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Trip to Germany and Luxembourg
Page 1 2 3 4 5 6	June 29 to July 2, 2010

Nice cold strawberry sorbet in Xanten After the nice cool museum, I went outside in the summer heat again.
From the museum I walked to the town square. Unfortunately they were doing some maintenance on the sewage system or something like that because the pavement was gone for a part of the square and there were red and white fences to avoid people falling in the ditch.
After a while I needed to cool down a bit so I went into an Italian ice restaurant and had a nice big strawberry sorbet.

Eiscafe Teatro in Xanten

The sorbet was good but not as good as the one I had in Echternach in Luxembourg last year.

Behind the restaurant, through another old gate, was the St. Victor Dom of Xanten. The St. Victor Dom began as a small chapel, build around 400 AC on the grave of the holy Victor. He was a Roman soldier, killed because he was a Christian.

The legend says he was “resting with the holy”, in Latin “ad Sanctos” and this is how Xanten got its name.

The St. Victor Dom of Xanten

In the eights century, a group of monks started a community here and during the next centuries, the first church was build. They started building the current church in 1263 and in 1550 it was finished, including the two towers.

The St. Victor Dom with its two towers

The interior of the Dom is very beautiful too, with its high pilars and arches and the light coming through the coloured church windows.

The interior of the St. Victor Dom

Under the church is a crypt with the grave that, they say, contains the remains of St. Victor and one of his fellow Christians. The crypt was enlarged in 1966 as a memorial for the victims of the national socialism before and during the second world war.

The crypt under the St. Victor Dom

On the square on the side of the church are three statues with the two criminals and Jesus Christ on the cross. (read about it in John 19 and in Luke 23 verse 39 to 44 in the Holy Bible)

Jesus Christ and two criminals on the cross

Xanten is a nice and interesting town to visit but after walking around for hours, I was getting hungry so I walked back to the bike and went to the hotel.

After a shower and clean clothes, it was time for dinner. I had a very nice fish for dinner with a cold beer and a cappuccino as desert.

Fish dinner with beer

After dinner, I parked the BMW in the garage of the hotel and went to my room to write in my dairy and watch a German Krimi (police detective series) on TV.

I could park the BMW in the garage.

Wednesday, June 30, 2010

It was seven AM when I got out of my hotelbed and not long after that, I was having a good breakfast in the restaurant downstairs. Then it was time to get the BMW from the garage and to put the luggage back on the bike.
I checked out, payed €40 for the room and breakfast and €15.10 for dinner, a beer and a cappuccino.

From the hotel in Rees I took the road past Xanten and Geldem in the direction of Venlo in the Netherlands. Just a few kilometers South of venlo, I stopped at the Shell station at Nettetal to fill my tank again. 7.03 liter on 191.2 kilometer makes 27 kilometer on 1 liter. Not bad at all !
After a short break, I started my BMW again to ride farther South.

At a parking near the gasstation.

Then I took the autobahn A61/A44 in the direction of Eupen in Belgium. Just on the border between Germany and Belgium, I crossed a bridge over an empty lake.....
I asked someobne who was walking there what had happened and he told me they drained the (man made) lake to repair the dam. It was a stange panorama to see the empty lake with lots of small boats in front of a restaurant on the other side.

On the bottom of the empty reservoir was, very funny, a (dummy) drain like they have in a sink.

(Empty) Lac de Robertville.

Small boats in the distance on dry land.

Dummy drain ;-)

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Last modified: 7 April 2021

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Trip to Germany and Luxembourg