Of Germany's easily accessable neighbors, Switzerland was the coolest in my opinion. My 2 recomendations would be Luzern (sp?), this really cool old city built on top of a lake. The second would be just to find a nice tall mountain to climb to the top of. As warning, things are much more expensive in Switzerland, and the people are pretty unfriendly.

Within Germany, I would suggest attending some religious services in some of those cool old cathedrals they have all over the country. I went to one on some significant observance, and the whole service was in Latin or something...it was very cool.



I'm not entirely sure how exactly it went, but they were using the euro for some transactions the whole time I was there, but they changed the physical currency over on Jan 1, 2002. Something that Americans may not know regarding the switch was right after 9/11, Germany was creating this huge botanical exibit to commemorate the switch to the euro. They changed it at the last minute though to commemorate all of those Americans lost.

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Tiger got to hunt, Bird got to fly, Man got to sit and wonder 'Why, why, why?'
Tiger got to sleep, Bird got to land, Man got to tell himself he understand.
~Bokonon