Köln,
Deutschland (Cologne, Germany)
A modern city that seemed to be lacking old buildings –
except a number of churches.
After checking into our hotel mid afternoon after arriving
from Bern, we walked to the Köln
Cathedral or Dom as the Deutsch call it. The square in front of the Dom was
filled, and I mean filled, with tourists and the local “businesses” that large
groups of tourists attract.
The Dom is a spectacular building – it apparently took
hundreds of years to complete due to circumstances such as wars, disagreements
and the sheer scale of the thing – it is enormously tall for a church and can
been seen from many of the streets in the city. The facade of the building is
difficult to describe, but it seemed to have multiple towers or spires. We certainly
took far too many photos of it.
We attempted to gain entry to the Dom, which considering the
number of people entering and leaving the building was surprisingly easy. We
soon discovered why – the Dom holds a number of Services during the day and you
cannot go very far into the cathedral – so the coming and going was a virtual
revolving door.
We set off in search of other attractions and stumbled on the
shopping centre of the city. Much like Swanston Street, there are no vehicles
on the street and it was shop front to shop front full of people. Needless to
say, shopping was the focus for the limited time we had left of the afternoon.
We did manage to discover Deutsch pastries and sweets – their nougat was
different to ours though; it was almost like a thin icing. The one thing that
we did notice whilst shopping was the very small number of non Caucasians – the
other ethnic groups stood out because they were so few in number. I don’t know
if this was a particularly Köln
thing or something that applied Deutschland wide, but it was particularly
noticeable.
The next day we attempted to visit the Dom again and found
the same problem, but this time we located a Service timetable and we made a
note of the times the place was free of a Service. After a little wandering
around, we found another church that looked a little old. Turns out that
construction there was completed in the 1200s, and it certainly looked like it
inside the church.
When we arrived, there was a group of schoolgirls in front
of us, all aged around 15 or 16. I wasn’t impressed with this, but soon changed
my mind. The girls were a choir and they had arrived to practise for the first
time in the church; their conductor was walking around whilst they sung their
scales trying to listen to the sound and find the best spot to listen. We also
thought that they were to be recorded because it seemed that there was
recording equipment everywhere. The
scales by themselves were quite magnificent – and the sound seems to
reverberate around the entire building, so that you could still hear them
singing even when you could see that they were finished. It was something else
to hear.....
The other highlights consisted of walking along the Rheine
River, sampling the Deutsch beers of which there are many and I only sampled a
few and the food. On the first night we asked for the sausage platter. This
consisted of mashed potato, sauerkraut and a variety of very thick Deutsch
sausages. I know this sounds a little boring, but it was actually quite
interesting as the sausages each had a very different flavour, including one
that was so smoky that you would have sworn you standing in the smoke of a
campfire as you ate it.
The Rheine River is a very big river and certainly dwarfs
anything I have seen, including some of the Queensland rivers. It has quite
large boats chugging up and down it and seems to be somewhat of a port for
those tourists taking cruises down the river to the Nederlands. The bridges
across the river seem to be several hundred meters wide and the cars and trains
crossing those bridges seemed to take forever to get from one side to the
other.
We eventually managed to get ourselves inside the Dom, and
to be honest, it was not as spectacular inside as it was outside. The stained
glass windows were as good as anything I have seen, but some of the Italian
churches were far more ornate than this one. Nevertheless, it was quite
cavernous inside and certainly held the many hundreds of people inspecting the
Dom’s interior.
It was on our walk the next day as we travelled to inspect
the old city gates that were built in medieval times that we discovered why Köln did not seem to have many old buildings. The place had been bombed by the Allies in the 2nd World
War and it seemed that a deliberate decision had been made NOT to bomb the
churches – the photos that we saw showed them standing like silent sentinels
over the rubble of the bombed out buildings surrounding them. It meant that
majority of the buildings that we saw were built after 1945.
A long walk back to the hotel the paved on path alongside
the river, much of which was spent avoiding cyclists and runners concluded our
pleasant stay here.
Top 5
5. The many Deutsch beers.
4. Interesting food.
3. A hotel room that overlooked the Rheine River.
2. Very friendly people – we were very comfortable here.
1. The amazing exterior of Köln Dom.
Bottom 3
3. The fact that we had enormous difficulty obtaining
Deutsch red wine – plenty of whites, but virtually no reds.
2. The noise of the cafes outside our hotel at night – sleep
was a little difficult.
1. Virtually no old buildings, which for a city the age of Köln, was very disappointing.
