Ausflug: 4 Countries in 14 Hours

A few weekends ago, we spontaneously rented a car at the Cologne airport and visited a few places that have been on our 'to see' list, but are annoying to access by public transport. Our plans were loose, but we knew that we had the car from 9am to 11pm that day...and the sky was the limit!

First stop: the quaint Monschau, accessible only by bus (and webcam).

This little town is right on the border with Belgium and it at one point was part of France, so we saw a lot of Dutch and French in town. The best part of this cultural mixture -- poffertjes and waffles!

The winding, narrow streets, the castles on the hills surrounding the valley town, and the pretty stream flowing through town make Monschau the epitome of a small, German village.

We spent about 3 hours wandering around, then hopped in the rental car for the next leg of our trip.

Ausflüge von Wien (Day Trips from Vienna)

enjoying the fall leaves in Slovakia

Although we spent a good amount of time in Vienna, the temptation to make a couple day trips was too much to resist. So one day we hopped on a 2.5 hour train to Budapest, and the next day we went to a Viennese cafe in the morning and visited Slovakia in the afternoon.

Budapest

Our trip was a bit less planned than usual, so we read up on both stops the day before and then mostly wandered around. Getting off the train at the Keleti Station in Budapest was very much like what I expected from a post-Communist eastern European country--pretty bleak, with lots of concrete and moldering buildings and abandoned construction projects. We also discovered that Budapest isn't big on promoting tourism at the train station, so we pretty much had to pick a street and hope we were walking the right way.

the statues are important people in Hungary's history, including fierce-looking Magyar chieftains (right picture)

We walked about 3km before we finally saw something I recognized, the Heroes' Square (aka, Hősök tere). We congratulated ourselves on not completely walking in the wrong direction, then found an invaluable walking tours map in the art museum by the memorial. Next stop: the famous Széchenyi Medicinal Bath (the largest in Europe!) and then Vajdahunyad Castle (yeah, we don't know how to say it either) in the City Park.

The baths are one of the many things I would like to try if we ever go back to Budapest. Unlike in Germany, it looks like most of the bathers wear swimsuits, which is a requirement if I'm going to be sharing any sort of water body with strangers. Next time! The castle was quite eclectic and housed the National Agricultural Museum that, according to TripAdvisor reviews, is actually pretty interesting. That's another thing for the 'next time list!'.

Vajdahunyad Castle

home of the national ag museum, in the castle grounds

We then walked even further and finally made it to the old part of town. Keleti train station is on the Pest side, which is much flatter with wide, tree-lined avenues. We heard about several interesting-sounding museums in Pest (the Terror Museum and the Hospital in the Rock), but we decided to see more of the city instead. We finally crossed the famous chain bridge, over the Danube, and into Buda.

looking across the Danube at the Buda side of the city

Ausflug: Tuchfabrik Müller, Euskirchen

While J was away at a conference a few weeks ago, I decided to check out one of the museums along the Ruhr Industrial Heritage Trail (Route der Industriekultur). The trail includes a drop forge, paper mill, textile mills, zinc factory, coal mines, and other types of factories in the region. The Tuchfabrik Müller (Müller's Woolen Mill) is an early 20th century mill, which processed the raw wool and made beautiful fabric for uniforms. It originally was a paper mill, but the Müller family bought it in 1894 and produced fabric up until the 1960s. In the 1980s, it was bought by the government and restored, and now it's a really wonderful museum.

The mill is only an hour train ride from our apartment, so it was a perfect day trip. Group tours are the only way to see the it, so I planned my arrival to coincide with the 4pm tour. Before it began, I read an English translation of the tour, which was really helpful for technical words such as Krempelei (carding) and Nassappretur (washing and finishing the fabric). The tour was conducted in German, but I caught about 80% of it and really enjoyed it. Aside from the translation, the other reason I understood so much of the tour is that every single room had working machines and demonstrations!

The tour began in the steam-engine (Dampfmachine) room, with huge coal furnaces and a web of belts connecting the engine to machines throughout the building. It smelled just like my Grandpa Lewis's shop, a mix of old wood, grease, and dust (in other words, wonderful). Later, we saw a model of the entire mill's power transmission system, which showed the intricate connections of the machines' belts to the main steam engine. To turn machines on and off, the belts were slipped onto a wheel connected to the main power, which caused the belts to turn and the machines to run. Such a clever system!

From there, we saw the willowing room, where the wool is taken out of bales and run through a machine with big rollers of teeth -- rough wool goes in and light fluffy wool comes out of the overhead shoot like snow. The German word for this room is Wolferei, which I suppose refers to all those teeth in the machine!

We walked past belt-powered washing machines made out of tree trunks and huge dying vats, with the dye recipe written on the door nearby.

The carding room (Krempelei) was next. Rollers covered in small, metal bristles were attached to a series of rotating wheels. The wool enters at the front and goes through these wheels, coming out as pillowy sheets that you can pull apart with your fingers like a layered buttermilk biscuit.

Once the wool is soft and carded, it's spun into yarn on long lines of spinning machines. From there, the spindles are attached to a clever contraption that in turn makes giant spools. Different colors of yarn are lined up to produce a particular pattern on the spool.

These huge spools are then brought over to the weaving machines (Webstühle), where the cloth is finally woven. This was one of my favorite demonstrations. Once the machines are loaded with huge spindles of wool, a heavy wood and metal shuttle loaded with more wool runs across the strands to weave the fabric. This video explains how it works, though these were mechanized looms without pedals or the 'flicker stick.' The shuttles travel very fast, and there were deep gauges all along the walls where the shuttles had come loose and smashed into the plaster! The noise was overpowering, and we only had half the machines running.

the loom on the left was making plaid fabric rather than stripes:
the red and white stripes were crossed by green yarn on the shuttle

I think I particularly enjoyed this museum because it was so beautiful, with the textures and colors of the well-worn wood, metal, leather, and wool in every room, and the smells of the machines bringing back memories of cold afternoons in Pa's shop. I also loved seeing the machines run. It gave me a whole new appreciation for the ingenuity of machines during the Industrial Revolution as well as the sheer volume of fabric that must have come out of the Manchester mills around the same time!

Ausflug: The Village of the Pied Piper

While my mom and sister were visiting, we rented a car and drove into the Harz Mountains, the home of many German fairy tales and the brothers Grimm. On our way, we stopped in Hameln, home of the Pied Piper story. Although we visited as part of a much longer trip, Hameln is only a couple hours from Cologne, so it's very day-trip-able.

The Altstadt includes a self-guided tour via rat cobblestones. It leads you along cute shopping streets, and to the Ratten­fängerhaus, aka House of the Rat Catcher, which is now a restaurant and guest house.

An inscription high on its walls reads:

“In the year of 1284, on the day of Saints John and Paul, the 26th of June, 130 children born in Hameln were deceived by a piper dressed in many colors, and lost at the calvary near the koppen." (not sure what the calvary or koppen are--perhaps a local landmark?)

Several fountains and paintings of the legend can be found along the 'rat trail,' as well as rat-themed goods in many shops (rat's "poison" in the perfume shop, rat-shaped pastries at the bakery, wooden pipes at the souvenir shop).

You follow the trail further to the Hochzeithaus (literally, "wedding house" or "high time" house, a venue for festivals and events), where at exactly 9:35 and 11:35 every day, you can see a very special glockenspiel. It begins with the sound of a haunting pipe melody, and then the doors open to reveal the piper leading a huge swarm of rats!

The music stops momentarily, then the piping begins again. This time, the piper emerges with the town's children following behind him, just like in the legend.

This was one of the cleverest glockenspiels I have seen in Germany. It turns out that in the 1200s, over a hundred children did disappear from the town (though records don't indicate that rats or a piper were involved). Although there are many theories, the event is unexplained to this day. We've been watching the TV show, Grimm, and we have read some of Grimm's (gruesome) fairytales, so it was neat to visit the home of one of the legends.

More about the rest of our trip soon!