Trier.

The train ride from Koblenz to Trier (Koblenz is a bit to the south of Köln, from where the train ride actually started) was mostly flanking the beautiful Mosel (Moselle) river. It would've been delightful to bike along the river (it meanders too much to make it part of a long-distance-I'm-behind-schedule-and-in-a-hurry bike trip like this one, but it would be perfect for a relaxing week of wine tasting and boating and little village sight-seeing), as you can see from some of the pictures with the pretty villages, etc.

Now what? Tomorrow after Trier I need to be headed for Berlin, and there are two possible ways to do this: head northeast towards Essen and Dortmund along the Ruhrgebiet and its Route der Industrie, of which Zollverein is just one stop, and which hits lots of former chemical factories and power plants and other interesting factory campuses (obviously very industrial, but flat and uncomplicated and through several sizeable cities--more comfortable stays and internet access guaranteed), or southeast through a multitude of hills and meandering rivers, smaller villages, a more roundabout route but with prettier landscape and what looks like more things to see (looks like may hit more UNESCO WH sites as well, though those could be reached from up north as well relatively easily by train if necessary)?

Arrived in Trier with such preoccupations in the back of my mind, which I shelved in the back-burner as I visited its nice Cathedral and the Basilica (now a Protestant church) which also used to be the throne room of Constantine, as well as its various Roman ruins which make Trier a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Trier, by the way, was also the birthplace of Karl Marx, so they named a street after him and turned his house into a museum. Towards the end of the day and with nothing much else left to do or see (a stroll up and down between bridges across the Mosel was pretty but lonely), I wondered whether to take the time to visit it.

Now, I don't know much about "Capital". It is supposed to be a very good book with some rather sharp and careful analysis of 19th century economics, but I haven't read it yet (though it is right at the top of my reading list as soon as I finish with A. Smith), so I can't comment. But his and Engel's "Communist Manifesto" reads like it was written by two dancing monks on crack, so I decided instead to head towards the city center and spend the rest of the day before my return to Köln engaged in some very capitalistic window-shopping.

Ha ha. One friend of mine would be proud. ;)