The 2003 EuroTour "On The Road" Journal

A Visit to Aachen The Town

June 2, Monday - The town is busy preparing for the upcoming CHIO Aachen. Shopkeepers were decorating their windows, and buses drove by as mobile billboards for the upcoming event, beginning June 16. The day after Franz's party, we joined some of our new friends at Franz's favorite bar for beer, coffee, and snacks, before heading off to Aachen's old town. There is never time for this during the horse show, so we relished the opportunity to spend time in the city known for more than the host of the #1 horse show in the world.

A tour of the city of Aachen must include a visit to the stunning "Kaiser Dom" (cathedral) which remains the single greatest storehouse of Carolingian architecture in Europe. Unlike many other cathedrals we have visited throughout Europe, Aachen's Dom has a more intimate appeal. Franz brought us through the cathedral, which was cool and comfortable from the unseasonable heat outside.

If one wanted to believe in that myth, then Aachen would owe its foundation to the horse of Charlemagne (742-814). The myth says the Charlemagne (Charles the Great) once went hunting on horseback and got lost in the brushwood of the forests. He got separated from his comrades and then, on his wrong track, discovered the spas, springs and palaces, which had once been founded and built by Roman sovereign Granus.

Charlemagne only discovered this decayed overgrown place because of his horse, which sensed the hot springs and pawed them with its hoof. Everywhere in Aachen's Old Town, are preserved buildings, relics, and stonework of a city over 2000 years old.

One of the many German spa towns, the arcaded neoclassical Elisenbrunnen (Elisa Fountain), built in 1822, contains two fountains with the hottest thermal drinking water north of the Alps. While the sulfurous water may not be pleasant to the smell or taste, one can partake in the same manner as Frederick the Great and Charlemagne did around 800 AD.

Since our arrival, the weather has tuned unseasonably warm. I had packed a suitcase full of clothes for the normally cooler weather, so I stepped into a few stores along the way for t-shirts and lighter pants. The shopping is wonderful here, with a huge selection of many clothes, at great prices. The Euro is strongest than our visit last September. $100 USD equals about 80€. Nevertheless, the prices were still excellent and I had fun stocking up on a few new items.

We would take breaks from our walking tour at an outside café, plentiful throughout Europe. Then it was back to Marion, Monica, and Manfred's apartment for one of Monica's genuine German dinners, of red cabbage, and rouladen, slices of beef wrapped around pickles and backed in a wonderful sauce.

We will be returning to this area June 15, checking back into the Hotel Van der Valk in Heerlen. So there were no goodbyes yet to our friends, just Auf Wiedersehen, till we meet again.