16/09/25: Lover's Locks, Cathedrals, And Canadian Geese.

Cologne had a very busy night time backing track. Of course there were bells from the Cathedral, but they were largely drowned out by traffic, trains, sirens, and of course the giggling in-house teenage contingent. A sleeping mask and ear plugs solved the problem nicely and luckily no emergencies occurred because I wouldn't have been aware of them anyway.

After a week of pastry breakfasts I fronted up for my first in-house German brekkie, complete with conversation with Robert who was riding his recumbent bicycle along the Rhine and sat with us to gain some numerical defence against the hordes of teenagers in the dining room.

The sun was out again and, apart from an uncomfortably lazy wind, it was a good day for walking and exploring.  Fortified by coffee and strong German bread, we set off for the Cologne Cathedral by way of the Hohernzollerbrück which just happened to be the busiest rail bridge in Germany and also the place where, despite it not being particularly romantic, lovers came to immortalise their love by way of leaving an engraved padlock on the bridge. And there were a lot of padlocks there.

Approximately 50 ton of them, to be more accurate. Not enough to bring down the bridge but enough to cause headaches for the local council who had to organise regular padlock purges lest the padlocks escape the confines of the bridge and take over the city. 

Padlocks had already infested nearby fences and available structures.

Not to mention cleaning up the underwater mountain of keys that accummulated as lovers, having locked their lock, tossed the keys into the waters of the Rhine below them.

Roger disappeared into the land of calculations: how many padlocks to a panel; how many panels on the bridge; the average weight of a padlock etc etc; he was in numerical heaven. 

1, 2, 3, 4... He's going to be here all year...

While he was occupied I watched couples videoing take after take of one (usually her) walking with casual elegance against the backdrop of the Cathedral, artlessly admiring the view and the padlocks. 

When in Cologne...

Eventually we made it off the bridge and to the cathedral, the size of which couldn't be captured by camera and the age of which my tiny brain struggled to compute. To contemplate the number of feet which had walked the same flagstones on which I now set foot was truly humbling.

How many hands had touched this lion's nose on the way in or out of the Cathedral?

Out of all the stories in the Cathedral let me tell you of Richeza, the first Queen of Poland, who died just short of a thousand years ago and who donated the land on which the Colgne Cathedral was built. 

Here she is.

Richeza was a woman of her times, committed from a young age to a marriage of convenience which didn't work out quite as planned when her husband was deposed and she had to return home. With considerable familial wealth of her own she spent a lot of energy in her later life in political machinations to advance her son and to preserve her familial influence and heritage, before heading off to become a nun. She wanted to be buried in the Abbey of Brauweiler which she gad rebuilt. Instead she was buried in the Church of St Maria Ad Gradus. An unseemly squabble over her remains ensued but she stayed at St Maria until she was moved to the Cologne Cathedral some 800 years after her death. Her grave was opened several times after the move, most recently in 1959, the presence of bones being reported. What a surprise.

Phew! All cathedraled out, we had lunch in the square.

Hanging on bars above the front counter, these sweet pretzel-y snacks attracted a humming cloud of what looked like bees.  Tourists swatted madly as they ordered their num-nums.  The locals couldn't appear to care less.

We walked home past the coloured houses of the old fish market and over a decidedly lock-less bridge.

Past the Gross St Martin, which would have been a noticeable building of its own had it not been in the shadow of the Cathedral.

I left Roger to snooze back at the hostel and took the lift to the viewing platform on the 28th floor of the Cologne Triangle, Cologne's highest viewing platform following the closure of the sky needle for pesky reasons such as not meeting safety regulations.

When viewed from above Cologne was both very green and decidedly low-profile, very few high rises to be seen.

Back at ground level I walked along the Rhine Promenade to the Zoobrucke and back to the Hohernzollerbrucke, through green parklands awash with Canadian Geese.

By then my feet were sore. I ate take-away salad from the downtown Rewe, popped in my earplugs against the background sounds of overexcited teenagers, and went to bed.

Oh OK, just a few more cathedral photos:

Roof, or parts thereof.

Today's very impressive door.

The latest stained-glass window in the Cologne Cathedral, causing controversy as to whether pixelation can be considered sacred art.