| From: brong@zebkrahn.brong.net (Bron Gondwana) Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2002 06:39:56 +1000 |
On the early train to Bonn (after that late night). We were going to go to Bruehl to see the Baroque Palace, but it was just a little bit wet, and too early for the tours anyway. Saw the Beethoven museum, which was really good - a bit macabre in places with a skull cast as well as lots of detail about the last few days of his life. He was one of the few composers who actually left money behind and was popular and loved in his last days. We continued through to Trier - where we had originally planned to stay, but then Mike from Luxembourg offered us crash space, and even offered to pick us up from Trier to save us having to use the Benelux ticket. In Trier we saw the Porta Nigra (a giant black Roman gate - Trier claims to be the oldest city in Germany, and was certainly the main city in the Roman empire in that area), Karl Marx's house, and then the toy museum. The train section wasn't as good as it had sounded (just going around in circles, no tricky points and stuff), but overall the toys were good. After the toys we rushed a bit to see the other sites - 5 hours really wasn't enough to do justice to this town. We ran past an old royal audience chamber converted into a giant church - with very little decoration. Even the organ was just stuck in where one of the windows used to be. We tried to find the ampitheatre, but it was closed for the day. Doh! Mike collected us from the train station, and back to Luxembourg - quicker than driving to Kate's parents' place back in Melbourne! Went out to a very good (but quite expensive) Vegetarian restaurant and met Mike's wife Brigitte. On the way we had a great view over the valley. Mike told us the story of how all the fortifications were destroyed as part of the conditions of Luxembourg's independance. We asked why one of the other countraies hadn't snapped them up during the various wars that have swept through, and he said that nobody really wanted the place - interesting thing to base a country on! |
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