Brussels to Köln

As I wrote the title I wondered why I write the English version of Brussels and the German version of Cologne.  Probably because I don't know French, but I can get by in German.

We're in a tiny German town with a strange name visiting friends and I'll post on that next, but here are some pictures of the train ride.

We took a taxi from the hotel to the Midi Station in Brussels - about ten minutes for just under €10 [the symbol for Euros on the US Mac keyboard is option+shift+2].  (According to my computer's currency conversion, that's $12.64, the Euro really did lose value since we got here.)  All you have to do is ask and people tell you where to find your train.  English works fine. 

Here's a trash bin on the station platform.

Leaving Brussels.  That dome was visible on the picture I posted the other day from our Brussels hotel.

This is a second class car.  This is one of those sleek trains.  It never seemed to go all that fast, but it was wonderfully quiet.  The sign on the door to the next compartment announces wifi, but I'm still not going to pay their rate for two hours of wifi.  I noticed it continues to be true that the fancy hotels charge exorbitant fees for wifi and the less fancy hotels offer it for free.  Our hotel in Brussels had free wifi.

I'm not sure if this is Liege or Aachen, the two places I remember the train stopped.

You can tell we're near Köln because you can see the famous cathedral.

I didn't realize how close the train station was to the cathedral until we got there.  But we only had twenty minutes until we caught the next train on to Wuppertal, so we didn't wander out of the station to see the Cathedral.  (We have been there before.)  This is from the train platform.

We crossed the Rhein and were soon in Wuppertal (30 minutes from Köln) where we were picked up by HG and his daughter A.