Hello, viewers! Welcome to the next day of our World War II tour around Europe. Currently, we are on our way to Berlin! That’s right, we are on our train and eagerly awaiting for this five-hour rocky trip to be done with! We departed from Cologne not too long ago; about a half an hour or so. It was a hassle getting all of our luggage on the bus, most of our bags are still lying about the aisles and in the hallway. I’m sure the locals are annoyed with us, but hey! At least we made it on to our train and it’s onto our next destination. Arrival time is about 11:30PM, making it a very late arrival to our hotel in Berlin. But before getting into that, I will now discuss the duration of our day and what we did before getting to Cologne!

Like I said in my last entry, we stayed the night in a hotel in France. We woke up early in the morning, quickly piling onto our bus (with our troublesome bus driver Mario … more on him later) and left the country. Within a half an hour, we passed into our third country on the trip – Belgium! In my opinion, Belgium is absolutely gorgeous. There are three languages spoken in Belgium: French, German, and Flemish. For the most part however, they speak mostly German. We met up with our tour guide for the day, Robbie, in Bastogne where we went to view the sight of where the Battle of the Bulge was fought. In the area, there is a monument built for the American soldiers who fought there, the monument honoring all 50 States of the US and the troops that participated in the battle. We even climbed the top of it, which showed a gorgeous view of the Belgian countryside, and even the far off distance of Lichtenstein, a very small country surrounded by France, Belgium, and Germany.

Afterwards, we visited many more monuments around the area that honored the American troups that fought in the country. There were many, and we even walked through a forest featured in the film ‘Band of Brothers,’ where they fought in real fox holes that still existed from the battle. Though they were not as deep as they once were, they were still baring the familiar rectangular shape behind many fir trees. Tour guide Robbie stated that veterans from previous groups who had fought in the war confirmed the fox holes, some even saying those were the same exact fox holes that they spent days and weeks and months in at a time. It was pretty amazing stuff, and even though we wished to stay longer and explore more, we were quickly rushed back to the bus to continue our journey to Cologne.

Now lets discuss Mario; Mario is/was our glorious bus driver from Germany. At first Mario seemed like a swell guy, and he kindly drove us around where we wished to go. But then we quickly caught onto his game when we realized how hot it always seemed to be on the bus. See, Mario had a cooler in the front of the bus where he sold ice cold water and soda for 1 Euro each. Each time we asked him to put on the AC (and we really needed it today), he would pretend to turn it on, but in reality, he turned on the heat just to make it even warmer. He was purposely turning the heat on in the bus so that the Americans would buy his frigid cold water! Trying to make a profit on us, see! Mario was also the one who sped up our time with our lovely tour guide Robbie, saying that we had to ‘go, go, go and get to Deutschland.” We sadly had to say goodbye to Robbie, and rejoined with the retched Mario to Cologne. The trip seemed to take forever, most of us sweating and praying for a split second of AC to come out through the vents. That time never came, but Cologne finally did and we were happy to climb off the bus and be greeted with the most refreshing breeze that we have ever felt. We said goodbye (sorta) to Mario, and found ourselves staring up at the gorgeous view of the Cologne Cathedral, which happened to be right in front of the rail station.

The sight was absolutely amazing, the cathedral being one of the buildings I have always wanted to see in person. In shifts, we took turns touring the cathedral, going inside to view priceless stained glass and statues. It is just amazing to me to think that people were able to build buildings like this without the modern tools and machines that we use today… it was absolutely remarkable and engraved in the ground in front of  it, it read, “this location may have some historical importance.” Cute, I thought.

After the lot of us viewed the cathedral and bought our World Cup gear (go England!), we followed Margaret through the rail station and up to the platform where we met our train. And that is where we are here and now, folks. It was another rather chill day, but it was still fun being able to see the gorgeous scenery of Belgium, and Germany. It’s a shame that America doesn’t have such large fields of trees and flowers and meadows like these countries do. It was just peaceful to walk along the buttercups and brush, just thinking of what value it really had. This land is historic and silently tells a story of what happened and what bravery fell against the ground those many years ago.