Day 3 - It's Jody's Birthday in Cologne

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Yes, today is actually Jody’s birthday! I won’t mention her age, but it’s still significantly less than mine, and she still looks great! After traveling through the night, we made it out of the Netherlands and entered Germany. I’m not sure whether it was always the plan, or whether it was detours for low water, but we ended up docking somewhere outside of Cologne at about 9:00am so everyone going on a morning tour could get on a bus and ride the 30 minutes into Cologne. The boat would arrive at the Cologne dock at about 12:45.

We met up with our local guide, who gave his name before we had our listening boxes turned on, and never mentioned it again. In any case, he was great, and explained to us the rivalry between Cologne and Dusseldorf. Evidently, Cologne has a long history dating back to Roman times and was once capital of the region, but somehow in modern Germany, the capital of this region was moved to Dusseldorf for no apparent reason, where the people have no history and drink terrible beer. He was very funny.

Our first visit was the Cologne Cathedral which began construction somewhere in the 13^th century and finally completed construction in the mid 19^th century. Evidently, this is the norm for Cologne, as most construction projects locally finish several years after planned completion. It is a large gothic cathedral with 2 towers visible from very far away. The Cologne Cathedral is the only building in Cologne that remained after WW2, as the allies essentially bombed the entire city into rubble. The cathedral was spared from bombing only because the towers were a good navigation landmark for more bombing runs. There was some minor damage to one of the outside walls that has since been repaired.

In fact, the cathedral is currently undergoing continuous repairs, paid for by the German "church tax”. Evidently, 9 percent of each individuals income tax is allocated to the religious denomination of their birth. In that way, taxpayer money is used to support the church. If anyone objects to their money going to support the church of their birth, they can either register their new religion with the state and their money will go to their new church, or they can register as atheist and the state just keeps the money. No separation of church and state here!

The cathedral was beautiful on the outside, but the inside appointments were a little disappointing. Of course we may just be jaded from some of the churches we have seen in Italy, Spain, and Portugal. The internal architecture was beautiful and so was the stained glass (which was removed during WW2 and stored away safely, reinstalled after the war was over). But there wasn’t much of an altar, and not a lot of statuary and artwork. But, what was there was very beautiful.

After leaving the cathedral, we headed out to the section of the city called “old town”. Unfortunately, all of the “old town” buildings are replicas, since all were destroyed in WW2. The streets are still cobblestoned, and the “old town” area was laid out in narrow streets like the original, including the old city square, which was once the main marketplace, it is now surrounded by shops and restaurants. There is also a huge shopping district, but almost all the shoppes were either American, or the typical European shops found in our local American outlet mall.

We were looking for some jewelry for Jody’s birthday, hoping for something from a local artisan, but there was none to be found. We did find a nice malachite pendant but it was at Bvlgari, and was about $5000, a bit more than we wanted to spend. It’s early in the trip, and I’m sure we’ll find other opportunities for a birthday gift. After shopping, it was getting close to 12:45 when the ship was due to arrive, so we headed back to the river. We had contemplated eating lunch locally, but we weren’t really that hungry, and most of the specialties were pork or veal, and neither of us are big veal or pork eaters.

Back at the ship, we grabbed a quick lunch, and headed back into Cologne to visit the Ludwig Museum, a fairly large contemporary art museum boasting a bunch of Picasso and Andy Warhol stuff along with many other artists that Jody knew that I did not. It’s on 3 floors, and was really a great contemporary art museum. Contemporary art is always hit or miss, with some really awesome artwork and some “what were they thinking?” artwork. This was one of the better museums with some really interesting and some really large pieces. We wandered around for about 3 hours and had a great time. Jody got a lot of inspiration for her own artwork, and is in a mixed media class when we get back where she can try out some of her new found inspiration.

The Ludwig Museum did have a gift shop, but since it was a serious museum, there were mostly books in the gift shop and no t-shirts or magnets. So on the way back to the boat, we stopped at a souvenir shop we noticed and picked up a couple of Cologne t-shirts and a Cologne Cathedral magnet. A couple of oatmeal raisin cookies and a couple of sparkling waters from the coffee station later, and we were back in the room resting up for dinner. By now I was over 15,000 steps for the day and Jody was over 16,000.

At dinner, we were invited to the table with the same doctor, his cousin and his doctor wife as last night, this time the other couple were from Bradenton, FL and dinner discussions did not involve shop talk between doctors and it was much more fun. Jody was trying to downplay her birthday, but the women remembered that is was her birthday and gathered up a few of the other passengers and sang her Happy Birthday! The staff noticed, and during dessert showed up with a birthday cake and sang Happy Birthday all over again. So much for keeping a low profile! Jody was a little embarrassed, but really seemed to enjoy herself.

Tomorrow we are heading out for a tour of Marksburg Castle in the morning, followed by a Rhine castles scenic cruise in the afternoon. It should be great fun!

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