European Musicruise 2019 # 5: Eau de Cologne and Other Bonn-ie Treats

Our ship undocked in Düsseldorf at noon, and by 5:00 pm we were safely tied up dockside in the north end of the city of Köln (better known to English speakers as "Cologne").  But since we were still downstream and therefore down-current from the city centre, it could fairly be said that we were surrounded by "eau de Cologne" -- which means, of course, "water from Cologne."  Sorry, sometimes I just have to crack these silly puns.

A part of the voyage between the two cities was taken up by lunch, and another part by the first on-board concert of the trip, but I did get a few pictures.  So here are a couple of views of the waterfront in Düsseldorf as we departed.

Much of the way were were sailing through placid green countryside, looking very much like a park.

But then there are the more industrial segments of the Rhine -- although the industries are notably cleaner than one expects in Canada's industrial areas.

Anyway, nothing to speak of happened on the evening we arrived.  During the night, the ship was able to move to a better mooring spot right by the centre of the old city, and that was where we began our walking tour the next morning.  River cruises like this one generally feature an included walking tour at every day's stopping place.

General note: although the Old Town district of Cologne looks very quaint, it's actually not very old at all.  Only a handful of buildings, and the iconic Cathedral, survived the blitz bombing that flattened all major German cities into the ground in 1944-45.  Even the Cathedral had taken over a dozen bomb hits, although the main structure survived intact.

 

The massive bridges across the Rhine were destroyed by order of the Nazi regime to protect the heart of the country from the coming invasion. 

So the city that we admired today is very much a post-1945 re-creation of what existed before.  

The first sight, just along the river from the dock, is the massive Hohenzollern Bridge, a key link in Germany's railway system.  It carries no less than six railway lines from the Hauptbahnhof ("Main Railway Station") by the Cathedral across the river to link the western Rheinland region with the rest of the country.

Just south of the bridge is a good spot to get a picture in front of the Cathedral, and our guide was happy to do the honours.

Continuing south along the riverbank, you pass a whole series of hotels facing the river, which would certainly be desirable locations for visitors.  I know that I stayed in one of these hotels on my first visit to Cologne in 1979, but I'd have to go back to my old boxes of slides to find out which one.  My diary might help if it's still a hotel and still under the same name.

This statuary group of (apparently) grumpy old men in a square in the Old Town is a tribute to the Carnival season, which in Cologne begins on November 11 and runs all the way through the winter, reaching its peak in the week before Ash Wednesday.

The sense of fun in Cologne asserts itself in other ways as well.  Looks like a perfectly straightforward modern building between two older ones, yes?

Look more closely:

This naughty little imp is mounted right across another square from the City Hall.

It's enough to give you ideas.

The high point of the tour, both literal and metaphoric, comes when you have climbed the hill and reached the open plaza surrounding the south and west sides of the Cathedral.  Officially this massive church, the tallest in the world with twin spires, is dedicated to St. Peter.  But let's see a bit more.  First, a few views of the exterior.

Notice in this picture the star on top of the central "flèche" spire.

Some parts of the stonework are plainly brighter than others.  It's not from cleaning.  The sandstone used in the building won't stand up well to pressure washing, so deteriorated parts are regularly being replaced.  Below the southeast corner of the church is an outdoor workshop where replacement stones are being patiently carved to be fitted into the massive structure.  Our guide joked that the cathedral is the world's longest-running perennial construction site, and that Cologne is one place where a stonemason has a guaranteed job for as long as he or she wants it.

Heading inside, the first thing you notice is the extraordinarily tall, narrow appearance of the nave.  The ratio of height to width here is 3.6:1, the highest such ratio of any medieval church.  

Large areas of the floor are covered with these elaborate mosaics.  Notice that the borders around the five roundels in the main design are formed out of a single continuous pathway.

There is some lovely older stained glass.

And this extraordinary modern window in the south transept, whose pattern of tiny squares looks for all the world like a random collection of pixels.

Another beautiful treasure is this medieval altarpiece, a style of art of which I am particularly fond.

The highlights of the Cathedral are two medieval pilgrimage shrines.  This one is dedicated to St. Ursula and her Eleven Thousand Virgins.

As I found out last year in the Caribbean, it was the legend of St. Ursula and the 11,000 which led Christopher Columbus to christen a large group of islands of all sizes as the Virgin Islands.  Today I learned, not entirely to my surprise, that the shrewd merchants of medieval Cologne made ample hay by widely selling relics of the 11,000 Virgins all over Europe.  The trade in relics was a major source of the city's wealth in those years.

The biggest shrine of all, an extraordinary creation entirely covered in gold, houses the relics of the Three Kings, the Three Wise Men of the Bible who brought gifts to the infant Jesus.  It stands immediately behind and above the high altar...

...in a location where it is immediately visible down the entire length of the nave to the west door.

And that explains why the flèche above the main crossing carries a star rather than a cross.

Once I had left the Cathedral, I was free to make my own way back to the ship.  But on the way I noticed one more thing, thanks to something our guide told us.  This custom may have originated in Paris, but it has most certainly raised its head in Cologne as well -- and I'm not referring to coffee or sausage-on-a-bun.

And there they are, thousands upon thousands of them, packing the railings along the pedestrian walkways on both sides of the Hohenzollern Bridge.

Our guide told us that his current girlfriend now has two locks on the bridge, and said that one of his friends has a partner who, before age 30, has placed four locks there.  Obviously, "true love forever" means very different things to different people.

And so, by lunchtime, we were again afloat on the stream, watching Cologne recede behind us as we headed out for the short voyage (3 hours) to Bonn.  

This smaller city was the capital of West Germany during the years when the country was divided in two from 1945 to 1989, but for our tour its status as the birthplace of Beethoven is even more significant.  Here, I skipped the guided walking tour (one long, slow walk per day is enough) and opted for a later ride directly to the Beethoven House.

You'd walk past it without a second glance -- just another house in a busy pedestrian shopping street in downtown Bonn -- if you didn't know where to look for it.

Fortunately, we had experts to tell us where to look.

There are actually two houses, and it was in an apartment in the smaller house that Beethoven's family was living when he was born.  The two houses together now form a museum.

After visiting the museum, we went out into the garden, and from there entered a modern addition behind the houses and found ourselves in this perfect little gem of a concert hall, with about 200 hundred seats and beautiful acoustics.

 Ground level is the top aisle around the back of the seats.  But the building goes deeper, since we were informed that underneath the hall is the location of the Beethoven Archives, with many of the master's notebooks, conversation books, manuscripts of music, etc.  Here, our musicians treated us to a concert of Beethoven's music.