For our first experience of Germany we went to crash with the Nagel family- also known as Lizzys exchange family. They came and met us at the train station and gave us big hugs and we felt very welcome. They were a great bunch of really warm, caring, smiley people. We were impressed. They gave us cakes and excellent coffee. We could do our washing (I wont tell you how long it had been since we had last done some). We had a room to ourselves and internet access. We had a family!!! Which, even though it wasnt our actual family was still a really nice feeling. We were fed huge amounts of food. The first night was a vegetable bake type thing which was so great, because it was so long since we had eaten a decent nutritional meal. It was funny there, because there there was also a french exchange student so we were at the dinner table, and there was french german english flying all around. It was confusing but very amusing.
The next morning something amazing happened. Rebekka took us to her school to see.... her robot!! She was in some kind of competition where they had to build a robot to do all these different things, and Megan and I almost jumped out of our skins in excitement. It was a pretty mind-blowing experience.
We then jumped on a train to Achen and had a wander around there. Its a little picturesque place that has a really nice cathedral and a funny little museum that has clearly been directly translated so that everything was 'so-called'. This is the 'so called crown jewels'. This is a 'so-called old cape of the king' (yep, thats exactly what is said). We had a bit of a giggle.

After our big day in Achen we headed back to our home in Erkelenz and had a delicious dinner of potato and sausage soup. Yummo. I was so full. We sat up talking about Cologne, and trying to work out how we would get to Hamburg the next day. Didnt really have many ideas.

Next day Alwin drove us to Cologne and took us by the big mines everywhere and it made us very sad. I observed that the germans are very good with their recycling. You know at home, how its 'recycling', 'general crap' and 'compost'. Well in Germany its 'compost', 'food scraps', 'paper', 'cardboard', 'clear glass', 'green glass', 'brown glass', 'metal' and every other type of rubbish you can imagine. Blew my mind a little bit, and made me realise just how crap Australia is in terms of sustainability. Cologne was really nice, had a really great old cathedral and we also had a delicious hot chocolate in a place that was so fancy I almost expected them to turn us away. Alwin bought us a currywurst, and then we jumped in a van (on a sort of organised hitchhike) and headed to Hamburg.