The Allisons

This weekend, we decided to take our first German day trip. Mike set his sights on the birthplace of Beethoven in Bonn, Germany, and the Dom in Cologne, Germany. It wasn't as close as we thought--a little over 2 hours each way.

The pink building is the front of Beethoven's birthplace and where he lived until the age of 22. My favorite part was seeing his pianos, some of the sheet music he had written, and his hearing devices. The picture of the 4 of us was taken in the "back yard" with a sculpture of Beethoven in the background (it looks like it's coming out of my head). We then walked into the town square and that's were the building with all the flags was. Bonn was actually the capital of Germany for a short while before it changed to Berlin. The picture of the obelisk was also in the square. There was a market going on and some food vendors so Mike ate some sort of weiner. We also picked up some yummy breads for SUPER cheap. Then we headed back out onto the road to travel about 45 more min to Cologne.

After driving around trying to find a place to park, we were too late to make the climb up to the observation deck in the catherdral (The Dom). I don't know if you can tell how huge it is, but it dwarfs everything else in the skyline. The inside was cavernous. I took a few pics of the amazing stained glass, but they're kind of dark and blurry so I didn't include them. What I did include however, is a picture of a ghost. Ha, ha right? Let me first say, that I am unsure as to what I believe about ghosts. I definitely believe in angels and demons, but I'm not sure what category ghosts fall into if any. Also, I will preface by saying that on Halloween Mike and I were wanting to watch something scary and stumbled upon a ghost show on TV. It explained about "orbs" (round, fuzzy, balls of light in a photo or video) and "vortexes" (supposedly part of an apparition in a photo). I have never experienced those things in any photo I have ever taken, but in the cathedral I took a pic of the ceiling in a wierd area and captured both. I'm sure it's some sort of reaction of light in the lense, or some otherwise explainable photographical (is that a word?) phenominon, but I thought it was coincidental and more than a little spooky and wanted to share it will all of you. I would also officially like to declare the Dom in Cologne, haunted. Ha!! Whatever...

Disclaimer: I am unable to run spell check and I'm in a super big hurry, so please don't think I'm an idiot if I spelled something wrong. :)