The Displaced New Mexican

A splash of Cologne before heading off to the party

On Saturday I took another day trip to Cologne with Roderic, Mikko and Lucas. Roderic had not been there yet so he wanted to make a trip there before he moves up north to Brake for his internship. The weather was nice when I woke up at 9 in the morning, but very soon progressed to normal with clouds and rain, and even a little snow. It took us until midday to even leave Dortmund, so our day in Cologne was short. We of course saw the cathedral, which as usual was pretty full. The rest of the group climbed the tower, but I decided to opt out of that one for several reasons. One: I would have had to borrow the 1� entrance fee. Two: I�ve done it before and it was not particuarly magical for me. Three: I�m going to do it again in a couple months with my sister and brother-in-law, and four: it gave me a good chance to take pictures without being disturbed and feeling like I was holding the group up. So I took a few more pictures inside the church and then went outside, where there was a demonstration against the proposed ban of Muslim headscarves in the schools. I got to hear a couple of live songs, including a rap song in German to the tune of Axel F. from Beverly Hills Cop. �Ich lebe f�r Allah� or �I live for Allah�.

Candle lighting is pretty popular inside the cathedral.

Some of the demonstrators carried signs or wore German flags as headscarves.

The demonstration came to an end shortly after that due to the cold and wet weather and the boys were down from above so we met up and went to the Roman Germanic museum next door, which houses an impressive amount of artifacts left over from the time that Cologne was a Roman colony. In fact, I think there are too many artifacts in there. It�s like a really huge video rental shop that has so many films it makes it really hard to look at only one at a time.
One thing that I notice about Cologne is the uncanny amount of beggers. They are all over the place as soon as you leave the train station. Some must take the same spot every day, as I remember them from the last time I was there. Everything from normal people asking for money and women sitting on the ground holding their children to young punks wearing chains and studded belts who really look like their only misfortune is that they decided they would rather spend their days hanging out in train stations than going to school or work. I don�t mean to be too harsh, but sometimes I have a hard time believing some of these people are very sincere.

The cathedral is somewhere up in that fog.

After the museum we only had time to seek out some food and walk around a little before we had to catch the train that would get us back to Dortmund at 10:20. We knew that there was a party for Lenka (Czech Republic), who will be leaving next week, at Steph�s house on the northern campus and it was already pretty late when we got in so we went directly there. We surprised them by coming in the back door. It was a fun party, I pretty much just played photographer the whole time, whether people liked it or not. Only once was my camera actually removed from my neck and I was forced to dance without taking pictures of the others.

Joe D. (USA, left) and Javi (Spain) give Lenka a little going away present.

Posted by The DNM at January 25, 2004 5:05 PM