And we’re off . . .

Saturday dawned grey and gloomy with an early 6:30am start and saw two heavily burdened women setting out on a trek for St Pancras – we seriously need to do a lot of reading and eating over the next few days to lighten our loads.  However we made it to the Eurostar terminal as boarding opened demonstrating our “Just In Time” efficiency and a short snooze later we were in Brussels.



We had a couple of hours in Brussels which we used to confirm the general opinion that the area around Brussels Midi station is not very nice.  Nevertheless we did manage to find a nice café for a coffee which had four priests in it, which obviously made Alice’s day and got our Religious Figures in Non-Religious Locations head count off to a good start.  We also, crucially, managed to obtain waffles before our train ride to Cologne in first class . . . very glad that we decided to upgrade for an extra 4 Euros, it’s certainly something that we could get used to!

Cologne left us wondering if it is trying to challenge Paris as the European City of Love and we were just slow to catch on.  We started off with the Cathedral which is literally right outside the Hauptbahnhoff – I’ve never seen such an impressive sight leaving a station before.  Fern’s eagerness to climb to the top of the bell tower meant that 509 steps later we sounded like a couple of asthmatics but looking at a very picturesque view and an impressive amount of graffiti from loved up couples.  This perspective of Cologne was reinforced by the strange sight of thousands of padlocks attached to a railway bridge inscribed with names, hearts and dates.  We later found out over dinner (and thanks to Alice’s German colleagues for the good restaurant recommendation) that there was a tradition of couples attaching the padlocks to the fencing and then throwing the keys in the river to symbolise the fact that they could not be split apart.

We also managed to cram in a few relaxing hours at the thermal baths under the auspices of sampling local culture and making sure we were as clean as possible before the next few days of train wash facilities – well that’s our excuse and we’re sticking to it ;-) and whilst we knew that this was going to be a journey of firsts, we weren’t expecting it to include public nudity!

This gave us enough time to have a delicious dinner before heading back to the hauptbahnhoff to pick up our luggage and board our first overnight train which was going to take us to Moscow . . . .

Distance covered:                                       553km
Time zones crossed (cumulative) :          1
Borders crossed:                                          3
Books read:                                                   0
Games of Wurdle played:                          8 (amateur league)
Religious figure headcount:                      4