The last days in Gemany

It has been quite a while since I made a posting on this blog (well, except for the irritated postings from Belgium), so I hope that I can still remember everything and not end up in the seriously irritating then-i-did-this-and-then-that reporting style...

After my very nice run next to the Main rivier I put off to the MMK after a short detour through the most historic part of Frankfurt called the Romerplatz (I can only remember this because of the name of the u-bahn stop at the museum). The museum was quite interesting, with the most interesting exhibition being (in my opinion) the peacock's egg which was smashed against a wall in this huge white room of nothing... Yes, very modern styled art [My dad always says that it is a bit of senseless art ]

(Romerplatz)

Some walking around in the shopping street of Frankfurt later, I met up with Nik again for dinner. It is always great fun to go out with Nik as we have quite similiar tastes in places and things to do.

(The Commerzbank Tower in Frankfurt as seen from the main shopping street)

I left Frankfurt only late on the Thursday evening as Karin had some work still to do in Koln. As I had the whole day still in Frankfurt, I met Nik again for lunch at his work canteen, whereafter he showed me the offices and trading floors of Dresdner Kleinwort, where he works. It was really facinating to see all the trader guys with their 4 or 5 computer screens, following the news and the markets and so on.

Just after peak-traffic I set off in the direction of Koln. Unfortunately the weather was quite bad (rain) and so it seems that the peak-traffic took a bit longer to disperse and I ended up in Koln only around 8:30pm. Here I met up with Karin and we had a very nice tapas dinner with a colleague of hers, whom I have also previously met in Cape Town. After dinner Karin took me on a short walking tour of Koln where we stopped at the Marriot in Koln to have the "Winner of the World Cocktail Championships 2003" cocktail in the hotel bar. It is a shame that I can't remember the name because it was a really magnificent cocktail - one which I would've liked to try and recreate.

Both Karin and I had to get up early the next morning, me luckily only to play tourist whereas she had to work. For my Koln trip I did the Dom and then popped over to Bonn to see the "Best of Guggenheim" exhibition there (ie, a selection of works from the various Guggenheim museums all over the world). The exhibition was really impressive with inter alia Van Goghs, Picassos, Roy Lichtensteins and Warhols.

(The Dom in Koln)

With that I was done with Germany and finally got to go "back" to Belgium...