“It is better to travel well than to arrive” Buddha (While I agree its best to focus on the trip and the now and not worry of tomorrow but I would like to be clear that I want tomorrow still, this sounds almost like he’s promoting to live crazy and not even make it to your destination!)
Cologne… quite a pretty city… from the cheap side of the river, something we realized as we passed over the bridge into Cologne. Looking back we learned all of the fun that was to be had was on the West bank, the best bank. Weaving through the crooked streets we passed what the locals called a blue garbage bag opera house. It was originally set up as a “temporary” preforming center… temporary in Cologne, Germany, I’m assuming, spans well beyond 20 years it would seem. The opera house is still in use and currently had a vampire opera headlining. I pondered for a moment how vampire operas could bring in enough revenue to cover expenses, but then quickly realized the overhead was literally a blue trash bag and subsequently I’m assuming quite low.
Skip ahead to meeting with our walking tour guide. The walk started with thirty minutes of standing in front of a cathedral, then thirty minutes of walking through the cathedral alone, with no tour guide….. Then, the walking tour began. We marched at a snails pace around one side of the cathedral passing by a museum of Roman artifacts that immediately drew my attention (we would come back to this later). We walked down toward the three market squares, stopping in each one. We saw a silly sculpture of a man pooping from the rooftop. Across the street on the town hall a sculpture just below the large clock depicting a government official blowing raspberries at the people. These two statues were a representation of German humor of the people not liking the government thinking they are shitting on them, and the government not caring phhhhhttttt (face fart). These were pretty much the highlights of the walking tour before we were deposited back at the cathedral and left with a choice… go back to the boat and eat free lunch, or wander around until our next excursion started a mere three hours ahead. We chose, as reasonable people would, to double back and check out that museum full of Roman artifacts from the region. The museum included a beautifully preserved mosaic found directly next to the cathedral.They uncovered this wonderful beast from the past when they were digging trenches to deposit and save the stained glass from the church during the war from the pressure and bombing that was occurring. They dug out around the mosaic and it was never moved. The ground level at that time period was so much lower it was equal to a modern day second level basement. After getting our fill on Roman antiquities we then, like sensible adults, got our fill on schnitzel and tiny beers. It was here in one of the old market squares that we spent the rest of our free time, eating and drinking and laughing at a drunken bee as he tried to carry an item much too big for him.
As the time passed much too quickly we had to leave, vamous, skadiddle, so we could meet with our next group. We misjudged. Somewhere along the line words lost their meaning, or our ability to understand them fell short. We ended up spending an hour wandering back and forth from the bus drop off location and the meeting point for our next tour. All the while counting the number of homeless people we saw (it ended up being 16, a number we thought too high for a welfare state with over 50% tax going to the government with one of its aims to prevent homelessness). Like a drug deal in daylight, we awkwardly crowded on the side of the cathedral, behind the photo shop and next to a construction entrance. Here our guide lead us through a dirty fabric covered fence and a makeshift plywood door, to what would be best described as an OSHA textbook nightmare. We were directed onto an elevator attached to scaffolding, something in hindsight that was a completely undeveloped decision.
The guide closed the door and pushed the button… It wasn’t until about halfway up, about 8 stories, we read a sign that said no insurance, at your own risk, you done fucked up, this thing has no safety features. I then made the mistake of asking “is this hydraulic, or is this set on a winch system?” Hoping she would easily and quickly dispel any fears with a reasonable answer. She simply, silently, pointed at one little box. I realized it was a single gear mechanism with no fail safes… Remember a few blog posts ago when I described Alex’s grip leaving marks? Let’s just say this one left scars. That’s right folks, it would seem we got ourselves a real behind the scenes tour through the renovation areas lead by one of the art restorers. If there was any questions on whether or not this was a public tour that was quickly dispelled as our elevator reached it’s final height of crazy pants high, and we walked out onto scaffolding suspended from random bits of limestone spires. We were probably a good hundred and fifty feet above the roof on rickety aluminum scaffolding with subpar, yea let’s just go with subpar, safety measurements. Getting passed the safety issues and having a misplaced faith in our current predicament the tour itself was incredible, astonishing, stunning, and well worth the risk. We walked along the roofline’s edge, popping in and out from time to time. At one point along the edge of a wall several hundred feet above the chapel floor we leaned over the edge and saw the people congregated to pray or view the remains/tombs of the Three Wise Men. We visited what is now a storeroom in one of the towers, pressed through the small inside corridors of the church, passing the pipe organ which was suspended from the ceiling. From here we went back out on the roof, up some more spiral stone stairs, and into the attic space above the vaulted ceilings. Outside a small door it was here we got a close up view of some of the gargoyles that also doubled as water spouts, and climbed yet again to a higher point in the attic above the main cathedral’s vaulted ceilings. We saw the workshop, restoration room, and storage space for all of the characters and intricate designs surrounding the spires outside. The guide let us in on a little secret; because the creatures and designs were so high up, the artists sometimes decided to add their own signature or flair to the pieces they were replacing or restoring. If you look closely, you may find a little man speaking on his cellular telephone affixed to the side of a spire, amongst other easter eggs.
We thought we were done with stairs, but no! We climbed another set of spiral stairs up past one of the belfries to a platform built behind the two towers at the top of Cologne. The view was stunning. We could see our ship, the train station, the roman museum, and even that big blue trash bag. We took a bunch of pictures, laughed at the little people the size of ants below (more of a nervous laugh really), and the silly people who paid for the general tour and climbed 600 steps for a, while safer, much less interesting tour. Our laughter came to a grinding halt when we realized we had to get back into that rickety elevator. Did we make it? Will our heroes descend like angels from the spires? Or will they be defenestrated from the plastic peep holes of a scaffolding elevator and hung like the gargoyles of old, just another easter egg on the side of the building? Tune in next week. Same bat-blog, same bat-website.
Erroll & Alex's European Honeymoon Trip! 