Aix-la-Chapelle

After leaving Luxembourg we crossed (through a little bit of Belgium) into Germany where we stayed in the town that the Krauts call Aachen and the Frogs call Aix-la-Chapelle. I don't know what to call it but it was a nice town.

I thought we were going to see Charlemagne's grave but it turned out to be his relics. They had a stone sarcophagus where he was originally buried but it was empty. Apparently he was canonised a couple of hundred years after he died (news to me) and so they opened up his tomb and pulled his body to bits. That's reverence for you! His arm and his leg were in special boxes with crystal sides so you could see them. Apparently his skull was inside the big gold bust. And it wasn’t just bits of Charlemagne and his personal effects, they had quite a collection of reliquaries. They had a piece of Jesus’ sweat-rag, Mary’s belt and rib bones from famous saints (Peter, Paul, Stephen). I found the whole thing a bit macabre but that's mediaeval Catholicism.

I was a bit worried about travelling in a country where I didn’t speak a word of the language (except what I’ve learnt from Hogan’s Heroes). Cindy took German in high school for a couple of years (but has forgotten almost all of it) so I had her teach me the numbers at least. She was able to read the days of the week on a few signs but apart from that we were without any knowledge of the language. We found that, even though we were very close to the French border, the Germans of Aachen were not very good at French, most of them preferred to speak English.

After an abortive attempt to get an authentic German meal at a pub with a frazzled barmaid, we found a restaurant that had lots of flags in the window. There we were even able to ask questions about the dishes as the waiter knew the words for most things in English if he didn’t know the French word. I had the Nuremburg sausages with saurkraut and it was pretty good (there were caraway seeds in the saurkraut). I’ve realised that cabbage can be edible if it’s cooked in beer or wine or something nice.