Hannah Swithinbank

1. It will be COLD.  And Trier is a town where the things you want to see are largely outsidey things that involve wandering around. Apart from the Rheinisches Landesmuseum, which is obviously an inside thing, and the churches the main sights are the Roman ruins like the Kaiserthermen and the amphitheatre, and the town itself.

2. Cold itself isn’t too horrible, it’s when you start adding in wintery weather like rain, sleet or snow. ALL of which it did at some point on Friday when I was there.   This is what town looked like from the Porta Nigra on Friday afternoon.  ‘Twas lovely.  You could sort of see that Trier is actually a really lovely town, but by the time you’d got wet ankles a cold head and cold hands, you weren’t really in the mood to appreciate it.

3. There is an additional problem that arises when you add cold and wet winter weather to a collection of outside sights. It’s called ICE.   Apart from the Porta Nigra and the Viehmarktthermen (which is under a big glass box) all the Roman sites I wanted to see were shut due to icy surfaces.  So I stood outside them and whimpered, and took photos through the fence.

5. Photos. Aha, yes. Cameras and sleet are two unmixy things.  Snow, oddly, isn’t so bad, for it feels dryer (don’t ask, I have my own personal science going on, clearly) but sleet and rain don’t make my camera feel comfortable.  So on Friday I took few photos and fewer that I liked. Saturday was better as, although it had snowed overnight, it wasn’t whilst I was out and about, and there was even a smidgen of blue sky and sunlight, which made for better photography.

6. Other things indoorsy things will also be closed, because there is restauration work being done (the Liebfraukirche), or because it’s January (the Landesmuseum).  ‘Twas at the discovery of this last, on Saturday morning that I just starting laughing at my comedy of woe.  Trier in January FAIL.

That said, it wasn’t actually a complete bust.  Saturday morning, despite the snowy and icy conditions meaning that things were shut and that I kept trying to do the splits whilst walking on, well, pretty much every possible road surface (the GRAVEL in the park was frozen and slippy, seriously), the town looked really lovely in it’s snow dusting.  For example – the cloister behind the Dom and the Liebfraukirche.   There’s a lovely little coffee shop in the House of the Three Kings, which does amazing bagels and is open from seven am, which is great when your hostel doesn’t do breakfast.  The walk along the Mosel River past the windmills to the Römerbrücke is rather lovely.

There’s also a really really nice little wine cellar-restaurant across the road from the Liebfraukirche.  It’s called Weinstube Kesselstatt and is a really beautiful place with lovely wine and yummy food, and it totally made up for the fact that Friday was cold and wet and miserable and filled with shut things I wanted to see.