Germany - Cologne / Hamburg / Schwerin

Germany and France are the last two major European countries I've been meaning to visit. By the time I leave Europe I want to say I have a general grasp of what's out there. Then, when I return, I'll re-visit places I liked, see places I missed, explore more of what I liked and so on. The UK have their summer around August so at the first opportunity I jumped onto a plane to Cologne simply because it was cheap! Seemed a good enough place to start too, right?

When you walk out of Cologne station you are immediately forced to behold the Dom - a beautiful cathedral - in all of it's splendour.

(BEHOLD)

Then after finding your hostel you are again immediately forced to wonder what else there is to do in this city? I just don't really care much for museums I must say people. Sure some are good - mostly the sciencey ones - but it needs to actually be good. I'm not going to go to the Roman museum in Cologne simply because it exists ja feel?

So here's where it gets interesting. You see some of you may be wondering how I meet so many people on my journeys and why a lot of them always seem to be men.

Well.

Yes, some of them are randos from the hostel. However, a lot of them are guys I've met from various gay dating apps on the iphone. I'm sure you've all heard about them - I won't go into too much detail - but yes I have and still do use them albeit not usually for their intended purpose (sex). Stuck in a city and don't know which restaurant is good? Ask the gays! Not sure if this cathedral is worth the 5 euros to enter? Ask the gays! Need someone to have a beer with at a bar? Ask a gay! So useful is this resource that I have had some absolutely incredible adventures with some amazing people.

(House party in The Netherlands)

(Horses in Sweden)

(Flamenco dancing in Spain)

After exhausting the Dom and the streets of Cologne I decided to contact a gay to meet up for a drink and had a great night! I've been told by many a German that Cologne's sights are not really worth shaking a stick at (my words) but that the nightlife was definitely worth its weight in gold (again, my words). I didn't really get to see that much of the nightlife but I did have an amazing burrito and few drinks with a young law lecturer. Young for a law lecturer. I think he was 28?

On the first day I was awake at 2:30am in London to get the bus to get the train to get the plane to Cologne and after arriving was told I couldn't check in until many hours later. All I wanted to do was lie down somewhere and have a nap or read a book blah blah. I could find nothing! Later it turns out that all the parks sit in a circle SURROUNDING the city. So I spent a while just strolling through the long string of parks including a fun sculpture park.

Travelling alone means it is often hard to take photos of myself and have to resort to stupid shots so that I have something interesting to show people - Cologne was no exception!

(Aww yisssss)

However Cologne did provide me with a German sim card and a book to read. I say 'provide' here to mean I did it myself but Cologne ... allowed me? There was a cool American guy in the hostel who I had a fair few beers with but that was really about it. Just this morning in fact I was having a bit of an existential crisis about the nature of forming relationships with people. That is to say - if I know it won't go anywhere should I bother? Or if I bothered would it go somewhere? And if I did bother and it went nowhere then I'm just sort of left by myself again but with a sense of loneliness. Heavy stuff you guys. Still haven't found an answer. I gloss over the deeper issues of course. This was legit stuff peeps.

After Cologne I hauled ass up to Hamburg - German's second largest city. As some of you may know, my approach to travel (and indeed life) is haphazard and unorganised. Such was the case as I walked out of Hamburg central station with no place to stay. I knew all the hostels were inexplicably full and my attempt to find an AirBnB place failed (Exact quote from one - "Hey Kris, a friend of mine is staying at my place for the weekend, so the room is taken Saturday night - i forgot to block that date in the calender on this site ... (Sorry!)" and just no response from the other). In any case, I simply walked into the enormous hostel by the station and luckily slid into a cancelled room in a 4-bed dorm. At this point I want to say that Germany is stiflingly hot at the moment and the thought of sitting in the stuffy hostel room for longer than necessary was unappealing so instead I decided to meet up with Max for a walk.

This lead to a bizarre music festival in the middle of nowhere with his cool friends listening to what I would have described as 'german electro' until the DJ's accent suggested somewhere else. From here we explored the bar scene of Hamburg and I had my first Hamburger in Hamburg. I'm sure a lot of you have seen this picture already. It's FUNNY, OK?!

Truth be told the hamburger itself was terrible. It was sourced from a dingy burger place and was more expensive than a mcdonalds cheeseburger and one of them had mayonnaise for some reason. Time and a place mayonnaise - time and a place. Not on my burger at 4am plz.

The rest of my time in Hamburg was spent riding bikes, strolling by the Alster river, lying in parks, eating and napping at pretty much any opportunity. I've found that having this beard means my neck gets super sweaty after I sleep. It's kind of gross especially since the humid heat is already making me develop a fine layer of sweat daily anyway. I must persevere though - chicks love this piece of man-face-hair. I did do some touristy things though, took pictures, climbed up a tower and all that. Managed to do most of the touristy things within a few hours actually. Swish.

(Hamburg on high)

 (Awesome empty church)

 (Stage at music festival)

 (Alster lake (maybe) through the lens of my sunglasses)

Finally on the last day I met up with a pal, Henrik. He thought it would be a good idea to go to the gym (????) so along we went and it was a nice venture actually! He had some interesting stories to pepper in along the way about his home and some favourite places that he likes to visit (including a beautiful decking area right on the water for some goat cheese) and we finally spent some time overlooking the river watching the boats drift by and the sun slowly descend. Henrik is really into his supplements so prior to the workout we had a protein shake, had some amino acids after the workout then another protein shake. Turns out the workout didn't hurt as much the next day as I thought - I suppose there's some credit to the theory!

That night I caught a bus to the nearby city Schwerin at the advice of a friend Laura. Many of the Hamburgers couldn't really understand why I wanted to go but truthfully it was on the way to Berlin, I didn't have accommodation anywhere else and I liked the idea of exploring a smaller city - after a while all the big cities start looking the same. I arrived around 9pm when it was still light and had an easy stroll around a big lake to get to the hostel. It was one of those hostels where the owners are never around and you have to call them to get keys etc. I wasn't too fussed as they picked up and the key was easy to get. I was in a 9 bed room dorm which isn't normally a problem but tell you WHAT it was just comically irritating how noisy and unaware of others these guests were. I hope I snored to teach everyone a lesson. ha.

(Fucking POSTCARD WORTHY)

Fortunately, Schwerin isn't exactly an intense town to be in so not having much sleep was ok. I had a nice stroll in the morning around town until eventually I had a sit down with some pastries, tea and a book. Later I went to the castle to have a look around. It's pretty much the main draw of the town and even though I didn't find the inside really very interesting I really enjoyed wandering around the grounds afterwards. As the weather was pretty shitty it wasn't exactly the best situation to take photos (did anyway obvs) but I did manage to catch a quick nap on some grass under a tree.

(Thumbs up to naps)

As I finish writing this (Although not when I'm posting as there's no internet) I'm on the train to Berlin. I used a website called blablacar.com which I thought was to organise car pools with people between cities. Turns out that someone was just using the website to grab some people so we could all catch the train on a group ticket. I'm not exactly complaining! It's a 2 hour and 20 minute journey so eventually I got out my craptop to finish this and they did their own thing. I'd still happily use the website again though! I'm in Berlin for five nights but looking to get a trip to Leipzig then Dresden... We'll see what happens!