Nights 1 & 2: Köln

I'm off to a good start! Internet provided, I'm going to try and update a little bit from/about each place I visit. The first stop was the big city of Köln (Cologne), located on the Rhine River in western Germany. I've decided to trace out where each place is on the map so y'all can follow my progress. The red line is the train ride (four hours from Hamburg to Köln). I've also circled Bremen, where I did a Servas weekend earlier, and estimated where Detmold is, where the Traphöners live. : ) Click for larger view.


My host in Köln was a wonderful single woman named (prepare for irony) Regine, (prepare for more irony) who is a professional photographer/ photojournalist. (How appropriate, right?) She had a lovely old apartment that was decorated exactly as I would have decorated it. I slept on an antique sleeper sofa in the kitchen and can't remember when the last time was that I'd slept so well.

I arrived at the Köln central station in the late afternoon on Monday and followed her directions to her apartment. This involved a misunderstanding with a bus driver that made me realize that this trip could potentially be much more difficult because of different dialects and accents in each part of the country and also made me feel totally silly once I'd figured out my mistake. I still got to her apartment easily enough and we introduced ourselves and had some tea and getting-to-know-you chitchat until she had to go to a Spanish class and I, exhausted from not sleeping and traveling and still being very sick, went back to trying to contact new host families for my third and fourth visits, as I still hadn't found someone that worked. No such luck that night. I also had a little mishap in which I realized while getting ready for bed that I'd forgotten my PJ's on my bed in Hamburg. Regine came in as I made this discovery and immediately offered to loan me a pair for all four weeks. They are striped and silky. LOVE.

We woke up to dismal grayness and rain on Tuesday, which put a damper (har har har) on my exploration plans. I waited for a while, then gave up and went on about a four hour city wander. Regine didn't come along as she had some back pain and things to do, but pointed out where I ought to go. It was a lovely walk that took me all over the city; along the Rhine, over the Rhine, through little alleyways in the old part of the city, around the shopping district, here, there, and everywhere.
I ended up at the gigantic cathedral after several hours and went inside to sit in the back pew and breathe in the hugeness and oldness of the place.


While I sat there, I thought about how unbelievably fortunate I was to be there, and for the third time of three separate occasions in my life. Sabine and I had visited it together during my first visit to Germany in 2006, which included us climbing to the top of one of the towers. I'd then visited it again by myself a few months later while waiting for a train back to Belgium after a scary German train adventure. And now. It truly is a magnificent place and I knew as I walked through the huge arches in all the stillness and flickering candlelight that I'd be back again sometime.

I made it back to Regine's in the late afternoon and had a little downtime before she took me on another walk, this time along the Rhine in the other direction. I had a major feeling of déjà-vu as I remembered many walks that I'd taken with Régine, my Belgian host mom, along the canals in our area in the dirty early spring. Both Regines commented on how lovely it all was and I agreed while trying to overlook the bleakness and old abandoned factory feel. Then she took me to one of her favorite places, and old cargo train bridge overlooking the city as all the lights started turning on at dusk.

It was there that I learned about a new trend among lovers in the city that had recently become very popular. The couple buys a padlock, writes their names on it, locks it somewhere along the bridge or similar location, then throws the key into the Rhine. Cute? Yes. Who knows what they do if they break up, but adorable all the same.


She then took me around her neighborhood and told me about it's history and how it had been affected by the war, all of which was really fascinating. We ended up at her favorite Mediterranean restaurant where we had a delicious meal and Kölsch beer and talked about pretty much everything.

Wandering around the city on my own was nice, but having the inside stories from someone born and raised there along the way and seeing cool places that I never would have known about was what I really enjoyed the most. That's something that particularly excites me about this trip.

We shared a lovely breakfast of fresh fruit, bread, and coffee this morning before going our separate ways. I caught the bus back to the train station and headed south to a small village in the Rhine Valley where I'm staying with a young couple and their three boys. More about that later. Now I can't wait to sleep again.

Oh, and I did end up securing homes for the next two cities. My telephone German is getting better and better. Awww, yea.