Aachen: Cradle of Europe?

When we found that between Dortmund and Belgium were many trains and towns, and one town was rthe final resting place of Charlemagne, a place where, after he visited, he moved his royal court and palace to the town. This city is called Aachen.

We read it was a small German town, nestled in to the corner of Germany where it borders the Netherlands to the north-west and Belgium to the west proper. Indeed, the city has two international borders in town. Of course it matters a lot less nowadays...

But, this town was anything but "small:"

With a population of 260k people, it's listed as the 27th largest city in Germany (the 27th largest city here in the US is Louisville, KY, at about 680k). It was a beautiful, and metropolitan, town.

After we made it to the hotel, the woman at the front desk said, While we do have air-conditioned rooms, it in not like the AC you are used to in the States. We laughed and said no problem.

Walking around gave us some nice views of some of the older stuff:

And street-vistas. Street-vistas in older European towns and cities is always a great thing. 

This building was clearly older than the one next to it, and housed a FroYo place in the bottom. Maybe ice cream proper...

Aachen was bombed pretty well during WWII, and while some of the older castle structures were intact, others were not. Like, here's an old corner of an old church:

Here's the Rathaus, the city council building, with it's rebuilt roof and spires:

This is a bronze model of the original complex built by Charlemagne, separately but made to fit together, and later we visited it in person. Inside was the treasury, where much of the Frankish treasures of Charlemagne and his descendants collected over the years.

The Holy Roman Emperor was crowned in Aachen from the 900s to the 1570s, when somebody moved it to Cologne, I think. Remember, the Holy Roman Empire was a German entity and named because the barbarians just wanted to emulate their previous overlords.

After the fall of Western Rome, a Frankish dynasty took power, the Merovingians, and they were followed by another Frankish dynasty, Charlemagne and the Carolingians, who ruled until the Vikings rampaged through and more modern kingdoms arose.

The Franks are a German people, and are the namesake of today's France, which in German is Frankreich---the 'Frankish kingdom.'

Maybe the thinnest house we saw

One day while walking around we made it to a park. It was small and pleasant, and had what looked like a subway entrance:

Okay, it wasn't a subway entrance...but what was it exactly?

Well, inside was an excavation site, where you see the area's many thousands of years of history on display. Charlemagne liked the area some much because of the therapeutic thermal baths. The Romans loved the area because of the therapeutic thermal baths. Neolithic humans in Europe liked it for its...you get it, the therapeutic thermal baths.

So...Charlemagne.

When we drive to Texas, largely along I-40, we're reminded often that the route follows, mostly, the erstwhile bit of Americana, Route 66.

In Aachen, it's all about Charlemagne.

Images like the one above are all over the place, and while that was taken at a Charlemagne museum, they were pretty ubiquitous.

Inside the octagon was pretty cool, and seeing the treasury was interesting:

Treasuries are nothing without relics, and here's some radius and ulna from a saint that Charlemagne brought back from places east.

There was also a very well known and well bejeweled bust of Charlemagne himself:

When I saw this I flipped out a smidge. The area is occasionally described as the Cradle of Europe, and when I saw this it all made sense for me. I gazed at the cloak this king, this ruler of areas that covered France and Germany today, and was dumbstruck. The top portion, with the black eagles on the yellow background, is used as a national symbol of Germany today. And the gold fleur-de-lis on the blue field is used as a national symbol for France.

And with Charlemagne, they sit combined. The Cradle of Europe.

The next day, our last proper day in Aachen, we visited those therapeutic thermal baths, and they were awesome. They pruned my hands up quick, and eventually they were left sore. It was an expensive venture (and that's saying something on this trip), and no phones were allowed, but the pools were warm, fun, split between inside and outside, and not for swimming, like our kids wanted to do.

They were lounging, making out, and, eh, not much else. The walk there from the bus still had nice vistas:

And the walk back to our hotel was through a park, we decided to do, instead of waiting for the bus, and buying four tickets and all. Once we realized that it would be this easy, and after the heat broke, the evening walk through he greenery was preferred. I mean, check it out:

Aachen was a pleasant shock. It was large, boisterous, and full of history. One evening, after putting trhe kids to sleep, Corrie and I ventured back down to the hotel bar for beers and watching the German-Ivory Coast World Cup match. Ivory Coast took a one goal lead into halftime, and the mood was tense. But Germany scored two second half goals and won the game, likely securing a chance to get to the knockout round. But, this was just a group stage game, and outside after the victory, people drove around honking their horns and going crazy like a war had just ended.

We even visited an middle class home from the early 1700s, that today would be considered a mansion. You get the idea that back then, a 'middle-class' home was just between the palaces where the lords lived and the dirt huts where their serfs dwelled. The floors creaked and the docents watched our kids like hawks. Anyway, it was pretty cool.

I could return to Aachen. Cass ordered a dorado fish at a Greek restaurant, and when the plate arrived, you could see that it was split, soaked with cured lemon, and grilled to flaky perfection. Cass's Fish Adventures: 2