Another stupidly early wake up was worse for having only had 4 hours sleep. The speed at which my brain was functioning was almost certainly evident from the amount of noise I made trying to pack up. My sincerest apologies to everybody else in the dorm.I successfully negotiated the back streets of Antwerp to catch a 6:20 express train to Brussels. The change I needed to make to get to Cologne didn’t really go to plan. Firstly, I’d managed to disembark from the Antwerp-Belgium train at the ‘central’ station and not the station where international trains depart from. Second, I couldn’t make a reservation on any of the express trains that day because they were fully booked with tourists heading home after the public holiday /long weekend.I eventually made it to Cologne by taking regional inter-city trains and changing a further two times.  But I wasn’t done yet. In Cologne I booked into a return journey south to Mannheim and set off to meet a few old colleges/friends.I had a neat little afternoon in Mannheim. I saw a bloke run off down the street after shop lifting from a chemist. I made a few legitimate purchases myself and enjoyed some coffee/wifi while waiting for Dom and Christian to finish work. We had a  snack for dinner and a few beers but there wasn’t much time before I needed to get back to the station and head back up to Cologne. We’ll have to sort that out next time!It was great to arrive in Cologne, catch up with Anna, meet her parents and sisters, and feel a part of a functioning family. It was also really cool to get into town and be in ‘real’ coffee shops and original stores rather than the generic tourist traps you so often find yourself in when in unfamiliar cities.To cover off two of Cologne’s most well known icons, we stopped briefly at a beer hall to try Kölsch. We then walked around to take a look inside the grand Kölner Dom (Cologne cathedral). The place is massive and I’m really not surprised it took over 600 years to construct.Three days wasn’t long enough but I needed to get across to Amsterdam to meet up with Matt and farewell Wes who was due to head home to Australia.