Aachen: Me, Charlemagne and Solo Travel
The crowds! The Crowds! Townhall Aachen.
History: So Difficult, yeah?
I went there twice in recent years. Why? Well, why not? Charlemagne’s capital and all that. Who he? Don’t you guys read history? Only the first Holy Roman Emperor (800/814 AD) and King of the united Franks. After his demise, and his King Lear type carve up, we got the Western Europe we know now; France to the West, Germany to the East. But this forgotten - and important - king’s capital was in… Wait for it… Aachen.
Frankly, the ‘Dark Ages’ tend to get ignored in our collective rollcall of history which slides by centuries like Instagram scrolling. Collective wisdom goes something like this: Romans or something, the Tudors, Hitler. Bit of slavery thrown in but the detail is all a bit hazy. The Holy Roman Empire? Wazzat?
But I know. I put in the hours. Accordingly, in Aachen, I did the requisite obeisance by visiting the Cathedral and the Charlemagne Museum (both, btw, are well worth visiting). It’s a compact centre and you’ll have no difficulty finding these two landmarks. Beyond these two, I found Aachen a little underwhelming.
Man on Man Action!
I stayed at the Park Hotel Quellenhof which is a very grand, fin de siècle style building just the right distance outside the medieval city centre. It’s a spa hotel and I fancied a massage. I booked myself in with the glamorous lady at the spa. How you doin’ Fräulein? I was looking forward to this one. My shoulder hurt, blah, blah. No, it really did and it’s well known that attractive females rubbing you down with oil are the best remedy.
So I came back at the appointed time - eager and only two beers down - in my shorts, hotel dressing gown and slippers only to be met by a big hairy bloke called Omar. For fuck’s sake! This is not how it’s supposed to be. He led me into a treatment room and asked me to strip off totally. In turn I asked him to fuck off.
“You not had many massages from a man?” he asked.
(Fuck off!) “No,”
What followed was a butt-clenching €100 hour of torture. I left more tense than I went in.
And that, dear readers, is my short-form anecdote about Aachen.
Aachen Top Tips
Restaurant / Bar Recommendation
Ate quite a few sausages at a fast food restaurant called Hanswurst near the cathedral which I recommend. They serve beer too. (Hansbräu). See the mirror picture above - who’s cooler, the sausage shop or Tim Robson?
Hotel
Park Hotel Quellenhof. Expensive & imposing. You feel either wealthy or an imposter here. The room I had first time—must have been flush—was an extremely large corner room with a great view. Must have been upgraded as I’m tight. I recommend this hotel but also recommend working hard to pay for it.
Attraction
Aachen is very near the Vaalserberg which is the tripoint where Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands meet. Stand on the point and take a picture. “Look, my foot is in Germany and my hand is in Belgium!” Hours of fun.
Further Reading
For more neglected European cities, head to my summary. There’s some jewels (and some dogs) - Dordrecht, The Hague, Luxembourg City. I go to places the crowds do not. You judge.
For more Germanic trips, try my Squeal Piggie in Monschau article. Found out who has a real pretty mouth.
The Cities I Forgot
The Urban Noir Blanks
I’m catching up on some cities from my recent tours in the last few years that haven’t yet been blogged about. Click on the city of your choice for a brief solo travel overview:
Bad Zwischenahn
Luxembourg City
Amsterdam
Utrecht
Dordrecht
The Hague
Gent / Ghent
Why Unwritten?
It’s like a lost regimental flag in some musty provincial town museum listing ancient battle honours: Delft, Antwerp, Bruges, Krakow, Breda, Monschau, Mons, Paris, Honfleur, Chicago, Prague. These are the cities I’ve blogged about on this site. Places where I’ve recently matched my wordsmithery and world-weary eye against the elements, fighting wonky barstools, cobblestones and largely indifferent ladies and subsequently exposed each adventure to the public on this website (Urban Noir Tales).
But are these the complete story of my recent travels, I hear all ten of you ask? Are the cities I’ve reviewed every destination I’ve been to in the last three or four years? No, it is not Mr Xi from China (who mysteriously checks this blog everyday).
So what have I missed out from this scabrous tour of Europe? Which towns didn’t make the callback to join the ensemble cast of the city tours already published? Were their stories less remarkable? The people I met less interesting? The follies de toutes less observable? My failures unfunny?
The Runts of the Litter? No!
Perhaps but no, I usually manage to make a compelling story from the most mundane materials. Clearly there’s no hidden embarrassments too shameful to reveal. I’m always pretty truthful; all events I describe on this blog actually happened and my own pratfalls and missed connections are real. True, like any writer, I’m guilty of crashing events together, editing furiously and leaving out the parts not additive to the main narrative of whatever city I’m writing about.
‘Literary impressionism’ I once called it. Yes, a somewhat pretentious term but that description is an apt one. I aim to entertain and inform. And be pretentious.
They Came Too Soon
The main reason these cities were left out, I guess, is that they came at the wrong time. Maybe I hadn’t yet toned the writing muscle I rediscovered in those rainy afternoons in Delft and Antwerp late spring 2025. Simply, they came slightly too soon for the ‘Urban Noir’ series.
All have stories unwritten in each. Perhaps, given time, given newer, shinier cities, they just got forgotten. What is unwritten is unremembered. There’s nothing so unfamiliar as the recent past. But let’s check out that theory. The stories - and cities - may have short entries but I’ll add the highlights, as I remember them from some distance.
So where to start? Let’s go to Aachen and an uncomfortable massage from Omar.
Quotidian Notes
“Are you scraping so far below the barrel Tim that you’re actually mining? Or has your egotism finally fully taken over in your solipsistic world that you now give us the scraps from your notebooks?” Fair point. Thank you but fuck off. No, some of these untold stories are better than those already published. I have high standards around here.
For example. There’s many a scabrous story in the Dam! If lying on a bed in nightclub being forced to suck on a pipe strapped around a naked guy’s groin is your thing, you might like these new recollections. A lost gem I feel.
The main point is to give travellers (particularly solo travellers) some idea of what a place is like before they get there. An impression. A feeling of what the city is actually like. Maybe some bar reviews. Some practical tips. Muesems. But mainly the bars and the interactions I get into. Or fail to get into.