Trip around North Germany on Christmas and New Year

End of December brought us the news of holidays coming. So me and a friend (Javaid) decided to take a tour around North Germany meeting our friends on the way. We set out on Saturday to our first destination, the city of Cologne in North-West Germany. We spent one night there with a friend (Ramzan) and played with his cute little children while enjoying parathas (oil-bread?) of his wife's hands. You can see the pics at: http://community.webshots.com/album/534045615tphuvO


We missed our second stop-over due to mis-communication and had to go to our third destination, the second biggest city of Germany: Hamburg. It lies in North of Germany and so suffers extreme winter. It started snowing the day we arrived there and continued till we came back. It is a port city where a river meets the ocean. Containing lots of bridges, the city runs ferries (boats) alongside its tram and bus network. It was nice to walk through a tunnel under the river and see a museum of transport models of European and American cities. These models were fully operational with trains, buses, cars, emergency vehicles and ships running around. It simulated the whole day with darkness and daylight. Pics are present at: http://community.webshots.com/album/534046721yyjcfL

From there we returned to our last stop-over missing again another intermediate station to Giessen, a small city in almost middle of Germany and near Frankfurt. We travelled with a person who was going there by car by paying him some amount. When we left Hamburg, a snow storm hit North Europe and traffic slowed even on highways. It took us double the time to reach our destination. We saw the New Year fireworks in the city-center of Giessen. Pics at: http://community.webshots.com/album/534051618HRAPul

Finally we took a trip (rather two) to Frankfurt. First trip was to help the next batch of HEC scholarship holders who were arriving on 30th Dec. The flight was delayed for two hours due to snowfall and so we had to spend the night at the airport. After boarding them on respective trains we came back to Giessen after spending some time with a friend in Frankfurt. We returned back home on Sunday 2nd Jan. Pictures at Frankfurt can be found at: http://community.webshots.com/album/534053275YHvsuT