable coincidence. Anybody who knows much about me knows why. I won't say because, um, this is the internet. Anyway, we chatted about literature and politics and education. It was good, but I never did ask her name. I hope she had fun in Paris. Then I had more adventures on the RER that were totally my fault, with the result that I got home about an hour and a half later than I had expected when all was said and done.
All in all it was a great trip. My friends were fantastic hosts, and I saw a lot of history. I also got a lot of insights into the church in Germany and Europe as a whole. It fascinates me how different the body of Christ can be from one continent to the next, and yet in many ways we are all the same.