Where calling someone a Nazi is not funny....

After leaving Amsterdam we started on our trek into Germany. The terrain started to change from flat to hilly to mountainesque. We first stopped in the smaller city of Cologne. One of the sad things of Germany and many other countries in Europe is that so much of its architecture was destroyed in WWII. Many times the only thing left standing was the towns church or cathedral. The reason was not religious but really because the church or cathedral was used as a guide to find the city. They usually stood out from the other buildings and the planes could guide themselves to where they wanted to bomb. So in Cologne the thing to see there was the Cologne Cathedral. It is an interesting spired building that is very dark in color, almost black. In the background in a couple of these pictures you can see a bridge and a train station. Both of those were destroyed in WWII. Parts of the cathedral also came down but it did mostly stay in tact. We were able to climb up to the top and look over the city. It was very cool. Not the prettiest cathedral inside, but still fun. One funny thing is that we got yelled at by a priest - or I should say mom got yelled at. She opened her bottle of water when we got down from the 500+ steps and he said something like "put that down this is a church!" A church where there was no dress code, we just hiked up a graffitti filled steeple sweating up a storm and a church where flash photography is totally fine - and opening a water bottle is inappropriate apparantly. Anyway Jason said something and the priest turned back around and very angrily said to Jason "you got a problem?".....welcome to germany folks!....it was funny - so I took a picture of the guy. He's in Red.

Then after that we left to Heidelberg, Germany. It was the most picturesque German town I could possibly think of. It is actually a college town which housed the oldest university in Germany. It was built for the rich kids to go to so they didn't have to learn a foreign language to go to a University in places like Italy or England. The town had tight street corridors and open squares with statues. It even had a castle on the hillside we could hike too and overlook the city. It really couldn't have gotten cuter and neater than that.

The pictures of the mice and monkey at first have legends. If you touched the mice you'd be lucky if you touched the mirror of the monkey you'd come back to Heidelberg. Cute, huh?

Up in the castle on the front side there is a story of a Knight that was having an affair with the Queen. One day the King came home early and caught them. To get away he jumped out the window and landed so hard on the ground he left a footprint that is still there. Who knows if that one is true.

Anyway just some great pictures from this neat town. We spent the night a little ways out of Heidelberg.

PS - We tried to get pictures of most our hotels because hotels in Europe are interesting!

PPS - Amy you mentioned pictures of me. Yes, mom took more of those. These are just my pictures.

PPPS - we miss everyone!

PPPPS - Yes, I was sweaty in the pictures....it was a hike up stairs and it was really really humid. And I'm fat.