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Our final destination of the trip: Cologne, Germany's fourth-largest city. And this is its ginormous cathedral right in the middle of town! Its twin spires soar to 157 metres, and despite its ground stone being laid way back in 1248, stop-start construction meant it wasn't finished until 1880! The cathedral is one of the world's largest churches and for four years (1880-84) it was the tallest structure in the world, until the completion of the Washington Monument. We climbed the 500-something steps to the top, and along the way passed the 24-tonne Bell of St Peter - the largest freely-swinging ringable bell in the world.

Apparently some people need a ciggy after about the 400th step.		Views from atop the cathedral.		There was some big gathering going on down below for a live band that was pumping out the sounds. Last time this many Germans got together and got riled up it wasn't to be a good decade for the Jews.

Panorama from the top.

No shortage of shopping in Cologne either.		I like chicks who like beer ;)		We spent half a day driving through the adjacent Ebbegebirge Nature Park which includes a ridge of hills up to 660m above sea level. It was hardly the Black Forest, but not a bad spot for lunch.

These two have had a falling out.		For some reason the GPS took us on an off-road route to get back to Cologne. I tell you what the Gutless Wonder got it all on this trip! On-road, off-road, racetracks, the lot.

And just when I thought we'd seen the last of them, we hit about the tenth road block of the trip, again with no diversion signs to guide you around it. Thank God for GPS is all I can say!		After 16 days on the road it took a good hour to repack all of our shit, and alas a lot of it got discarded with Katie no longer around to add some of the weight to her luggage. An old sleeping bag, the tents (cheapos), the Mitsubishi bags, etc. - it all went.

I flew back to London, and Kristina flew a couple hours later to Pisa, Italy to meet up with her mate for some more gallivanting around the continent - what a life.				Back over Britain. Cloudy, every time.

This was our final route. The detour to Fucking isn't on there, but I can't be Fucking bothered redoing this map again hehe.		The poor Gutless Wonder put up with a lot of punishment and did us proud, finishing with almost 4,200kms on the trip meter.		Likewise my little cycle GPS made the trip a whole lot easier, and got us out of some tight spots, not least of all the road block outside of Loket.

So that was it! 16 days, and in the end it was 7 countries rather than 9, and 4,200kms rather than the 3,500kms I had originally estimated (largely due to the detour to Fucking, dropping Katie at the airport, and working around all of those road blocks). Unfortunately these nine pages in no way reflect quite how amazing this trip really was: wandering around Karlovy Vary, the Bastei Lookout, mountain biking in the Austrian Alps, the Baden-Baden nude spa, racing around the Nurbugring, it really goes on and on along with so many other little things that can't really be captured in a photo or easily articulated - it really was awesome. Of course there was all the palaver with Katie too, but be that as it may, this, at least for the time being, will stand as the best road trip I've ever done!

And to finish off, a small section on being Kristina hahaha! What can I say, she's 'special' ;)

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