Germany and Belgium – Christmas Markets 2014

The thing we probably were looking forward to most in Germany was on-time trains, cleanliness and efficiency.  3 out of 4 trains we took were late, including the expensive high speed ICE train back to Brussels (2 hour train, 2 hours late).  The expectation of humorless natives, bad TV and underwhelming food didn’t disappoint though. Oh, and there was a lot of beer.

Important Tip:  In Germany you must rely on your own advanced research because the tourist offices are unfriendly, the maps are bad, and the other printed materials are poorly organized and missing a lot of essential information.   Example – the brochures in Cologne omit almost every museum and church we mention here in our blog (we used a Fodor’s Guide, Lonely Planet, and TripAdvisor).

Museums in Germany are not free, so we limit our museum-going to only things of great interest.

 

23 November, 2014

Our first ride on the Eurostar.  It’s nice not to fly, but the train is pretty average.

Warning:  Brussels Midi station has TERRIBLE food options.  Warning: If you have to reschedule your journey due to a Belgian train strike (I’m sure they’re angry at the 30 hour work week and 8 weeks a year vacation), then be prepared to not have a seat and have to sit/stand in the aisles.  This experience was a lot more tolerable decades ago, yet it gave us a change to observe 20something German girls giggling and drinking their beer.

Our wonderful and recommended Hotel Domstern is a short walk from Cologne station.

24 November  2014

First stop today is the Koln (Cologne) Cathedral, which took almost 900 years to build (including a 300 year pause) and which was spared during WWI by allies using it as a landmark for other bombings.  Priests walk around with leather bags around their necks looking for donations and unhappily staring at the tourists.  We followed a group of Italian students so we could listen in on their guide.

Walked past a Roman / German museum that houses many ruins inside (entrance fee) and outside (free) the building.  Down the road there are archaeological ruins currently under excavation at the Praetorium, in front of the Rathouse (City Hall).  Fun features inside the Rathouse are the clean bathroom and a water fountain that dispenses both still and carbonated water.

St. Albans was left in its war-ravaged stated and features statues of mourning parents as a tribute to those fallen in war.

Walk to St. Mary in Capital, with the 2nd largest crypt in Germany (not that we can get in to see it.)  So we just take photos in the cloister.

Shopping stop in the Italian grocery store Standa (which turns out to be owned by German chain Rewe).  We laughed at large mayonnaise tubes, a whole half aisle of mayo and half aisle of ketchup, including McDonalds ketchup and mayo and tubes of mayo mixed with ketchup.  We take photos of odd flavored potato chips like hamburger, worcester sauce and sun dried tomato (not all in one chip).

Based on guide book and online recommendations we decide to try an “authentic” restaurant called Fruh.  See our one * reviews on Yelp and TripAdvisor. In sum:  1. Expensive (i.e. 1.80 euro for 20 CL of low end beer).  2.  Memorably rude waiter  (“You don’t need a 2nd menu. You can share.”)  3) Not good food (game meatballs = tasty, button mushrooms = canned.  mashed potatoes = weird).

One of the best sites in the city is Kolumba, run by the Catholic Church with an interesting mix of antique religious items and modern art, and a part of the museum covers church ruins, beautifully illuminated and covered by a long wooden bridge spans the ruins.

 

Walk to St Ursula some classic relics and bones.  Pay admission folks to gain access to a room filled with bones and their containers.  Seriously, bones mounted on the walls, spelling out Latin words.  4 walls worth.  overseen by a woman who is constantly talking to herself, adding to the eeriness.

Christmas markets abound around the city, including one in the shadow of the Cathedral.  walk Bratwurst = good.  Currywurst (soupy dark red curry and chunks of wurst) = not good.  Gluwein (hot ,mulled, spiked wine) = very good.  For another euro you can add amaretto or rum.  Gingerbread, chocolate with hazelnuts, fried stuff, cooked and dried sausages, spatzel (cheese and potatoes with gravy), fish, pretzels, trinkets.  Gluwien mug is “rented” for 2.50 euro, and you bring it back for a deposit return.

Can’t find hardcore channel, but there is a lot of advertising for porn videos once soccer turns off.  German TV is as bad as Italian TV, and even worse for us not understanding it.

25 November, 2014

Train to Dusseldorf, approximately 30 minute ride on express like train and the only train we take in Germany that actually is on time.  Woman at the tourist office is the only friendly tourist office person we encounter on our trip and helps Vito get to Classic Remise, in a renovated train junction building.  Mostly vintage, rare, automobiles, and a decent lunch in their onsite cafeteria.  Annabella wanders around the city, walking along the riverside and enjoying fries with mayo for lunch.  The old town is rebuilt and there are some small Christmas markets.

Christmas market for dinner, this time sampling a special holiday bratwurst with apple pieces.  We also got raclette baguette:  they melt raclette cheese under a gas flame and scrape off and put on bread.

26 November, 2014

Walk to first spot of the day, St Gereon’s Basilica, walking past by a bronze statue of St.Edith Stein.

Then on to the National Socialism Documentation Museum (i.e. Nazi museum), housed in a former Gestapo jail.  Prisoners wrote on the walls, and these writings are preserved in the basement level cells.  2nd floor is story of party starting from 1918 to around beginning of WWII.  Most of displays written only in German, but knowing the history you get the idea.

Lunch is in a cake shop:  whipped vanilla cream topped with super tart and flavorful raspberries and a cheesecake topped with apricots.  Their best food is sweets for sure.

One of our favorites in the city is the Museum of Applied Art (Museum fur Angewandte Kunst) , or Makk Kunst und Design.  One floor starts with medieval arts and objects and goes up to 1920s (art nouveau and jugendsteil)  On the bottom floor are Bauhaus inspired items and modern furniture, radios, tvs, even an iMac.

 

The Bieber Pfiffer beir garden was crowded and expensive, so we went back to the Christmas markets for pork steak, beef and pork sausauge, washed down with gluwein and kolsh beer.  Live Christmas music.

Nov 27 2014

45 minutes to Aachen, 70% bombed during WWII..  Tourist office and center are quite from the train station, about 20 minute walk with very poor signage.  We spy food trucks, cheese truck, large trailer full of fish, coffee truck, fruit trucks.

Rude and humorless staff at the tourist office (100% irritated by our attempts to pronounce barbaric German words), but we get a decent map and directions.  The remains of Charlemagne are here.

The highlight of our day is the big spa, Carolus Thermen.  http://www.carolus-thermen.de/go/bad_aachen/english.html

You pay and get a round plastic chip, pick a small locker for valuables, put chip in a bracelet with locker key, and go get undressed.  You can go into the swimsuit area or upstairs to the all naked area (which costs extra).  Clothed spa is 11 euros for under 3 hours, naked is 22 euro.  Center of the spa is large pool approximately 5 feet deep.  Lots of nooks, water bubbling up, some tiny round pools to relax, a few water falls from metal funnels periodically.  One side is a rectangle pool covered 3 sides with fake rock wall, very cool, 2 waterfalls that people wait for and massage you as you stand underneath.  There are 2 outside pools — not too cold, fresh air, square outside pool.  There is a steam room smelling like menthol/eucalyptus.

At the Aachen Christmas Market we really enjoyed the eirepunch, which is a hot, strong alcoholic drink, tasting of egg liquor, topped with whipped cream.  yum.

On a side note, we notice lots of people limping, on crutches, beggars, famous gypsies either selling a newspaper, roses, or with their clipboards asking questions, some drunks, and people looking for food and recyclables in the trash.  All cities we have been have this.  This is not a good advertisement for their wonderful, socialized medicine.

Nov 28, 2014

ICE train back to Belgium. 2 hour ride turns into 4 hour ride.  Not impressed.  We lose a big chunk of our afternoon in Brussels.

The German and Belgian countryside have green fields, modern windmills.  Person across from us seems to have tuberculosis and we are tempted to offer him one of the free Ricola they were handing out at the train station, which would be fun to sing the commercial jingle, but we’re thinking this will go over about as well as doing it on a train in Boston so we suffer through the coughing.   The loudspeaker announces that they are offering free drinks, no alcohol, because of the delay, so I get up to get my coffee.  By the time I get there, coffee is KAPUT !!! ( i get a few laughs when I say this aloud).

Our hotel in Brussels is just up the street from the central station.  Hotel 9 is very nice, lots of exposed cement, modern design.  C

We find a water company catty corner from Notre Dame Cathedral that dispenses free cold and selzter water.  cool, we fill up.  Viva Aqua is the name.

Chocolate and pommes frites EVERYWHERE!!!!!!

We sit down at a dive-ish place off the Grand Place called Le Petit Chou De Bruxelles. Delicious and generous portions of mussels in cream sauce with chips and pan fried squid with chips.  Brown trappist beer from Westmalle, raspberry beer.  Excellent and we go back the last night.

Massively disappointing hot chocolate.  Guess who doesn’t serve hot chocolate in Belgium?  Paul, where we have enjoyed their cocoa in Paris and London.  WTF?

The sound and light show in the Grand Place at Christmas is simply fabulous.

 

Nov 29, 2014

Brugges – Annabella was here for her birthday in 1990 – how things have changed in 25 years.  The once sleepy town is now a tourist mecca.  Crowded and full of tacky shops (and nice ones, too).

We paid 1 euro each to view the dried blood of Christ (small and crowded church in the center of Brugges).

Lunch at place called Dell’Art, expensive but decent beef stew with cheese croquets, roasted rabbit.   Great city to just wander around and admire the architecture and atmosphere.

Dinner in Brussels – time for pizza.  We sit by an Italian family, and as the teen discovers onions on her pizza, her mom asks “Schifoso ?”  She scraped off most of the topping.  We tell her we cook pizza with nutella and banana, and she motions with her arm to go to the kitchen and go make some.

Nov 30, 2014

Walk along the government building area to the Fin de Siecle Museum. Art Nouveau overload!  In a good way!

 

And the world’s largest passenger elevator ever, about 10 feet by 8 feet, with a carpet and 12 seats.

 

Sablon neighborhood has expensive shops, including many chocolatiers.  We found a reasonable crepe place on Haute Strauss.  The crepe of the month is pear and gorganzola.

The Victor Horta museum opens at 2 and closes at 5, so we walked to get in line at 1:30  Stunning and unique house museum, a must for fans of Nouveau.

Dec 1, 2014

Before heading to the airport we go to see the international creches at the Cathedral.  Each ethnic group that worships there has donated a manger.  Wake up, both feeling stuffy and i have mucus.