After a great weekend in Heidelberg, I caught the train to Koblenz. The first part of the journey involved in a “simple” trip from Heidelberg to Mannheim on the S-Bahn where I would have ten minutes to wait for the connecting EC train to Koblenz. However, despite the S-Bahn train arriving in Heidelberg on time, it then sat on the platform for 8 minutes waiting for another train to pass. Once we finally got moving, it was obvious the train running on a parallel track to us was my connecting train! After arriving on the wrong platform in Mannheim, I had to do a mad dash to get across to the connecting train with only seconds to spare.
Once I arrived into Koblenz, I checked into my hotel and then went for a walk around the city. This city was very different to the cities I had been in over the past few days and felt like what my poor knowledge of European history would have suggested that Eastern Germany/Europe would have looked like – lots of bland concrete buildings. After having a sausage from a market stall, I found a street concert, and finished the day off by watching the America’s Cup on an Austrian TV channel.
On the following day, I spent the morning exploring Koblenz, and in the afternoon I took a train up to Cologne. On the trip up to Cologne we passed by a decommissioned nuclear power station. Being from nuclear free NZ, this made for an interesting sight. Upon arriving in Cologne I headed straight to the cathedral. Words cannot express, and photos cannot show, just how big and amazing this cathedral is. I was so caught up by the impressiveness of it that I decided to climb the bell-tower. I then spent the rest of the day randomly walking around Cologne dodging the persistent rain showers.
Overall, the city of Koblenz was a great place to attend. Koblenz was very different to my expectations, but the people made the city amazingly hospitable and given its close location to Cologne leaves one with little reason why not to go for a random visit.
