Cologne

12th September

Our tour guide made Cologne a memorable place. His accent, when speaking English, had an Irish lilt to it and he kissed the Blarney Stone continuously throughout our 'active' walking tour. Other passengers joined the regular and slow paced groups.

Our first 'Kodak moment' according to Marcus, was this view of the Cologne Cathedral, which took 600 years to complete. Those who took on the responsibility of building the cathedral over the centuries faithfully kept to the original plans, because the original plans were kept! The cathedral suffered major damage during the wars but, because it had a metal structure instead of the usual timber, the roof did not burn. It is now fully restored.

Our tour guide, Marcus, who shared his well kept secret 

that there is no word for guide in German, so the general word for leader is used...fuehrer! 

You can't capture the enormity of these European churches in a photograph. They dominate the area and dwarf every building nearby. The coloured buildings are replicas, not original as suggested by their dated facades!

The building on the right is an original old building. To the left is a building with an interesting statue decoration on the top left front. The male figure is bending down and has no pants on. At first it appears that he is going to the toilet but, in fact he is 'mooning' 

the Government building opposite - the Rathaus, or town hall which is pictured below.

On this building, one of the statue figures is poking its

tongue back at the mooning figure. It's amazing what you miss if you don't have a guide.

The middle figure of the three in this picture is a bishop of Cologne. We know that the artist didn't think highly of him as he is standing on a pedestal unlike the 

pedestals of the other statues. If you look closely, you can see a bare bottom, complete with male 

genetalia!

Wedding in Germany are conducted in the

Rathaus. Here you can see friends and relatives making a guard of honour for the bride and groom out of sunflowers.

After our guided tour, we went into the cathedral until the 

construction of the Eiffel Tower, this cathedral was the tallest building in the world.

The vaulted gothic ceiling was spectacular,

As were the stained glass windows.

This gold sarcophagus contains the remains of the three magi - it is called The Shrine of the Magi. Pilgrims visit the shrine from all over the world.

What happens when you're embarrassed about the statue of your esteemed Emperor who caused the start of WW1 with his behaviour? Well, according to our guide, you deliberately plant trees in front of the statue so that nobody will be able to see it. The statue of William 1 is certainly invisible from all but one spot up on the bridge and there is no name plate to be found, so there could be some truth in his story.