Han, in London

Sooooo, I have been to Germany. Cologne specifically, which I think is my second favourite city in the world (no prizes for guessing the first).

I have been posting photos at MetropolitHan, which is my photo blog, and I’ll link to all the posts once I’ve finished them – I’m trying to get them done asap. I’ve also been posting the Egg Hunt photos there (have I even mentioned that here? Can’t remember) and I have four more zones of those to post. And four left to hunt :D. 

Kikishua and I travelled to Cologne by train – you get the Eurostar from St Pancras to Brussels Midi, and then a Thalys on to Cologne Hauptbahnhof.

IT IS THE BEST.

Seriously. The tickets were £85 RETURN, which is waaaaay less than going by plane. And the whole journey from St P to Cologne Hbf takes about 5 hours (and that includes a break at Brussels Midi). HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. It’s comfortable, your only weight limit is your own stupidity (well, technically it’s two medium-sized suitcases per person, but even Kikishua and I aren’t that dumb), and you get to watch the scenery go by. Admittedly this is more of a selling point once you’re off the Eurostar route.

The Hauptbahnhof is right in the middle of Cologne, and our hotel was about two minutes away, which was excellent. The Cathedral is next to the Hbf, and the shops etc start about two minutes away from that. Although it is a big city (and has suburban rail services), everything in the centre is easily within walking distance.

Most of what we did, to be honest, was wander around, look at buildings, go shopping (C&A, C&A, C&A, C&A C&AAAAAAAAAAAA!!), go food shopping, and make a couple of trips out to Brühl (recommended) and Düsseldorf (not so recommended, although might be more interesting by tram as then you wouldn’t have to plod down endless streets of posh shops).

Oh, and we watched TV because the hotel had satellite so we did have some English channels as well as the German ones (which, unfortunately for Kikishua, meant that she had to put up with my extreme channel hopping skillz). I did try to watch some German stuff, honest. And actually we did watch Resident Evil 4 in German, and followed it absolutely fine (Kikishua doesn’t even speak any German…), so yay for action movies and zombie dogs.

We also saw an acoustic cover version of Enjoy the Silence but have yet to track down who did it. I am working on that, but funnily enough there’s a lot of Enjoy the Silence covers out there.

It was a really good holiday and we had a great time. The first couple of days were grey and rainy but the last three days were gorgeous, so that was lovely. It’s quite a calm city, although there are approximately 100 000 pubs, and everyone seems to eat dinner really early. Or I eat dinner really late, I’m not sure.

I would recommend Germany to anyone and will blah on at you forever about why you should go if you give me the chance. All I would say – and this is as much advice to myself as anyone else, hahahaha – is if you’re travelling by train, for goodness’ sake, remember that you’re going to have to get all this stuff back.

So since getting back, I have done some clearing out, eaten some chocolate, actually thrown some clothes away (this is good for me), and got very, very sick. Which was a big shame, as I was due to go up to my sister’s on Friday, but a) sick and b) after dragging myself up to St Pancras (again), I realised I didn’t have my tickets, and of course they won’t reprint them for you – even if you have the card you paid with and the reference number their system gave you – as they’re ‘no longer on the system’.

Bullshit.

So. I crawled back home and went back to bed, and that was that. Saturday wasn’t much better, but I went to my parents’ so at least I could just flop around. Sunday was a bit better but with bonus absolutely ridiculous tiredness, and I managed to get some of my Germany photos uploaded. Yesterday I managed to shake off the last of it, hurrah.

Anyway, at the moment I am a) trying to get my Germany pics uploaded, b) sorting my card stuff/card shop so I can promote the thing properly (I am aware I haven’t even linked it here) and c) rewatching some Spooks in an attempt to get myself to finish some sodding fic.

(oh, and I’m watching the finale of Being Human tonight, which is why I have written this entry instead of faffing on Tumblr or whatever)

(I wish I could give up Tumblr, but it is great for when you just want to look at pretty pictures/gifs)

More rambling once I have watched Being Human :) Probably some flailing too.