I am in an internet café in Köln, Germany. Seems like a nice city, although it took a long time to get here on the bumper-to-bumper autobahn traffic. 20km/hr on an ulimited speed road. Disappointed.
We stayed at the Ibis which was clean and inexpensive, and went out to find a real German restaurant. All the restaurants that we could find were either Spanish or Italian so I had to ask a local. Soon I was sitting down to a glass of beer and Sauerbraten with red cabbage and some weird kind of potato dumplings. Sauerbraten turns out to be just roast beef, not the sausage that I was hoping for. Despite this error I was very surprised to find that my Dutch language skills could be used in Germany – I was more or less able to accurately interpret the menu for the whole group. In fact I was also surprised that I retained enough schoolboy French to get by in Paris as well.
It is Jem‘s birthday today so we are going in search of a store that sells Campers shoes, as is his wish. After that we will probably swing by the Rhein valley and try to find a bed and breakfast for the night. We have to be in Paris by Thursday afternoon, and I return to Australia on Friday night (arrive Saturday night).
Last night Adam and I went out to this bar that had chess and backgammon boards. I dominated in the chess, taking out both games, but Adam got me back by winning the next three games of backgammon.