Weekend trip to Trier!

Trier is so far the farthest southern city that we’ve visited in this group. And accordingly it took quite some time to go there by train. It almost felt like the day was going to an end after the train journey. This is where we went this weekend.

Since the youth hostel where we were staying was inside Trier we decided to leave our stuff there, although actually the distance between the train station and the youth hostel was not quite negligible. Just as last week, the sun was burning like we were in a tropical country.

The youth hostel of Trier looked extremely modern, although I’m generally surprised how clean the youth hostels are. It took quite some time to leave the stuff there (for whatever reason…). And it was already around 3pm. Not quite realistic if you want to go hiking then.

Still, we went hiking according to the plan. Actually the main attraction of this trip was the city of Trier itself, and the hiking path that I had created was almost merely there just in order to have some activity. However, the hiking trail turned out to be extremely beautiful, going over the Eifelsteig, which was part of what we did in Blankenheim.

I already had lunch in the train to Trier, but there was a neat local pub on the way. Olaf, who is vegan and looks extremely healthy, started drinking beer. This ignited the range of orders of beer. It was just too hot outside. And we’re in the country of beer. We should also follow the tradition.

And unfortunately we could manage to go only up to Ehrang. We took a train there and went back to Trier.

After shower, we all gathered in front of the hostel and went to the city center for dinner. It was already around 9pm and many restaurants had closed their kitchens. We went to one of the traditional restaurants (Ratkeller). Outside, when we started moving the tables to put them together, one waitress was implicitly complaining. Another one came for the order, shouting at us for not giving the order quickly. Funnily, she was addressing us with “du”, which is the casual form in German, while we were talking to her with “Sie”, which is the polite form. Not bad for a traditional German restaurant…

We did not have enough time to do sightseeing in the evening, so we went back directly to the hostel. We had actually bought a case of beer on the way when we came back from the hike, which we put in the river for cooling and we were sitting on the landing stage. It was extremely dark outside, but at least we were not disturbing anyone. Somehow the others did not drink beer as much as we thought they’d do. Well, it’s probably rather a good thing since the trip is not completely over. Actually I prefer this way of enjoying the weekend, because we don’t have to change the daily rhythm a lot, enjoying the entire day and going to bed also early, instead of not doing anything during the day and going out only in the evening to come back home at something like 3am, which in my opinion is only extremely unhealthy and destroys the next day, even though that’s what often happens in Düsseldorf (and everywhere).

Next day, I got up around 9am and found out that I was, together with Jen, the very last person to have breakfast. All the others were apparently already waiting for us outside, playing table tennis or doing something else.

Since we couldn’t do the sightseeing in the evening on the first day, we decided to do it first. The original plan was to go to the Freilichtmuseum, which is like an open air museum. You can find these museums everywhere in Germany. I know one near Hamburg, and since I liked it a lot, I wanted to try it out here as well. But with Stefan having to be back in Mülheim by 8pm, the schedule was quite tight.

In the city center, we were standing in front of the Porta Nigra, when there was one local starting to explain us the history of Trier. He turned out to be a tourist guide, who obviously wanted to be our guide. That’s in principle totally fine, but his explanation seemed almost endless. After some time, I gave up the hope to go to the museum later, and decided to concentrate on the sightseeing.

After we left the Porta Nigra, Mami somehow became our tourist guide. We were essentially following her instructions to go from one sight to another. What you see on the photo is Karl Marx’s house. There’s nothing wrong about it but it looks somehow weird that his house looks stately. Similarly, you can see the statue of Karl Marx on the photo. This one was a gift from China and caused controversy a few months ago. The funny thing is, when the weather is good, you cannot recognize the face of Karl Marx anymore. And it’s true that it’s at the city center, but it’s somehow separated from where you’d be as a tourist.

Trier is certainly a nice city. But sightseeing is simply not my stuff. Maybe it was more or less the same for the others, when we had a break some time after noon and did not come up with any new idea after that. Then we split up into two groups, one of which stayed in the city center and the other one went to the river.

I was in the river group, drinking beer. I wanted to go to swim but the water quality was just simply horrible. At the next table, Mami was drinking alcohol free beer. Alcohol free doesn’t mean directly zero alcohol. According to wikipedia, a drink can be called alcohol free if the alcohol content is less than 0.5%. This fact could be seen clearly today, as Mami’s face was going between red, purple and blue back and forth.

Then we went back to the train station. Right in the moment we arrived there, rain started to pour down. So brilliantly organized 🙂

As planned, we were back in Düsseldorf around 7pm. I didn’t have to be there so early, but I was also happy to have a comfortable night, especially after this trip combined with my stay in Paris. But having a stormy period of time is also a good thing, as I was truly looking forward to going back to my normal life this time.