Aachen and its Christmas market

Our day started very early for this day trip. We were quickly out the door and waiting for our train, and boy was it cold on this morning. Off to Aachen we went. After arriving in the city center and getting a map for Brie, we wandered through the farmers market, and drooled over cheese and cookies being offered. We quickly ducked into the Chocolate Company's shop for a quick hot chocolate to warm up with. Brie had a brownie flavored one and I had a praline nougat (I think), mine was yummy, Brie said hers wasn't so sweet.

After defrosting some, we started to wander around the area where the cathedral is. I started showing Brie some of the cool fountains that were around. We then got our tickets for the cathedral tour, and slipped inside so she could see the mosaics surrounding all the walls and ceilings. If you want to see photos of the inside of the cathedral, check out my previous blog. It was interesting seeing the cathedral again after visiting Ravenna, because that cathedral was the inspiration for this one. The octahedral sides, all the beautiful mosaics. Stunning.

After being protected from the wind in the cathedral, it was hard to go outside again. Exiting the building we were hit by some pretty strong winds. At this point the Christmas market was open, and we began wandering through it. We walked around to the Rathaus square, and I slipped off to buy a 2nd scarf while Brie was taking pictures of Charlemagne's bronze fountain statue. When she turned around to find me, she realized the brilliance of my idea. While we were wearing extra layers that day, it was so cold. So we both got scarves, the round ones that you can loop around your neck a few times like a cowl neck. Made of yarn, I got a burgundy red one, and Brie got a forest green one. They helped so much in the cold wind.

All decked out for the holidays

Brie showing off her newly acquired scarf

Pre-second scarf

We then proceeded to Kings College for lunch. I had a broccoli gratin with tea, and Brie had a schnitzel (I think) with tea. Right after lunch we went back to the Christmas market. One of the stands we hit up was Nagel & Hofbaur, which was selling holiday liquors. They had about 5 different varieties and we tried them all. One was a cappuccino flavored one, which was so like a mocha, we didn't get that one. Another one was a cream flavored one (sahne). This one had cream, liquor, champagne and a few other delicious ingredients, of course we both had to get one of them. I went for one in a star shaped bottle, and Brie went for one in a long narrow bottle. Her strategy was to get one that would fit in a wine bottle suitcase bag (if you've never heard of Jet Bags, you've been deprived) [http://www.amazon.com/Reusable-Padded-Absorbent-Bio-Degradable-Accessory/dp/B004FLK2IU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1387695610&sr=8-1&keywords=jet+bag]. Another flavor was a cherry liquor. Brie ended up buying one of those too. There was also 2 different varieties of Dom liquors. Much too strong for my taste personally.

While buying the liquor we learned of this massive storm headed to the Netherlands and Germany. It was so massive that they closed the Christmas markets north of us. This explained the extreme cold and wind. They were talking about closing Aachen's Christmas market early too because of the really bad weather, eeeep.... When we checked the weather the night before, we only looked at Aachen's and it said nothing about this big massive huge storm.

We got our liquor then in case they closed the market early (although we didn't want to carry that stuff around for the rest of the day. We marched on to our Aachen cathedral tour. Last time, I took the tour in German, mostly so I could see the upstairs area. This time luckily, we went on the English tour, and while I knew a lot of information, it was nice hearing it in my native language.

We then walked around the Christmas markets even more, buying gifts for work and others, before walking to the Couven Museum. I think Brie enjoyed this one, especially the room with interesting tiles in it. The rain started for a bit while we were warm inside. One of the security/ ushers started pointing things out to us on the 2nd floor which was really sweet, especially since he didn't speak but a word or two of English, but I was able to use my quasi-Deutsch to communicate. Yay to using German!

Our evening was spent wandering the market in the cold, and we started to wander further from the city center, where we ended up pummeled by rain and high winds. We decided to duck in and have dinner while we waited for our train. The first place that we could find that was closer to an area we recognized was Otto's Restaurant. I got deep fried egg rolls and Brie had a Rumpsteak with fries and we shared a plate of grilled sheep's cheese. Brie had a Rose Cinsaul wine and I had a Moelleu.

At about an hour to 45 minutes to go until our train, we headed to the station. We kept seeing lots of trains being delayed. Ours was only delayed about 10-15 minutes. We knew we probably would have to run to our next train going to Bonn from Koln, and when we arrived, we had just enough time before it was supposed to get there, unfortunately it was delayed 70 minutes (to start). I went to the front to ask if we could hop on one of the other trains, and the boards showed delays from 1-4 hours for almost all the trains. There were some guys trying to get to Amsterdam, and later when we looked up the storm pictures, we commented that they were better off staying in Koln than going up there that night. We finally got the attention of someone, and they said yes, hurry, please catch the next train to Bonn, so we ran through the station to catch it. At one point they changed what train was going to be on that platform so I started to run back to a board where I could check where they changed ours to. Brie said she never wants to run that much again, especially by stairs.

Our train finally came and everyone clamored aboard, as every other train was delayed. We got to several stations, and then the train stopped and they said they were having problems. About 10 minutes later they came back on and said it was fine, and then by the next station they said 'oh sorry, we can't go any further, good luck.' Apparently there was a problem with the power lines powering the trains. They didn't give any instructions on how to get out of Timbuktu, we were stuck in Roisdorf without any information. It was about 10pm, and off and on raining, and there were about 100 of us. I had been asking someone else what was going on, and he ended up looking after us until we got back to Bonn. Luckily someone had a smart phone and was able to direct all of us to the S-Bahn. After waiting 30 minutes in the cold, and through a brief hail storm, we were able to catch probably the last train to Bonn. Luckily the thing was empty because we all filled it up. When we got back to Bonn and to my flat, we considered ourselves lucky. We were probably the last ones to get to Bonn that day, let alone anywhere further south was cut off too. We looked at the storm photos and were glad we didn't go to Hamburg or the Netherlands, we were close enough to the storm action in Aachen. So glad to be home and warm!