Mid-semester break – part three

On the final leg of my mid-semester break trip, we visited Brussels, Belgium, and Cologne, Germany. We spent just one day in Brussels, as it was a last minute decision to visit at all. Right when I got to Brussels I was surprised at the topography of the city. Most of the cities I’ve been to here, but especially Berlin, are all relatively flat, but Brussels’s center was on a huge hill. It was really cool to be able to get a higher view of the city by just walking up the street. Brussels is also the capital city of the European Union, and it was interesting to see all of the international influences around the city’s center. We spent the beginning of our day in Brussels in a chocolate museum, where we learned about the origins of chocolate, and we watched them actually make some chocolate in front of us that we tried. Later on we visited the Belgian beer museum, where they taught us about the brewing process before offering a sample.

We spent the last two says of the trip in Köln, Deutschland, or Cologne, Germany. Cologne quickly became one of my favorite cities. It was not only both modern and historic, but also the perfect size in my opinion. Nothing was more than a twenty minute train away, compared to the usual one hour trip to get many places in Berlin. We walked up the 533 steps of the Kölner Dom, or Cologne Cathedral, to get to one of the coolest views I’ve ever seen of the entire city of Cologne.