The Stench of Cologne

Lightning Strikes at the Dom Cathedral

You have your key out and you're so close to making it, but no such luck.  At first, you try to stop it, but as water pours down, out of your jeans and into the carpet, you just give in.  "Okay," you think, "I'll pee."  Nobody's around anyway and you're by yourself, except for the blinking security camera, but it just doesn't matter anymore.  The next morning, you're paranoid and you think the people at the front desk are talking about you.  And for the next two days, you walk around with a plastic bag tied in a double knot, carrying your mildewed jeans, still wet with pee.

I hate Cologne.  The first night, I lose my wallet and I pee my pants; it's one bad thing after another.  There's something about this city that just doesn't mesh well with me.   It's bad chemistry.  There's the Gothic back-drop of the Dom Cathedral and it's dark and disconcerting.  Before beginning my trip, I prep for this.  "On my travels, there will be one day, " I tell myself, "when everything will go wrong and I'll be pushed and tested and defeated."  That day is Cologne.

Outside this broken-down hostel, left, and then straight, there's the Dom Cathedral.  It's too tall and when you look up, with your back bent and your neck cranked, you can't see where it ends.  It's frightening, sticking out like a sore thumb, with Gothic ridges and flying buttresses and tinted windows.  And somebody tells me (or did I read it somewhere?) that it took seven centuries to build this cathedral.  And it's just a number, but if you really think about it, that's 700 years of stone-laying.  There's constant rain and thunder and when you look up at the tower, lightning strikes, and I swear you can hear the off-key chords of an out-of-tune organ.

There's always an accordion playing, the asthmatic aerophone, wheezing in and out.  It's usually my favorite instrument, but in Cologne, it's plain old creepy.  Strange men follow you.  And the street performers watch you, and when you sit on a bench, trying to figure out where you are or what you're doing, they play to you.  "Tip please," and they look at their empty jar with puppy-dog eyes.  "But," you try to explain, "I have no money and I'm all alone."

In the city center, stages are built and tents are pitched for a summer concert series.  The three days that I'm there, it's constant sound and disarray.  There's too many people and too much noise and it's just a hot-bed mess of over-activity.  People, red-eyed and jittery, stand around, slurping free cans of Coca-Cola while music blasts from megawatt speakers.  It's too much.  The streets bend and I get lost down narrow corridors.

Down one street, it's pitch quiet.  A car is flipped over.  Shards of broken glass speck the pavement like glitter.  Police officers and pedestrians stand on the sidewalk, quiet as hell- no sirens, nothing- staring at this upside-down vehicle, this mess of twisted metal, wheels turned up, like a dead dog.  "Something is wrong," they ponder, "but what is it?"  And they scratch their chins.