Köln, Zürich, and other adventures

We left Dusseldorf for Zurich yesterday morning. We had a three hour "layover" in Köln, Germany. Right outside the train station there is a beautiful old cathedral, which has been built over centuries starting in 500! (It's the Köln Cathedral, or Cologne Cathedral for an English "translation"). It's a three day weekend in most of Anglo Europe right now so most things aren't open, but luckily we could walk around a majority of the cathedral. It was full of gorgeous stained glass, some of which was blown out during the World War(s) and has since been replaced. There are some relics in the cathedral that are ancient and people come just to see them.  Here's a picture of the outside at least, I have tons of the inside on my camera ill post later, 

After walking around the cathedral we were able to walk down the the Rhine River where there was a small park. I've also learned that Germans spend a lot of time outdoors, and therefore a lot of interactions Americans may think of as more private (kissing which I've witnessed full out make out sessions in abundance) they do in public parks. It's very interesting just to observe people and their interactions here. 

Anyways, we finally got on a train and three more and arrived in Zurich, Switzerland around 9 PM. We ate Italian for dinner (Italy is one of their neighbors and one of their four official languages is Italian) where we heard our server speak English, German, and Italian.  But most of the Swiss speak a "Swiss German" which is slightly different than the standard.  Anyways, I got a delicious pasta dish with fresh-made pasta (YUM) and asparagus, which so far all two restaurants I've been to have a whole page of asparagus dishes (again, yum). 

It's now Sunday morning and were attempting to plan out our day! Updates later...