So that I can keep everyone updated on my not being dead yet; so that I can get a jump-start on showing off all the pictures of everything I do this year; and so that you have a good excuse to avoid future, in-person, picture shows.
One of the main attractions of Aachen is the Cathedral, called Aachener Dom. It was built in the late 8th century by Charlemagne and it towers over the whole city. It was the religious and political center of the Holy Roman Empire and, for 600 years, it was the site for the coronation of German kings and queens.
On the right is a picture of the back-side of the cathedral as I first saw it, coming up through the town.
Below is the Aachener Dom, from one of the upper windows of the Aachen Stadhuis.
The cathedral has a complex floor plan because various additional towers and additions were added at different times. It makes for an interesting picture. Here you can see the floor plan for the cathedral and you can see the multiple additions throughout. The darker section, the main circular section, is the original part of the cathedral, built around the octagonal central section which Charlemagne found significant (there is more about the importance of the octagon in this brief video here).
There is a little statue of the church in the courtyard, which gives a little better view of the church from an aerial view.
When I arrived, I was about 15 minutes late for the only English language tour of the church offered and I wasn't confident enough in my understanding of German to pay the money to go around with a German tour. Since you weren't allowed to go into the church without a tour, I didn't get a chance to see the interior. However, you can see some pictures from the interior (which is very beautiful), here and here.
The exterior walls were covered with filigree and statutes of saints. There was also a statute of a man in the inside courtyard of the church. I don't know who he was.
One of the turret doors into the cathedral.
This is a steeple in the front yard of the Dom.
If you watch this, you can see St. Foillan's and the backside of the Cathedral. You can also hear some very beautiful violin music that was being played in the alleyways between the churches.
The Aachener Dom, from one of the upper windows of the Aachen Stadhuis. The tower on the left is St. Foillan, the Scottish Missionary church.
This is the first of a two part series about the Aachen Cathedral. It is about 15 minutes long and talks about the church and the history of the city. It is pretty interesting.
This is the second video of the two. It is about 5 minutes long.
Walter's return from Germany, and his reports of the fun time he had there, reminded me of how much I enjoyed the Christmas markets in Prague. So, in the spirit of the holiday, because I am writing about Aachen (even though I wasn't there during the Christmas season) I thought that I would share some pictures I found of the market, which is located in the Katschhof, the large plaza between the Dom and the Stadhuis.
If you go here and here, you can see some photo albums from different fairs. Here you can see an interesting blog post about visiting the market. Here you can find the official website for the market. And, if you go here, you can see an official Christmas Market website that talks all about the different German Christmas markets. If you scroll down a ways, you will find a video of the market which includes a little history of the market and a couple of really interesting bits about popular cookies and candies at the market.
The Aachen Cathedral stands across the Katschhof from the Stadhuis. The Katschhof is the central market and public area. It is a remnant of the medieval shape of the city and the name, apparently, comes from the German term for pillory. When I went through, there were some school groups who were having wheelbarrow races.
This is a 360 degree video of the Katschhof. It starts looking toward the Stadhuis and then circles around. When the camera points toward the Cathedral, if you turn the volume way up, you can hear some of the musicians who were performing in the streets.
This is the North-East corner of the Stadhuis. On the left, you can see the side of the Ratskeller restaurant.
This is the Ratskeller, or City Hall Basement, Restaurant. I think it is really cute. It is so tiny, especially in comparison to the giant Stadhuis that it is cozied up to. There used to be a giant horse sculpture, called Culinario, that stood in front of the restaurant (you can see some pictures of it on the restaurant website here). It wasn't there when I was there, though. Apparently, it got a parking ticket, for blocking the pathways for pedestrians through the marketplace. It sounds like the restaurant is pretty sad about this and hopes to get Culinario back pretty soon.
Shopping streets in the shadow of the Cathedral.
One of the shopping streets in the shadow of the Dom.
A fountain made out of metal marionettes.
I couldn't get a very good picture of this window, because of the glare, but this bread store looked amazing. There are chocolate candy elephant cookies all over the place. I am not sure about the significance of this but they were plentiful.
This is the name plate for St. Foillan Church which is right next to the Dom. The plaque says that St. Foillan was a Scottish missionary bishop and martyr during the 7th century but St. Foillan (according to Wikipedia) was an Irish missionary of the 7th century. Perhaps the Germans don't care to differentiate or perhaps there were more than one. In any case, the church has had a storied history. This says that the church was built in 1180, destroyed in a city fire on May 2, 1656, rebuilt in 1672, destroyed in a bombing on April 11, 1944 (so close to the end!), and rebuilt in 1958. One upshot of all of this, as the sign notes, is that the building is is "gothic and neogothic with modern elements."
The stained glass windows over the alter in St. Foillan's Church.
This is a little video showing the front side of the Cathedral market and St. Foillan's. If you turn the volume up a bit, you can here a busker (street musician) playing an accordion on the corner.
This was a booth in the Market in front of the Dom. The sign says "Asparagus from Cleef Farms" (more or less). They were selling asparagus there and demonstrating their nifty asparagus peeling machine.
People were pretty fascinated by the asparagus peeling machine and, I will admit, it was pretty fun to watch it in action. People were also buying a lot of asparagus and strawberries because it was the height of the asparagus and strawberry season. It smelled wonderful.
I took this picture for Mom because of the sewing machine. As far as I can tell, "Picco Bella" is Italian for "Beautiful Peak" or possibly "Point Beautiful". The only Picco Bella I could find on the internet was some kind of cleaning, catering, and office supplier, as far as I could tell, but that doesn't have much to do with a sewing machine, so I don't really know what this is all about.
The weather was just beautiful when I was in Aachen and there were loads of people strolling through the city streets. Since the streets are pretty narrow, it made it seem pretty claustrophobic.
This is Sankt Adalbert. It is the second oldest church in Aachen, after the Dom. It is a catholic church and is the base for the diocese of Aachen. It is named after Adalbert of Prague, who was the Bishop of Prague but who was also a missionary to the Prussians. He was martyred, in 999 (as far as I can tell) because he was too vocal in his condemnation of the Prussian practices of polygamy. Saint Adalbert is actually one of the people commemorated in the giant statute in Wenceslas Square, in Prague, where I actually was. I put a picture in my post here, although I think Adalbert is the statue that you can't see, to the back left of Wenceslas's horse.
I took this picture as I was walking around town on the way back to the bus station. I just thought that it was interesting that the street was named after Martin Luther.
I took this picture just for Mark. I thought that it was pretty interesting that, of the five
things advertised for sale, three of them are alcohol. ("Geschenke" means "gifts".)
The roundabout at the border where we swapped between the Dutch and German buses.
The Aachen Hauptbahnhof, or Main Train Station, where the bus stopped to drop us off.
The horse sculpture in front of the Hauptbahnhof. Horses were a popular theme throughout the city.
The view down the Theaterstraße or Theater Street. The street splits and curves around the theater as the Theaterplatz.
The theater is really beautiful. It is roughly rectangular but the corners are rounded and it is very white and it really stands out.
They were setting up for a performance of some kind when I went by.
The front of the theater.
The horse statute at the front of the theater square.
This is the street across from the front of the Theater. The restaurant where I ate lunch is just to the right of this picture.
This is a picture from the website of the Aachener Brauhaus, the restaurant where I had lunch, because I forgot to get a picture of it myself. I chose this restaurant because, on looking through the menus, this seemed to have the most authentically German selections. A lot of the other restaurants in the area seemed to be significantly Frencified. You can see the website, which includes the menu, pictures, and other information, here.
I had the Schnitzel Wiener Art mit Kartoffelsalat--the Viennese style wiener schnitzel with potato salad--because that was the way that I remember having dinners when I was in Munich. It was pretty good food (I especially liked the potato salad) and the building was very nice and had a lot of character. However, I am not sure that it was an entirely traditional menu. The potato salad had cucumber curls on it and the wiener schnitzel was served with little individual packets of mustard, which didn't seem quite right.
There were statutes all around the city. Some of them were peculiar and a bit bulgy. There was a whole collection of these statutes around this fountain but I couldn't get a clear picture of all of them because people were in the way.
A corner of the Stadhuis--City Hall--with one of the outdoor restaurant areas that surrounded it.
Shops across the street from the Stadhuis. A lot of the shops and streets where named after Charlemagne.
One of the beautiful shop facades that are scattered throughout the city.
As far as I know, this is actually real gold decorating the building.
For some reason, golden unicorns were a very popular theme.
One of the many statues of Charlemagne. This one on a fountain in front of the Stadhuis.
A statuette of Charlemagne on the corner of the building.
To get to Aachen from Maastricht, I took a bus which ran regularly between the two city centers. There were no boarder crossings, or anything, because of the European Union. I found this rather disappointing, as it would have been nifty to get stamps for going from country to country. They did, however, make us swap buses at the boarder. I am not sure why, especially because we didn't have to swap buses on the back, but we all got dumped off just on the Dutch side of the boarder, on a roundabout, and were picked up a few minutes later by a bus from the German side. Fortunately, the buses took the same ticket card, no matter what side of the boarder you were on.
You could tell a real difference between the landscape in Germany and in the Netherlands (or at least in the Eastern Netherlands). There are trees, and rolling hills, and different kinds of fields.
What was especially impressive were the castles (or at least the castle-like buildings) which popped up through the trees all over the place. I looked through the Google Maps to try and find what those castles might be and, while I couldn't find all of them, I think that I have identified one of them.
I think that this castle is actually a Benedictine Monastery in the Netherlands (the main road parallels the border for some ways). The Abdij Sint Benedictusberg is just across the border into the Netherlands and reflects some of the differences between Maastricht (which is kind of Catholic) from all the rest of the Netherlands. If you go here, you can look at the monastery's webpage, including pictures showing the distinctive conical towers, plus a little information about the monastery.
The bus ride was only about 45 minutes long but it was really shocking to step onto the bus more or less understanding what was going on around me and then to step off it, less than an hour later, and not to be able to understand what anybody was saying or even really to read signs all that well.
