Day 8 - Trier and Eifel Region, Germany

Our travels today took us into Western Germany. More specifically, the city of Trier, the Eifel region, and several Maare (volcano lakes).

We headed in roughly the same direction as our last road trip, but following a different road, towards the Moselle River. The valley we had driven in before was to our right. Eventually, we turned and crossed the large bridge over the river and into Germany.

Before today, I had never been to Germany. Of course, aside from the river, there aren't any obvious natural signs that you have moved from one country to another. The biggest difference I saw was that the signs went from French to German, an understandable change. Another big change was the speed of driving. It's well known that the Autobahn has no speed limit for a lot of it. Traveling at 140-150 kph (roughly 90-95 mph) certainly makes the trip faster.

We arrived at Trier shortly after crossing the German border. Trier is a city with about 100k people. We had to drive around town for a little while in order to find a parking ramp that would fit the car we were riding in. Most parking ramps are apparently 1.9m, while the van is a few cm taller than that. We eventually found one, parked, and walked out into the cold.

The first major sight was an ancient Roman doorway called Porta Nigra (Black Door). It was built in roughly 180 AD, the town was founded in 17 BC. It was also one of the capitals of the Roman empire at one time. It was quite tall and impressive. There was a way to get up to other floors, but as it cost money, we decided to keep walking.

Through the door was a large shopping and merchant district. The architecture here is somewhat similar to Luxembourg, which isn't all that surprising. Lots of people were out today, despite the cold. A lot of food places, jewelry places, and clothing places. Even some anyone would recognize, such as McDonalds and Subway.

We briefly stopped by St. Gangolf Catholic Church, which was nestled in a small alcove through a doorway right in the middle of some shops. It was quite pretty, but I must admit the most enjoyable part was the small relief from the cold. We began to walk around more of Trier, and saw many things on our way. A lot of Roman history here, at least, a lot of the history told to me was Roman in origin. I can't recall everything we saw, but it is also a beautiful city with lots of history, like Luxembourg.

We stopped by a cafe that Charel's grandfather used to go to when he visited Trier and got hot chocolate. The stop was definitely needed, as both of us were reaching the limit of how much cold we could stand. The place was cute. As we were leaving, though, I heard "It's Raining Men", which amused me greatly. I don't think Charel was nearly as amused, though, since I started singing it as we left the cafe.

We left Trier and headed for a portion of Germany with volcanic lakes, called Maare. We did lots of driving at this point, only getting out once. The first lake, called Holzmaar, was frozen over, so there were a few people ice skating. The others we drove past, they were called Pulvermaar and Dauner Maare. I would have liked to have spent more time there, but it was getting very cold at this point. Maybe someday we'll go back when it is warmer.

We were going to go to Bitburg and the US air base at Spangdahlem, but we couldn't find signs until well after we started to head back. The sun was beginning to set, so we began to make the drive back to Luxembourg, passing Trier again. I haven't fiddled with my shutter speed setting enough yet, so I wasn't able to take pictures of the lights as we passed.

Two albums today: Trier / Eifel Region