After another breakfast of oats, raspberries and bananas, I chauffeured Sabrina to school where we battled to find a parking space. After much disagreement from my passenger, I wedged her little Renault Clio into a tiny space with just enough room to get out of the driver’s side, just like a European pro. I wished Sabrina a happy day in the lecture theatre (just like a Mum, only missing the brown paper lunch bag) then set off north towards the city.
The clouds had turned to rain so I braved the walk with my hood up and got some music going to help cheer me against the weather. Both Sabrina and I had neglected to think of bringing an umbrella. It wasn’t too heavy so I survived. I walked along the river to get to the Cathedral, not needing a map partly because I was learning my way around but mostly because the two towers stood prominently above most of the surrounding buildings.
Happy to be out of the rain, I went into the Treasury Museum where I bought a ticket for the Treasury and the Tower for EUR8. The man behind the counter was tolerant of my English and helpful in directing me towards a locker for my bag and explaining the EUR1 deposit required to operate it. I don’t like the feeling of being ignorant not being able to speak the language or read signs but I’m getting used to it.
I was directed into the first room of the museum, the sacred chamber where the fanciest of jewels were held. When I say fancy, I mean fancy and I’m sure there are historic buffs that will rebuke me for calling them that. Everything was made of gold or lined with it and some chalices held sacred items from the early centuries of Christ. The gold and finery continued as I ventured further into the treasury where there were all types of large ceremonial crosses and crosiers still used today in church processions. I spent time reading the description of each item, mostly interested in the years they were made or discovered. Some went back as far as the 11th century.
The remaining rooms contained ceremonial clothing, paintings, artefacts found buried with former royalty in tombs discovered at the site of the cathedral and pieces of the cathedral itself. Curiously, there was a piece of stone from the cathedral that had travelled to space with an astronaut who hailed from Cologne. He’d taken the piece as a gift from the mayor and had photos with it while floating on the Russian space station. Weird much?
Having had my fill of gold and trinkets, I went back to the ticket office to ask about getting to the tower. The helpful man suggested I leave my backpack in the locker and I decided to leave my jacket also, even though he directed me outside to get to the base of the tower. I followed his directions to the inside of the church where I couldn’t figure it out so I asked a bishop who was wandering the church. He seemed helpful, started explaining where I needed to go, then began walking in the direction he’d been pointing. Assuming he was kindly taking me to my destination I followed, annoyed that I couldn’t make conversation. At the main entrance, he opened a separate door to avoid the flow of tourists and when I tried to follow him through it, he shut it in my face wagging his finger at me. Oh! Clearly he wasn’t showing me the way at all, he just happened to be heading in the same direction, I’ll call that a misunderstanding on my behalf.
Now armed with directions from the ticket man and the bishop, I walked outside in search of the tower base, something you’d think would be easy to find. At the edge of the Christmas markets, I asked some people wearing fluoro safety colours if they could direct me. They sent me back the way I’d come. My next bout of help was sought from the Cathedral store, surely here I would get my answer! Indeed I did, I’d walked right past the stairs leading down to the tower entrance. It’s contradictory to think you’d have to at first to down to go up. That only took five attempts!
At the entrance, I was overwhelmed by a throng of school children, typical of a school day’s morning. They were late primary school age so were naturally in the way and making a huge racket. I slotted in behind them, moving forward slowly and I flashed my ticket as I passed the ticket booth. There was no crowd control in effect, it was just a matter of walking up the incredibly narrow spiral stone stairs. With people coming down the same stairwell and us coming up on the inside, we didn’t have much foot purchase on each stair.
I made it to the top without incident, except maybe damage to my ears from the yelling students. Didn’t they know this is a church? The further we got towards the top, the more disgusted I became at the amount of graffiti covering the walls and windows. At the very top of the tower, after climbing a set of wire frame stairs, I was even more shocked to find that every inch of the cathedral stone had been graffiti’d with all sorts of useless messages and tags. First of all, why do people do this? Second, why doesn’t the church clean it off or do something about it? Thirdly, IT’S A CHURCH!
Trying to put that aside, with the rain failing on my face amongst the pires of the cathedral, my imagination took me to scenes from dark movies where the mysterious assassin crouches atop a peak of the cathedral, still amongst the rain, waiting for his target to appear. I squeezed between selfie-taking teenagers a few times round the tower to see out over the city, or what I could see of it through silver cloud.
As I descended, I was tempted to stop and slap some of the teenagers around me, calling out and making ridiculous noises with their mouths. I kept trying to recall if I had been anything like that at that age. I sure hope not. I stopped in at the bell chamber a third of the way down and was thrilled to experience the ringing of the bells while I was in there. While the main bell didn’t ring, two of the smaller ones that sat beside it were struck with big hammers, scaring me at first, then just making my ears ring.
The rest of the spiral stairs I took pretty quickly. At the base I was happy to excuse myself from the throngs of shitheads and escape into the serenity and warmth of the main hall. I was looking forward to a sit down for the 12 noon service, but the bishops weren’t allowing tourists in, we had to stand behind the pews and be quiet. I don’t know how they knew who was there for the service and who were tourists but I didn’t press. I was hoping the choir would sing like they had on Sunday, but unfortunately not, it was only a few organ pieces, but these were devine to listen to.
With the service over at 12:30pm, tourists were left to mingle again and I was all cathedral’d out. I retrieved my backpack, jacket and EUR1 from the locker and went outside to walk back to the university. I had originally planned to visit the Botanic Gardens to the north of the city but with such foul weather and Sabrina getting out of university at 1pm, I decided against it. I walked back through the streets, happy with myself for making it without a map until near the end when I made a completely wrong turn that took me a while to figure out. By the time I met Sabrina it was around 1:30 and we were both starving. Sabrina took me to a Turkish restaurant near uni where we both enjoyed great food.
We drove home for Sabrina to put some warmer clothes on before we drove out to Drachenfels, a castle atop a hill. Once home though, we never went any further. It was nearly 3pm, the weather was foul and Sabrina had some life admin to complete with insurance paperwork etc. So we had a lazy rainy afternoon in, chatting away while Sabrina sat on the floor with papers spread around her and I did some last minute checking for my visa appointment.
I was getting restless so we drove to the supermarket to buy groceries enough to cook dinner, then went to Sabrina’s gym for a pilates class where I got in for free! While I haven’t done yoga in months, it was handy to have some knowledge because the instructor conducted the class in German (obviously) so I just had to copy actions. It was a good class, funny when Sabrina was trying to whisper translations to me when I was clearly doing the wrong thing.
Back at home after seeing way too many boobs and arse in the girls’ bathroom at the gym, I cooked up a storm. The special? Chicken Parma with vegetables, enjoyed with a glass of Sav Blanc. It was delicious if I do say so myself. Despite Sabrina’s tiny kitchen, it was a pleasure to cook properly again, multi-tasking and using up the whole space.
Even though I had an early start tomorrow we stayed up late talking about all sorts of different stuff. I think we went from war to politics to relationships to bitching about people we know. Is this typical girl talk? Ha ha.
German fact #4: Tourist maps of cities are not free, they cost 50-60c from the visitor’s center.
