Europe Series 2 - Cologne, Germany

The first weekend I was in Germany, me and my colleague (Karthik) went to Cologne (Koln). A fairly large sized city, located on the banks of the river Rhine about an hour's drive from where we were staying. The first thing people notice, as they enter Cologne is the magnificient, huge Cathedral, called the Dom. We went there on a sunny and bright saturday and the weather was just perfect. Since we wanted to visit the Dom, we had to drive around for about 30 minutes till we found a parking tower we could park at. The Dom is located right at the city enter and has a ton of shopping and food joints around it, hence it is almost always tough to find a good parking spot in the area. Having been in Germany for a week now, me and my Karthik were dying for some spicy Indian food. The first thing we did was to find an Indian restraunt and eat lunch. The food was ok, far from good and nothing memorable.

Then we started walked to the Dom. The cathedral is just so imposing and intimidating when you stand close to it. It almost reminded me of a Dragon's castle. The kind that lets fire out of its mouth..like in Shrek! We went in, and it was peaceful and quiet, contrary to the noise and chaos outside. Me and Karthik then went started climbing the 509 steps to get to the top of the building. Karthik gave up half way, but I managed to climb all the way to the top with breaks. The view from top was certainly not breathtaking, but was beautiful all the same. It is always nice to get on top of buildings in Europe and enjoy the views as the architecture is so different and much more ornate than the concrete jungles you see in the States.

After hanging out around the city center for a few hours we started heading back to Wuppertal. We also had a cup of coffee in one of the famous side walk cafe's Europe is soo famous for. One of the things I love about Europe is its laid back culture. Its just so relaxing to see people and families sitting in the sidewalks, enjoying a cup of coffee and just chatting. Although there are side walk cafe's cafes in the States, you just dont get the same feel you get in Europe.

One the way back, while I was driving my car from the parking lot, I made a sharp turn and caused coniderable dents to my car when I made contact with the wall. I obviously was not yet used to the cramped tight parking spaces and ramps of the European parking towers. I since then noticed, Cologne is especially notorious for that. During one of our trips to Cologne sometime later, we once had to close our side view mirrors so they would not make contact with the mirrors of the car parked adjacent to ours.

All in all, looking back now, that trip to Cologne was a great experience. I guess I was lucky that my company paid the 750 Euros deductible for damages I caused to the car. I made several more trips to Cologne after that. Cologne is one of those cities that becomes more fascinating and interesting, the more times you visit.

If you ever happened to go to Cologne, dont forget to try the food and beer at the Peters Brauhaus. Its phenomenal.

Attached below are some pictures...

Thats a picture of the Dom and the railway bridge over the river Rhine. Right beside the railway tracks there is a small pedestrian area where you can walk.


This is a picture of me on the bridge (the one above), with the Dom in the background.



That's a picture of me having a cup of coffee at a sidewalk cafe.

(Europe Series...to be continued)

Europe Series 1 - German Engineering

Roughly 1 year ago (10/23/2005) to be exact, I set my foot for the first time on German Soil. The next 10 months were almost magical where I travelled extensively to Europe and also within Europe. Those 10 months will always be considered as one of the most enjoyable moments in my life. All the Germans I worked with were fabulous people. During this time I developed a great sense of respect and admiration for German Engineering. Sure many would claim it is over engineering and I agree. I saw a lot of machines in Germany which werent really needed and didnt serve the people it was designed for in the most effective manner. But what impressed me the most was not just the quality of the work, but passion most men (Not being sexist here, I worked mostly with men...so I dont really know about the women) had for Engineering. Starting from the maintenance guy at the plant, I worked out of. Once we were talking about this idea for a project which had a little bit of engineering involved and I saw this guy who generally has great inertia get all excited about this. Couple of hours later he came to my office with a bunch of AutoCAD plots with potential engineering solutions. All this was on a Saturday and anybody who has been to Europen atleast once knows how hard it is to get Europeans to work in the weekends.

I am an engineer and I am passionate about my work, so nothing wins my admiration more than seeing people being really passionate and proud about their engineering. Thus I changed my mind from a Lexus 330RX, owning which, I had dreamt of for 5 years preceding my trips to Germany, and got a Germany manufactured BMW 330i.

There are many such small stories that happened during my trips to Europe that are deeply embedded in my thoughts and memories of the place. I am going to attempt to write and share some of those in the upcoming months.


I am attaching the very first picture I took in Europe and Germany. It isnt a great picture. My colleague took it and its a picture of the Autobahn A1, while we were driving from Wuppertal to Koln. The car in the picture is the rental car from National I had for almost 2 months, a diesel Opel Vectra.

(Picture taken on 10/29/2005, 11.14 am Local Time)