Köln-Weekend¶
368 words on Travel
Big flat travel-weekend! To celebrate a number of birthdays, we had a big flat congregation in Köln this weekend. And thus, five of us - along with numerous sleeping bags, rucksacks and a present - were crammed into a car on the rainy and dark Friday afternoon on the way to Köln where we met five more of our friends, all of which lived in our flat at some stage to celebrate Birgit’s birthday. We had a nice big meal for that with chili that was a bit too spicy for my palates (choice quote: a tub of Sambal Olek dropped into the pot
) and a rather wicked yoghurt-mango dessert served in large quantities:
Have to remember to get the recipe for that one…
After recovering from all that and quickly enjoying a bit of rather nice weather in a nearby park, we went on to the city centre, visited the cathedral and were annoyed by the ubiquitous christmas markets. While I had been to the cathedral before, it seems I never did the 500+ step ‘walk’ up the tower which we did this time. Quite a climb, I say, but quite impressive as well. In particular when keeping in mind how hard it must have been to create. On top of the tower, the view was all right and strengthened the impression that Köln just isn’t a particularly pretty city.
Another thing about the cathedral was that it recently got a new window which was designed by contemporary artist Gerhard Richter and replaced the clear window they had used since the second world war. Just as the images I had seen in the paper in summer suggested the window really isn’t that impressive. It just looks like a collection of coloured pixels. And that’s it. Possibly the colours do fit in with church window colours (although I thought they were too strong), but that’s about it. In particular I thought that using a grid of squares around the gothic windows which aren’t square at all was pretty lame. The window’s art should take into account the structure of the frames. And many of the cathedral’s other windows do.
After that we went for some music…
