Finally! After an entire week, we made it to Trier.
Mmmmm, Trier.
Trier is my some standards the oldest city in Germany, and has actually been recommended to me as a day-trip destination by a bunch of Germans. So I painfully rolled out of bed at 7am and was on the train with Nat and Chris by 8. The ride was fun, like it always is. We played random games and ate food. We all agreed that we were going to seriously miss this train system when we get back to Canada. Oh, of course I’ll come visit you guys in Toronto, I’ll just hop on the... oh... crap.
Well right out of the train station in Trier we came across a huge Roman… thing. It turned out to be a gate and part of an old city wall. It was extremely old, and extremely huge. We weren’t going to go up, but then we found out that the ticket that we would buy covered entry to all the other Roman ruins in the city, and there were quite a few. So since we had gotten there nice and ealry, we decided to go for it! After the huge gate, we walked up the cute pedestrian zone, visited a huge cathedral, another historical church, and a huge underground Roman bathhouse complex. Then it was coffee time. We stopped at your typical German/Italian street café and I had the most amazing Eiskaffee ever (which is a tall glass of cold coffee with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream in it, topped with whipped cream… mmmm). It was a good break. And afterwards we were ready to head out again.
I don't really have any pictures of the big gate, but I pulled out the camera at the cathedral.
The cathedral had a really nice graveyard/courtyard inside.
Nat liked it too.
This was another Roman church, and at some point somebody went and built a big pink... thing in front of it. The corners of the two buildings actually touch each other and overlap. Weird, eh?
Mmmm. Coffee. And always better when you bring your own peanut butter.
Time to work it off!
Next stop: Karl Marx’s birth house. Somewhere along the line I know I had learned that Karl Marx was born in this city. But somewhere along the line I had also slightly forgotten, and it came as a slight (and very nice) surprise as we were reading about the attractions in the city. Our little Roman ticket didn’t cover entry into the Marx House Museum, but we went in anyway. It ended up being pretty cheap, but I would have probably emptied my wallet to get in there! Okay, so Chris and Nat might have thought I was a little over the edge about it all. But I study this stuff. I mean, the ideas from Marx have influenced... okay, I won’t get into it now, but let’s just say this was my favorite place of all in Trier. I even bought souveniers. And that’s saying a lot.
It all started in such a normal looking place.
This is not the souvenier I bought.
This is the one I wish I could have bought ;)
Awww. Friends!
This is Karl Marx’s breakfast plate. Wow.
Teachings of Master Hegel.
Karl Marx’s wife’s name was Jenny. Jenny Marx. I like that.
And we even had our very own guided tour.
After the Marx House we went on a bit of a walk and ended up at another huge Roman bath complex. Man, those people liked to bathe. This was the “King’s Baths” actually. There were a lot of cool ruins above ground, but the best part was the huge underground labyrinth of tall narrow tunnels that went all over the place. We walked a little further to find our last little Roman attraction, an ampitheatre, which was no less cool than the rest of the stuff. Unlike the Coliseum in Rome, this one had actually been carved as a basin into a huge hill, like the one in Heidelberg. We were able to enter it through tunnels from the ground level, just like the Gladiators and stuff. It was pretty big, and from the top you could also see a lot of the city.
I’d love to have a bath in there…
I think this has been reconstructed a little bit, but who cares? It’s still cool.
Ampitheatre
But then it was time for supper. We walked all the way back into the city center from there and grabbed some Nordsee. Beside that was a place that was wafting the scent of its homemead waffle cones into the street, so afterwar Nordsee we just followed our noses. I had already had ice cream in my coffee that morning, so I didn’t get anything, but Chris and Nat picked up some pretty amazing looking creations for the walk back to the train station.
We got there in perfect time to catch the train back to Mannheim. The ride was pretty nice too, except for the stinky guy that came and sat with us for the first 15 minutes. But it was even fun making fun of him and taking pictures of him while he fell asleep.
No, this is not the stinky guy.
Long day?
After getting back to Mannheim at like 11pm we were ready to eat again and grabbed Döners at the station before catching the streetcar home. I had actually barely fallen asleep when my phone rings and it was Dad. It was good to hear from him, though, and I didn’t mind at all that he woke me up. So we talked for a good half hour. My uncle from Saskatchewan is coming by on his new Harley for a few days apparently. I hope you guys have fun!
