A Hopeless Case (and then, the Germans)

Really ... that's about all I am. I've been so neglectful of this blog as to have been to Cologne, had my New York staff rearranged whilst still doing my bid in Amsterdam, and flown the proverbial coop of that great canaled city to find myself typing this from the renewed comforts of my home sweet home in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Yes, I've been a truly horrible schmuck. But then again - in all areas of correspondence, my aspirations generally exceed my reality by a long shot. For those of you who know me and curse my inability to stay in touch on a regular basis, this is nothing new. For those of you who don't, well .... you were bound to find out sooner or later. In this instance, it's sooner - except it's later. Go work out the math on that one.

But yes. I have returned stateside and am now forced to recount the remainder of my transatlantic capers with the benefit of any hindsight I may have unearthed in the interim. I'm more exhausted than any one human really ought to have the misfortune of being and no lightness - unbearable or otherwise - seems to rest on yonder horizon. I am, of course, being terrificly melodramatic, as any southern woman is trained to be in matters of her personal life brought to public attention. But I am plumb worn out. That much is fact...

So where to begin ... perhaps with the afore-promised tale of Cologne, a city delightfully bound and gagged by its very German-ness. Like most cities, Cologne has its nooks and crannies, its neighborhoods and people that could tell you a thousand unfathomable tales if you would just take the time to find them out. For all intents and purposes of your casual, time-constrained tourist, though, you could do Cologne in about 48 hours, if you put your mind to it. Which is what I did, admittedly because Rough Guide - that beacon of light in the dark to all tourists - has produced only a couple of pages on the city in its tome about the country as a whole.

So you start with the Cathedral, impossible to miss as much from its convenient location at the exit door of the train station as from its awe-inspiring size. It's also impossibly dirty, as by right it should be. You can clean up for guests (roughly 3 million a year!), but it's a little more difficult to do if you've got 8 centuries of the world's atmospherical bits and pieces clinging to your facade.

Interestingly enough, my cross-country courier had recently turned up the August issue of Wired magazine, containing an article about a brand new stained glass window installed in the Cathedral, designed not by ecclesiastical divinity, but by a nuts and bolts artist named Gerhard Richter. This masterpiece is entirely bereft of images of lambs, saints or Christ - there's not so much as a bread crumb of Christianity in the window. I won't go into details, but for those of you who'd like to know that science! behind all this, you can read the article here: http://www.wired.com/culture/art/magazine/15-08/pl_arts.

For those of you more intricately embedded in the SHOW ME generation, I have a (very amateur) shot of the real thing, but it doesn't do anywhere near the justice the window deserves, so I'll leave it untainted by my paltry attempts.

The hotel actually had a fantastic view on the Cathedral, marred only by the fact that the entire front lawn was dug up and under heavy machinery as they toiled away on the new subway line, two years into its 5 year undertaking. It would seem this little modernization project has developed its own touristic currency, as there were constantly crowds of people looking down into and taking pictures of the massive hole in the ground. If they haven't already, some forward-thinking agent could make a fortune representing the construction workers and ensuring they were getting their just rewards through cameo appearance fees.

As coincidence would have it, that same weekend Cologne played host to the annual Beer Fest in its old market region. For my part, I was expecting multitudes of beer-swigging, swine-eating Germans in traditional garb oom-pah-pahing to their hearts content, but it turned out to be a relatively sedate affair. Though - to be precise - there were a lot of pigs roasting on sticks at various vendor stalls and you could play beer bingo to win your choice of various hops-themed gift baskets.














There were also boat rides down the Rhine, charming turn-of-the-century Saxhausen (guest houses), the Chocolate Museum and very traditional eateries to be enjoyed by all. Though the former revealed much of the Rhine coast to be under construction, the latter did not fail in providing positively obscene amounts of wurst, kraut and kartoffeln to gorge on to your gut's content, sticking to your ribs until time immemorial.

I also unearthed the companion piece to the brewing masterpiece of coconut beer I wrote about previously. This one's based on grapefruit and, lest you manly men start hemming and hawing about my sissified tastes, even men of the finest German stout enjoy this particularly tasty beverage. So oom-pah that!

This trip had the advantage of being seen through the lens of my fancy-schmancy new camera, which had arrived from the states just prior to my departure. One day, I will actually upload all the photos from my little excursions and post the link for them here. But that will have to wait for the present.... I'm taking my jet-lagged behind (and the rest of me!) to bed.