Köln: Day One

ARRIVAL. So, yesterday was the day I arrived in Germany.

The trip out from Frankfurt to Cologne was easy enough, I just kept following the signs in the airport that said "Bahnhof" and a bit later on "Long-Distance Trains". Buying the ticket was also easy enough (though surprisingly expensive! But I also remember seeing almost a hundred euro cost when I demoed the train reservations long before I left). I then looked at the board, and headed down to the track for "Köln Hbf", albeit with some reservations because two different words were being used for "track". Then I gave myself a bit of scare, just before the train arrived, when I saw it said "Kiel Hbf" instead. Had I read the upstairs board wrong? But this train was at the exact time my ticket said! A helpful lady showed me where all the _previous_ stations were listed on the train as it showed up, they just weren't _anywhere else_ (I think) which was pretty disconcerting. But, that was the train, and it got me into Cologne about an hour later.

The countrysides were beautiful on the way out, albeit often interrupted by an endless series of tunnels. But between those, there were rolling hills, so many trees, and quaint villages. I was keeping even more of an eye out as we passed over the Rhine on the famous Hohenzollern Bridge (apparently one of the most important railway connections in Europe; I might not have been able to fly straight to Cologne, easily, but all roads lead there). And then I was there.

Emerging into the sun outside the main Cologne station I saw Cologne Cathedral looming up over me. Ah, Europe, with your casual historical showiness. I eyed it as I walked (and took a few pics), but my main goal was heading "mauka" (west, I think), toward my AirB&B, a bit more than a mile out, on the western side of the central city (right next to the Köln West train station, which was the goal, so that I could easily travel to Hürth for the workshop, but not be trapped out there, with that village as my home base).

LIVING IN HARMONY. My AirB&B coordinator (for a company that controls a whole bunch of apartments in this building) was kind enough to get me early entry, so I was able to drop off my stuff at 1pm, rather than having to wait until 3pm, which was great as I was awake for about 21 hours by that point, minus 5 minutes of sleep on the plane. I then lounged around the apartment for a couple of hours, recharging my devices (an unfortunate theme for this trip already) and trying to get myself enough together to go back into the world.

The AirB&B, I should note, is subpar in a few features. The first thing I noticed is that it was WARM when I walked in. It has a bunch of south-facing windows, the drapes were all pulled back, and there's no AC (just a portable fan). Oh, and this part of Europe (all of Europe?) has also been experiencing an unusual heat wave. Today's high is supposed to be 82, for example, and the range of temperature in Cologne is listed as 54 to 76. But after today and tomorrow, we get hit by thunderstorms, and then it's supposed to be mid 60s to 70s, and hopefully I have clothes for that!

So I got all the windows open, other than the one whose weird European handle is broken, and I couldn't get the fan blowing cool air in from the main windows due to a lack of outlets, but I put it back in the kitchen by that window, and that seemed to help.

The other two main issues with the AirB&B are that the internet SUCKS and there's a bar right below, though fortunately I'm on the fourth (fifth) floor. The internet problems are nearly a deal breaker. It's adequate (but slow) maybe 90% of the time and then grinds to a halt 10% of the time. In other circumstances I'd make a big fuss about that, but given the circumstances, whatever. The bar I noticed when I checked in, but it only became an issue as the night went on, and the fairly polite patrons of the afternoon became louder (but not raucous as would be the case in the US) and then crappy, amplified music came on. When it came time to go to bed, I discovered that closing all the windows muffled 95% of the noise, so I won't have sleepless nights (and past reviews claim that Friday & Saturday are the only really bad nights), but that of course did mean I had to close windows in a room that really hadn't entirely cooled off.

In listing the inadequacies of the AirB&B I'll also note that the bathroom stunk of pot when I got here, but that was mostly cleared by morning.

I wonder how things would have been different if I'd had the apartment I originally reserved. I was switched about a month ago due to water damage(!) on the other unit. But would it have also been south-facing and above the bar? Maybe no, but maybe yes and it might have just been on a lower (louder) floor. So I should count my blessings, because this was the place to be to be really near the train station without it costing a high amount. And I actually got the only apartment as far as I can tell that has a balcony (unless there's another, on the west-facing side of the building), so that's nice even if it's above the bar.

MANY HAPPY RETURNS. After I settled, and chilled for a couple of hours, I decided that I needed to get back out into the hurly burly to try and suck up the sunlight and reset my internal clock.

First stop was the nearby train station, so I could make sure I'll be able to use it to get out to the workshop site. (It's mostly a bricked walkway next to the tracks, not a proper train station, but it'll do, as it does have a ticket vending machine, and I also have an app that I can maybe use, though I haven't been able to get it to work entirely yet.)

There's a ring of parks on the far side of the station, and so I wanted to check that out. It looks somewhat nice, and there are certainly people biking and walking there, but I was accosted multiple times by beggars and then I discovered that just a block clockwise, there's an impassible major street, so it's not really a contiguous ring like I'd assumed.

After being unable to continue my explorations due to that busy street, I headed back down to the Rhine, retracing my steps of the morning. I browsed the Bahnhofsvorplatz in front of the train station a bit more. It's really a well-used, nice public meeting space. Then I walked across the Hohenzollern.

My intent was just to get a better view of the Rhine, but it's a cool bridge. The classic 20th century architecture with its three arches is gorgeous. But along the pedestrian walkway is a detail that's just as intriguing: a wall of locks. I've seen Love Locks before, maybe on a bridge out in Boston, if memory serves. But the locks on the Hohenzollern are just a solid wall. Old estimates put the numbesr at 500,00 locks, in excess of 15 tons total, and that was a decade ago. They mostly show two names or initials and a date. But sometimes it's just one name, or sometimes there are two or three dates, or sometimes two dates with a hyphen. (Clearly some of the locks are in memorium.) Most of the locks are professionally engraves or professionally printed. Others were printed with marker or engraved by hand. Wikipedia says the tradition dates back to 2008 and I did see at least one lock with that year, but most of the visible stratum seemed to be from the last five years or so. Sometimes a bunch of padlocks was spray painted, giving the wall of locks an occasional burst of color. I mostly ignored the locks on my way out, as I watched the Rhine, but it was most of what I looked at as I walked back, as I could feel the story in each one.

There was one more surprise for the evening. When I returned to the Bahnhofsvorplatz there was a big demonstration going on for "Climate Justice". I watched it for at least 5 or 10 minutes, and it became obvious it was huge. At first I thought there were hundreds of protesters, then I decided thousands. The police reports say there were slightly less than the 10,000 expected (https://www1.wdr.de/nachrichten/fridays-for-future-demos-nrw-100.html) but it was definitely still big. Apparently similar protests were going on all across the region.

(And then after I got home I talked to Kimberly both before and after her vet visit, where she ultimately said goodbye to Lucy as we expected she might, which was a sobering end to the day.)

FALL OUT. After staying up for that, I finally headed off to sleep, around 30 hours after I'd awoken.

My transitions to European time have been great over the last several years, but I was a bit more troubled last night. I woke up at 1am and managed back to sleep pretty quickly, but then when I woke at 3am I felt wide awake. I tamped that down with some more melatonin and opened all the windows since the bar had quieted and the room was still a little warm (which probably contributed to my sleep issues). I then managed to sleep through to 8pm, a relatively unheard of 10 hours.

And I'm still tired today, but I've been running short on sleep for about four months now.

There's still another day to write about, since that was all yesterday, but not until tomorrow.