Back from a fantastic weekend in Cologne, or Koln, mainly thanks to the wonderful and expansive hospitality of my hosts, Aodan and Annette. Aodan has picked up a huge amount of lore about the city, and kept me laughing for a lot of the trip.
Pictures are here!
I nearly didn't get there - leaving in plenty of time on Saturday morning, I decided to walk to the main Frankfurt station. I was fine until Eschenheimer Tor, which I've walked to often, but then made a wrong turn while thinking I knew where I was going and found myself off to the northeast, on the street that runs off beside the flat. I had 14 minutes before the train. Why oh why didn't I just get the U-bahn? I know how apt I am to go off on a complete tangent even armed with maps.
I power-walked in some desperation back to the nearest U-bahn station, but it wasn't a line that ran to the main train station. But there were taxis. We hit every red light in the city. The elderly driver was very chilled out. But he got me to the station, I knew the platform from the detailed Deutsche Bahn printout, and by some considerable feat of luck the doors I came in led straight to the platform I needed. Two minutes to spare. Told myself off.
There was a group of very loud natives with a mini keg and huge sausages (being eaten with a tube of ketchup) sitting across both tables, one of which held my reserved seat. Decided I couldn't be bothered, and as the train wasn't that full I just sat in another seat. Proprietor of said seat boarded at the airport, so I just stood until everyone had found their seat and sat in a vacant one. The ticket inspector didn't care, so I could finally relax. Read MA stuff on the way up, deeply depressing accounts of what the Japanese did, mainly to Koreans, forcibly drafted as 'comfort women' during the Asia-Pacific war.
The next stop, just an hour and ten minutes from Frankfurt, was Kolnhauptbanhof. There's no missing the cathedral - just come out the exit marked 'Dom' and there it is blocking the entire skyline. I wandered around the outside for a bit, then went in and bought a self-guiding booklet and proceeded to walk around the inside. An embarrassment of riches makes it impossible to decide whether to look up, down or all around. I never feel quite right taking photos in places of worship, but I seemed to be the only one. I kept the flash off, at the risk of camera shake, but the light was great - it was a lovely day - and I didn't have a single bad shot.
After seeing the inside, I headed out through the shop and got a few postcards and a fridge magnet as a souvenir. I thought of heading further afield, but was aware that Aodan might call. I remembered that there was a spire you could climb so walked around to the end of the cathedral and found it. Paying my 2 Euro, I headed up.
Now, normally I'm fine with stairs. If you're visiting mountainside temples in Japan you need to be. But at least they have proper steps. It was nothing like edging up a worn circular stone staircase, on the inside with no banister and the thin edge of the triangular step, trying to hold on to the core of the stairs while taking great care to place your foot so that you get as much step as possible under it but don't catch your shoe on the step as you go up. All the time very painfully aware that it would only take someone on the way down tripping or catching my rucksack to knock me backwards. I had to stop briefly twice on the way up - when there was no-one coming down and I could step over to the banisters and let the terribly fit elderly Germans coming up behind me overtake - my calves were burning and I was breathing hard. Finally got to a point where the up and down stairs broke off, and stopped for a while to get my breath and try to stretch my legs out. There were more stairs to go. At least these were newer, wider and (for at least some of it) not circular, with banisters.
Once at the top I was mostly moved along by the crowd, got some good shots and headed down, stopping off at the bell tower. It was much easier, both because I had the banister and wider stairs, and because my calves were getting a break. I must have been using cycling muscles or something, I didn't think it would be that easy. There were even more people coming up, so looks like I got out just in time. There was graffiti everywhere, all over the walls of the staircase and even on the spire itself.
Frankly, unless you love stairclimbing and are combining travel with exercise, I recommend buying the postcards of the view at the entrance. I can confidently put this way up on Mom's list of places to say 'Let's not and pretend we have!' to.
After staggering out of the church I tried to find somewhere to sit and read the guidebook while waiting for Aodan. The only place with seats in the station was Starbucks, where I ordered an expensive latte which I'm not sure had any coffee in it at all. Missed Aodan's call, and realised I can't get into my voicemail as the voice of a nice German lady is giving me some kind of setup instructions I don't understand.
We headed out to the church of St. Ursula, a lady who travelled to Rome to dedicate herself to the church to avoid a marriage, had a dream that if she came back the same way she would die, and dutifully did so - martyred with ten maids to become the eleven martyred virgins. A brisk trade in bone relics sprung up, fuelled by the Roman graveyards... eventually so many were sold that the number of ill-fated virgins grew to 11,000. (There is also a Koln joke that there have never been that many virgins in Koln.)
The Golden Chamber in the Church of St. Ursula where someone's bones are preserved in Gothic splendor were unfortunately closed, so we instead wandered off to look around the town, including a strange sculpture with a woman with a lantern and loads of little men. The invading Prussians were so annoyed with the laid back and work-shy attitude of Kolnians that one of them invented a story of a bunch of 'little men' who built and ran the town while its residents slept in a drunken stupor. One night a tailor's wife put peas down on the ground, the little men stumbled on them and she caught sight of them - they were so offended they disappeared. Leaving Koln in the state the Prussians found it in, where they managed to convince the locals that the cathedral (which had been as it was for 300 years) wasn't actually finished. The relic and pilgrimage trade had been so good they hadn't bothered to complete it.
There were tales of Carnival, an alcoholic and musical riot preceding Lent, and the city gent/country bumpkin duo who supply much of the town's humour. And more sobering, small metal squares set in the ground, everywhere, before the houses of Jews killed by the Nazis, bearing their names and how the died. Not a city endeavour, but a lone stonemason's mission.
We walked around the banks of the Rhein for a while, then headed back to Aodan and Annette's very nice flat, passing the Schokolademusuem on the way. Koln is quite compact, so it was nowhere near as far away as I thought. We had a fantastic broccoli and blue cheese soup made by Aodan and talked well into the night about the past, the future (they will become parents in July/August and have bought a house in part of an under-conversion listed farm building) and how what you worry about changes as you get older and how hard it is to keep up with everyone who could be a good friend.
The hour went forward, so that combined with a long sleep and a long and late breakfast got me to the Schokolademuseum around 2pm. I was thinking of going to another museum as well, probably a 20th Century one near the cathedral, but it didn't happen. There's a lot in the Schokolademuseum, about the cocoa bean (they even have some trees in a tiny hothouse) and how it is processed, where the growing and processing happens, and what the demand is. The figures were from 1997 (and in Deutschmarks) so I'm sure it's even more impressive now. Then there was a mini-production line with real live little chocolate ingots coming off it, samples of melted milk chocolate on wafers dispensed by a white-suited Lindt employee from an enormous chocolate fountain, a huge section on advertising and packaging and finally cult chocolate products and the history of Lindt & Sprungli.
I sat down for a bite to eat in their cafe, and was delighted to find I was able to order - although the fact that what I ordered was a 'ham und cheese toast' helped. I also had a hot chocolate, which was very, very sweet. Nice, but you didn't want a second one. I've never been mad on Lindt milk chocolate.
Last, and most fatal, was the shop. Only the fact that I conserving my Euros until I get my bank card saved me from diabetic coma. I came out with a whiskey and chili bar for Aodan, a dark (62% cocoa) milk Java single origin bar for me, and some Venezualan (43% milk) and Ghanaian (85% dark) pastilles for work. My Javan one is nice - starts off with a dark chocolate kick but has milk chocolate mellowness aftwards.
Met up with Aodan and Annette again at (another) Starbucks and chatted to them and their friends until it was time to go for the train. Decided to U-bahn it and was told which lines. Decided to go to the loo, but for some reason didn't factor in the wait for it to become available out of the time left to get to the station. Aodan was looking dubious as I left and I soon realised why - as I got into the station, the station clock said I had 11 minutes. Ran for the platform. Got nervous and finally realised, as I missed one train in each direction, that I was on the wrong platform. Got the next train of the correct line, two stops. Got out at Koln Hauptbanhof at the time my train was departing. Ran for it anyway, as I had the platform number. Got turned around looking for the platforms after coming out of the U-bahn, but finally saw them - and the train was still on the departure boards. Ran. Jumped on. It was four minutes past departure time.
As the Japanese say, even monkeys fall from trees. The ever-reliable British 'maybe the train will be late' worked. Found my seat and collapsed. Got a fantastic view of the cathedral on the way out and a 'glad you got the train' from Aodan in response to texting him about it. Was going to study some German on the way back, but found the files for the Berlitz course had failed to copy onto my mp3 player, so listened to music, looked out the window and read the book instead. Took my safe travel charm from Fushimi Inari Daisha out of my passport, gave it a rub and thanked it profusely - I had had much too much luck to believe it.
Successfully bought some bread at the station and U-bahned home. Looking forward to another trip sometime - I could go to Koln again, there are loads more museums and churches, or Annette recommended Heidelberg, which isn't far away. Hmmm.
No comments:
Post a Comment