Duesseldorf and Cologne

Dear Family,

I am finally getting to report on our trip to Europe. We were there from August 31 to September 15. We spent the first five days in Germany, then five in France, and then four in Rome, Italy. I don't know how many hours I had into planning the trip, but planning it was a major undertaking. I will break the posts into chronological chunks, hitting the highlights and skipping over details as there would be a lot to tell.

We arrived in Dusseldorf, Germany at about 6:30 a.m. on a Saturday after a long series of flights. Beck did not do well on the long flight to Germany. We picked up our rental car, an Audi hatchback that I enjoyed driving except I didn't know how to put it in reverse. I believed the gear shifter was broken because I would have to jam the stick down and to the left in order to get it in reverse. It wasn't until a few days later that we were driving with one of my former mission companions, a German, who showed me that one need only easily press the head of the stick down and then into position. Anyway, the car was powerful and fast and the highways in Germany are well-marked and enjoyable to drive.

That morning we drove to Duisburg, a city north of Dusseldorf, that I served in for six months. Not an attractive city, but it means a great deal to me. We saw my old apartment and the meeting house that is still there. We went inside as the family history center was open and I talked with an older sister who was in the ward when I served there. We talked about the ward. The language felt clumsy, but I could understand it pretty much as I used to. By the last couple of days we were there, the language began to come easier.

We drove back to Dusseldorf and toured around the center of the city and got some good German food.  German food is meat and potatoes. It was heavy and delicious and made my eyes feel heavier than they already were from lack of sleep. From there, we got to our apartment rental and crashed for 15 hours or so. We woke up the next morning and didn't have many jet lag issues on our trip.

That morning we took the train 20 minutes south to Cologne to meet a former mission companion for lunch in the large, old Pedestrian Zone in the middle of the city. You come out of the train station in Cologne and immediately run into this:

This is the Cologne Cathedral. A gothic monstrosity. I had been there before for mission conferences and had participated in street preaches out in this square, but it was shocking to see the size and complex ornamentation of this structure again. It was great to meet my old friend and catch up. We would be picking him up the next day to drive south together to Frankfurt to meet another mutual mission companion of ours. We walked back towards the cathedral and toured inside:









We took the train back to Dusseldorf and toured around its old Pedestrian Zone and along the Rhein river. I served in Dusseldorf for 4.5 months and have a lot of great memories there. The city felt very familiar and, though these pictures don't really do it justice, it has a beautiful and well-preserved old town area that we walked around.








We fell asleep in Dusseldorf. The next post will include our drive south along the Rhein river, tour of the Rheinfels Castle, coming together with old companions in Frankfurt, and touring of Neustadt, another city I served in.