Cologne, Germany

 Our river cruise was coming to an end as we sailed in to Cologne to dock…

Here we can see the city in the distance with Cologne Cathedral the center piece of the city.

We decided to stay an extra night before continuing on our own for the next two weeks and stayed in the city centre in a very modern hotel with very interesting artwork…

We took a walking tour to see the highlights of the city center and came across this statue of Edith Stein who was the first Jewish woman to convert to Catholicism and was elevated to sainthood  she was murdered in the gas chamber at  Birkenau in 1942. The shoes are a symbol of all who died in the camps.

As we walked we also came across “ stumble stones “ which are small plaques that are placed in front of the homes throughout Germany once inhabited by victims of the Holocaust as a way to remember and honour them…

This woman was born in 1884, deported in 1941 and the question marks indicate no one knows what happened to her.

Cologne was founded in 38BC by a Germanic tribe and became a Roman settlement in 50AD. There are still unearthed signs of the Roman settlement such as a piece of the road…we were walking in very old stones! 

The Romans also fortified the city with walls and towers some of which are still visible today…

All roads in Cologne lead to the Cathedral which sits in the center of the city…it is the largest gothic structure in the world and took over 600 years to complete…construction was started in 1248 and finished in 1880. It is Germany’s most visited landmark and attracts 20,000 visitors a day…

It is magnificent from all sides and also from the inside as it has some of the most intricate stained glass in Europe. It was so brilliant…

And it is massive…

Cologne’s medieval builders had planned a grand structure as a fitting place of worship for the Holy Roman Emperor and also intended it as a shrine for the relics of the Three Wise Kings who visited Jesus at his birth. These relics are still here in a gold casket and many believers make a pilgrimage to them…

The Catholic Church in Cologne is very rich as every Catholic in the city has to pay an additional tax on their income that goes directly to the church. Many Catholics object to this so they go to City Hall to fill out a form to say they are no longer Catholic and pay a fee of 30 Euros! 

As we walked though the city with our guide he pointed out a number of sculptures that indicate how people really feel about the church such as this one…

During WW11 Cologne was subjected to 262 allied air raids and suffered an enormous amount of destruction so the Old Town here is not original but built back after the war…

Some of the buildings like this one list the years it has been built and rebuilt…

Some scenes along the river front…

The area around the church is very busy with lots of performers including this one…

The Central Rail station is also located here and is very busy…

Since we are interested in the history of Hitler and WW11 we spent most of the morning at the Documentation Centre which was the former Gestapo Headquarters in Cologne…

After the war many wanted to move past it but a group of Cologne citizens protested this move and demanded that the period was documented and the center was established here.

 It is huge with many rooms documenting the rise of Hitler and the subsequent events. Outside there is this sign in the sidewalk indicating the path that some walked to be sent to the camps…

Hitter’s party came to power in Cologne in 1933 and as the power of government was handed over it has been named…” the dawn of the Third Reich”.

There were mass rallies supporting the movement and the Nazi party moved quickly to stamp out opposition and begin the persecution of Jews and other groups…

Many buildings in Cologne became prisons for political prisoners and then places to hold those who were deported to the camps…

There were eleven sections in the centre and we didn’t get to see them all as we were short on time. However what we learned about this period of history in Cologne was very shocking and well documented…

Copies of records of people being deported…

The cells in the basement where prisoners were held…

And much more about this dark period in the history of Cologne…

After that we needed a beer so went to a local place to sit and ponder some of what we had learned…

The local beer is mostly served in small glasses though Don had a big one! 

The waiter keeps bringing you glasses and keeping count on your coaster to fiqure out what you owe at the end…

In beer halls here everyone sits at communal tables, are very loud and usually full of groups of men…

We were also very happy to meet up with a young woman we met a few years ago in India. She collected us at our hotel and we walked to a local place to catch up on our travels and life in general. It was lovely to see her! 

Now we are off on our own for a couple of weeks with a five hour train ride to our next stop which is Munich.