Cologne, B'Eagles Game, and more

It’s been a while since we blogged so we’re gonna play a little catch-up and then do better about keeping it updated on our adventures. Went to Cologne (err…German spelling Kohl) last Saturday for a morning/afternoon excursion to a great city only an hour away from our front door. While it was our first trip, we now realize that we will go back quite often. Cologne has a Gothic cathedral that sits right in the city center between the train station and all the shops. Despite the fact that nearly all the city was completely destroyed in WWII, the cathedral was preserved from destruction (gotta credit the ol’ Allies for the precision bombing, haha). The Germans rebuilt the city in the 50s and 60s and has a mix of older-looking buildings that didn’t look too old. Great downtown shopping and we enjoyed our fair share of German pub food and biere/water. The city sits right on the Riene River and there was lots of shops that has “summertime biergarten” written all over it. Despite the chilly weather, we lived it up inside the little café’s, people watched, and ate some great German snacks. No weather, chilly rainy or otherwise, will slow us down from living it up here in the BENELUX (Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg) region!!
Alas, the Eagles are not going to the Super Bowl. Seems like we’ve seen that more than we care to admit but they have a valiant effort against the Arizona Cardinals. We hosted a few work friends over on Sunday evening to watch the game. We got a projector and from the online laptop feed, we showed a nice big screen on the wall. Thanks for the great season anyway!! Good luck to ol’ Pat Tillman’s team!
We ventured to Maastricht with some friends to an Irish Pub (yup, they are everywhere!!) for their weekly Tuesday Trivia Night. We didn’t come in last but we were not close to winning (turns out that the Round on Dutch culture really killed us). Lots of laughter, cold Murphy’s Irish Red, and Jenny miss her Chocolate Lover’s Dessert by 5 minutes of kitchen closing time…bad news for the waitress. Moral of the story…don’t mess with a pregnant woman and her just desserts!!
We had our International Night with our Polish and German friends over for dinner. Jenny made her infamous green chili enchiladas and we traded lots of stories about what adventures led us here together in Brunssum. We are so fortunate to meet all these great folks from all over the world and learn so much about one another’s culture, background, and lifestyle. Tossed in some good French wine, Tequila, and hot tea for quite an evening of entertaining. We are also conspiring to field an International Dream Team for one of Maastricht’s Trivia Nights.

Stay tuned we plan on doing a quick trip to Amsterdam on Saturday. Have a great weekend!!