May 24th: Trier-"We actually rent the women in the rooms"
The ride to Trier was pretty quick and easy. The nice thing about going along both the Rhine and Mosel so far is that we've basically downstream with the currents meaning we've been going slightly downhill the entire time. By 1:30 we were just outside Trier, the oldest city in Germany that was originally founded by the Romans. It was a Saturday so we ended up having a hard time finding a place to stay. We stopped at a large hostel first but they were completely full. We rode into the city center and walked through the city's market, saw the cathedral and the old Roman gates of the city. We found the Hauptbahnhof and figured out our plans for today. We wanted to go to Cologne and see the Dom before going onto Heidelburg but that proved to be impossible. All the ICE trains from Cologne to Heidelburg were full and it was 8 euro for a reservation. Instead we might see the Dom on our way back from Berlin. By 5 o'clock we had our trains figured out to get to Heidelburg but we still needed a place to stay. There were a couple hotels by the train station but one didn't look quite right... The hotel next to it was full and Theo wanted me to check it out while he watched all of our stuff. I told him "It looks like a whorehouse" but checked it out anyways. It had graffiti-styled naked ladies painted onto the walls in the front hallway and there were a big pair of red lips under the word Hotel on the sign out front. I walked inside and proceeded to go upstairs. No one was up there but when I got to the second floor I see pictures of these two women in lingerie laying on beds on one of the bedroom doors. I decided to not go any further. I went back downstairs and see these two old ladies sitting outside of the restaurant that was downstairs and they were smiling and laughing slightly at me. I smiled back and said "Ihre hotel"? They laugh some more and a guy from the restaurant came out and asked me if he could help me. I sort of awkwardly ask "Haben sie ein zimmer?" To which he asked "For the night?". I said yes and then he said "actually we rent out the women in the rooms. I dont think you could afford a whole night." I just smiled and laughed as I walked away. It was a whorehouse! We kept asking for rooms at hotels but couldn't find any. Eventually we made our way back out of the city to the Mosel where we found another campground. By this time almost all of our laundry was dirty so we decided to do a load. The machine was really small so we just did our jeans and a few darks. We threw socks and whites into a sink with a Tide packet and tried to stuff it all in the dryer. We hoped 30 minutes would get it dry but after running it everything was still wet. We ran it another 30 minutes but it was still soaked. By now we had spent over 2 hours and 4 euros doing laundry and hadn't eaten dinner. It wasn't all bad tho cause we talked to a guy from Cologne while we were waiting in a mix of German and English about everything from the beer in Cologne to its famous Dom and the rivalry between Cologne and Dusseldorf. After giving up on the laundry we walked down the street for Doner Kebabs at a family run restaurant. The only other people in there were Turkish and they had pictures of the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and the Kaa'ba in Mecca on the walls. We felt a little out of place but it was fun.