Cologne, Germany

Cologne, Germany
25 March 2016

As part of our trip to Prague, we need to change our train at Cologne, Germany. So, we just took the opportunity to explore the town. The trip from Den Haag to Cologne itself took around 3 hours including short transfer at Utrecht. We arrived at Cologne Train Station at around 1 pm. We put our luggage in the station luggage storage. It cost EUR 7 for 24 hours.

Main attraction in Cologne is the Cologne Cathedral and it’s located just in front of the train station. Across the Cathedral, we can find tourist information, a good place to get some idea about places we can visit. But for map, we should pay EUR1.




 Cologne Cathedral or Kölner Dom is very impressive building, it is grand and has very detailed ornaments. This Cathedral has a long history. Its first foundation was built in 12th century and it took 600 years to finished it. But all the hard effort to build this magnificent church got ruin when it got hit by bombs during World War II. It was badly damaged. The restoration of the church took years, it was completed in 1956. Now, it is an UNESCO heritage site. 

Around the Cathedral, we can see some museums, such as Museum Ludwig, where we can see modern art collection from famous artists such as Picasso, Andy Warhol, Roy Licht­en­stein. The other museum is Römisch-Germanisches Museum, where we can learn about life and culture in Roman and early medieval Cologne.

Not far from the Cathedral, we can walk to the old town. Although 70 percent of the area was destroyed, but still it’s nice to walk around this area. Along the Rhine River, we can see colorful houses, the Roman church Groß St. Martin (Great St. Martin). We also searched for Tünnes and Schäl, the statues of the “Kölsch” folklore that stand across from the Romanesque church Groß St. Martin.Tünnes represents the simple farmers while Schäl is the classic bourgeois.


As we crossed the Hohenzollern bridge, the most interesting things that we spotted was the love locks. As proof of their love, couples fix padlocks to the railings on the Bridge then throw the key into the Rhein river below. From the other side of the river, we can get the best view of the old town.




 Then, we had our dinner in the station, bought some foods and drinks to take to our sleeping train. The train station had quite numbers of resto with various kind of food, from Asian food, fast food (such as KFC) and of course Wurst (German Sausages) and Laugenbrezel (traditional german pretzel). 







And there were some souvenir shops, where we can buy (Eau de) Cologne as souvenir. Cologne is a perfume originating from this town. Then we spent the rest of our time in Starbucks until our sleeping train arrived. Our train to Prague departed at aroung 23.00.