17/09/25 Modern Art and Bicycles

The man at the social cooperative near the Cologne Train Station pointed to a space on the form before us. Our shiny yellow rental bikes waited behind us.

"Passport number," he said. "Or driver licence. Please."

We both went through a frantic dance, slapping our pockets and checking our backpacks, even though both of us knew that our essential documents were securely locked up back in our hostel room. The bicycle hire man shook his head sadly and adhered to the rules with Germanic thoroughness. We would not be hiring bikes until we had produced the required documents. One of us had to sprint back over the bridge to retrieve them. Roger's old calf injury suddenly flared up and he hobbled convincingly. "You can walk faster than me, off you go."

Rain threatened.  All the more reason to hurry.

I'd walked over that silly bridge more times than I could remember over the last two days. The novelty of the locks had worn off, although I did get a giggle from the sight of a young man earnestly undoing a combination lock and throwing the whole thing away.

Earlier that morning I went to the Ludwig Museum for a shot of Picasso, Andy Warhol, and modern art to balance out the medieval skin-flayers from Brugge.

Interesting.  At least no-one's being flayed.

One of the beneficial side effects of going to museums in Europe was being able to use the museum loo, which was squeaky clean and free if you didn't count the entrance fee to the museum.  Thoroughly relieved and all caught up with culture, I had a light lunch with Roger while watching barges on the Rhine, and then off we went to do a spot of cycling and that was how I ended up speed walking over the bridge to collect my necessary documents.

Just a snack.

Bona fides provided, we pedalled upstream, dodging pedestrians and other cyclists on a path that led us through industrial docklands repurposed as office and apartment blocks. 

Roger fretted about the integrity of the new buildings, forgetting for the minute that we were in Germany and the one thing we could be confident about was structural engineering, provided the stereotypes held true of course.

"But I still can't figure out what holds it up!"

We pedalled home past river cruise boats in the throes of refuelling and swapping out passenger lists.  Conga lines of geriatrics hauling oversized wheelie luggage shuffled along the riverside paths, searching for their boat while slightly jaded boat staff in crisp white jackets jiggled little signs with the name of their cruise.  Heart warming scenes of quiet joy were evident when a conga line found a matching sign-jiggler. Some of the boats carried bicycles; others sported upper deck mini-golf, and we rubbernecked shamelessly through the windows of the upper cabins to ascertain the merits of upper, middle, or lower decks.

Eventually we got back to where we started, handed the bicycles back, and walked across the bridge one last time.

Someone had been kind enough to put a lock on there for us.

One of the teenagers practiced his English with me in the lift, which took a long time to go anywhere because cheeky teenage fingers persisted in pushing every button when they got out. "We're from Hamburg!" His mates giggled and sniggered at the audacity of him actually speaking his English. "We are on a school excursion. All week!" No chance of getting in a lift that didn't stop at every floor then. The teenagers got out at dormitory land and I continued on to the exalted realms of the upper floors and our private room.

So ended our last full day in Cologne.