3 countries.. in 1 day.. sans passport..

Who would have ever thought it was possible to travel to 3 countries and not have your passport checked once?? Well, until January, it was easy to do in Europe, but not now. However, I got lucky yesterday and for some reason or other, never got checked. Three friends and I decided to take advantage of our four day weekend (and yes, I am going on a two week vacation starting this friday, how am I EVER going to readjust to life in the US??) and go see a nearby town in Germany called Trier, which is the oldest city in Germany and dates back to 16 BC. And it happens to be located about 2 hours by changing trains a couple of times from Metz. I still can't get over the ancient-ness of everything that surrounds me here, I live in an especially old part of Europe that was settled by the Germans. So we got up early, met at the train station, and took a train to Luxembourg. I must give kudos to the girl who got this all together, somehow she stumbled upon a ticked that would include all four of us and each of us would only pay 12,50 euros for the entire round trip -- not bad for travelling through three countries during one day. We arrived in Trier at about 11 am. It was pretty chilly and threatening rain, but we set out to see the sights. Unfortunately, I forgot to charge my camera, so I have no pictures at all whatsoever, but some may be tagged on facebook by some of my friends... We saw the old Roman gate, which is over 2000 years old and looks like it could have been built last year.. those Romans really knew how to build stuff! Then we walked around the old part and found a place to have lunch. We all tried to choose very typically German fare, I had potato pancakes with salmon and "cottage cheese," which actually turned out to be more like mustard with some dill added. The others got wienerschnitzel, some sort of meatloaf, and potatoes au gratin with broccoli and chicken. It was a great lunch -- and it warmed us up. Then, we went walking some more, and found the old city wall, which is about 1000 years old, and a beautiful pink castle. We saw the baths from a distance, but none of us wanted to pay to get in, at this point ruined baths are ruined baths and we've all seen a lot of them. But we were able to stand beside it and peer in. We also went into the Cathedral of Trier, where, apparently, the robe Jesus wore when he was crucified is housed as a relic. Naturally we couldn't see the real thing, just a picture of it. Pretty cool, I will say. The cathedral was beautiful -- I wished we could have been there to see a service today (Easter Sunday). By this time, it was towards the end of the afternoon and we headed back towards the city center to get some ice cream -- naturally I had raspberry sorbet and it was DELICIOUS. Then, we got back on the train and headed back to Metz. And thank goodness we were not stopped once for passports (two of us had forgotteno ours). I won't lie though, those visions of being forever stuck on the train between France and Luxembourg recurred intermittently until I was safely off the train and back in Metz. I better not forget my passport next week!!