Cologne to Konigswinter

A short train ride took us from Cologne to the Rhine-facing village of Konigswinter for a few days.

Travelling as much as I have over the years has built up this nifty little reservoir of I'm-not-sure-what... It's a way of just winging it, of doing only cursory research and planning before a trip and letting it happen randomly. Travel balls, maybe? Too crass perhaps - maybe travel confidence is better.


No strict agendas, no specific day trips planned, only a train or plane timetable and a hotel booking here and there. It's a matter of waking up and doing what you feel like, including nothing much at all if the body or spirit are not willing.

And in places like Konigswinter, it always works out. The town is right on the Rhine, with a bike path lining either side for many miles and a stop for the river tours right out front. You can take a boat or a tram to get here as well.

A boat tour is a must here. Criss-crossing the river, you can sit for hours looking at German countryside roll by, stepping off at various old-school postcard towns for lunch and a beer, and walking into Christmas stores in mid-summer if need be. Cologne and the surrounding region are renowned for its year-round Christmas markets, with every ornament and trinket ever created. Then again, you could just stay on the boat, drink beer and eat apple strudel.

You can also head up to Drachenfels ("Dragon's Rock"), a small mountain with a 12th century castle perched on top. You'll get amazing views of the surrounding area here.

Ah, the meadows, the rolling river, the lush countryside, and the zigaretten.

Stumbled across a car show  

These boats span the Rhine - at first, you feel like such a tourist, but then there's... 

...the view... 

...ze strudel... 

...the small town(s)... 

...and this guy, who invariably looks more like a tourist than you ever will. 

Uhhh...Small-town horror house of some kind. We didn't stay long enough to ask questions.

Smells Like Cologne

One of the beautiful things about living in Amsterdam - and in fact, 20 minutes door-to-door from the airport or Central Station - is the ability to leave Amsterdam. Not too often, mind you - but the weekend power trip is something to be cherished when it happens.

Earlier this summer, we took just such a trip to Cologne, Germany. It's a bit off the radar when one thinks of Berlin, Munich, or Frankfurt, but well worth the trip.

Cologne is a charming place. The riverfront location, the big town squares, the old-fashioned housing mixed with modern architecture, the striking Dom cathedral - it all made for a very welcoming stay, just 2+ hours by train from Amsterdam.

Like Kindergarten, but better

And then the beer. Kölsch actually, is the local type of brew. To me it tasted like a standard and perfectly fine beer, but others with more dignified beer tastebuds would do a better job explaining it. Beer aficianados, click here for the full Wikipedia explanation.

And it is EVERYWHERE. Each table we passed at the sprawling cafes had monster glasses of Kolsch being quaffed by men and women. Walking the streets, a group of men, girls or families from teens to omas and opas can be seen strolling with their bottle of beer in hand. Overlooking the Rhine, lazing in the grass along a long promenade, hundreds of people drink from bottles of beer like marathon runners shoot back water (ok, that last one was a bit of an embellishment). But really, beer is always near.

Bottle openers hang from the overhead awning outside most convenient stores - a sure sign of a beer-friendly culture.

They all drink it with any type of food, though I opted for pairing with some schnitzel and fries at one occasion, and this item below on another:

Some kind of unholy potato concotion - the name escapes me; the heartburn does not.

Day 2 we moved down to Konigswinter, a Rhine-front hamlet/town (I'll never know the difference, but hamlet sounds somehow more majestic. More on that on the next post...for now, some images from Cologne itself.

The bathroom wall at the excellent art 'otel

 The view from the hotel room - in the foreground is a replica of Noah's Ark, to the right is the Chocolate Museum. Very difficult to combine these into one joke. Still working on it.

 Dom Cathedral

 In Cologne's souvenir shops, memories of the previous wars are ubiquitous. These are placemats, sure to cheer up any meal.

Punk'd

Berlin is the testicle of the West. When I want the West to scream, I squeeze on Berlin.

Nikita Khrushchev

While I can't exactly relate to this quote from a Cold War relic, I can suggest that what I did see on Friday night was indeed nuts.

How else to describe the music of a spandex-unitard-wearing, screaming, smiling lead singer and his trumpet-playing androgynous mascot wearing a creepy masquerade mask?

I ended up at Kaffee Burger, following the suggestion from the previous night's bartender at a great tapas place whose name escapes me (head to the Hackesher Markt area, and ask for tapas bar. And I would also recommend emphasizing the TAP part, so people don't think you are asking for a topless bar. Just sayin').

All was pretty chill when I walked in, with a DJ playing 80's music and a mixed crowd of 20/30-somethings all dressed down, maybe a little on the skater side. I settled in with a Berliner beer (maybe 2 Euros? cheap!), and watched as the dance floor and stage area quickly filled.

With little fanfare aside from the roar of a knowing crowd, two guys got on stage - one in the classic rocker garb of skinny-ish jeans and a t-shirt and shaggy hair, the other in a black t-shirt and not-so-classic spandex shorts and a Jesper Parnevik-style cap.

Flipping on a backing track with drums, they crashed right into a sort of speed-thrash-whatever style that got the crowd jumping in unison. Apologies for the lack of a description - my musical knowledge, while solid, hasn't reached this genre yet. (After the show I asked around and was told it can be called Dancepunk or Pop-punk). Either way, it was a million times better than Avril Lavigne, lest you be trying to draw comparisons.

They played about 12 songs, each one a mix of really happy anger (if that makes any sense) and incomprehensible lyrics. And several trumpet solos by the masked she-male who seemed to jump up on stage at will and took turns getting fake-beat up by the guitarist and the lead singer.

Confused? Me too. The weirdest part is that it was entirely listenable.

Spee-doh!

You down with FKK? Yeah you know moi!

FKK (pronounced eff-ka-ka) is Freikorperkultur - "Free body culture", and it is described by gridskipper.com as going as far back as the late 19th century. Though practitioners are "nude," they can't really be called nudists. There's a difference, at least in German culture, between FKK and simple nudism. FKK is more than going naked -- it's a practice that has broader philosophical goals. The FKKers are socially and ecologically minded, stripping down in natural environments. And, importantly, there's no eroticization of bodies in FKK.

It was with this daunting but noble premise in mind that I made my way to Liquidrom Berlin, on a rainy and cold afternoon that kiboshed my previous plans for a walking tour of the city. While it is not a "natural environment" at Liquidrom, the casualness and nakedness of the FKK mentality is at the core of the ease with which most German citizens get nekkid.

A German sauna dipped in accessible luxury, Liquidrom is a coed facility with 4-5 different sauna areas, an outdoor hot pool, a solarium with South Beach-like chairs, a bar and restaurant, and best of all a large domed indoor pool.

I arrived at the front desk, paid my 17.50 Euros for 2 hours, was handed my (gulp) black Speedos, and emerged five minutes later into the common area. I haven't worn a Speedo since about the age of 7, so I was slightly less comfortable than Paris Hilton at a spelling bee.

I strode (not at all confidently) to the bar and quickly asked where I could get one of the white robes that a number of the other patrons were wearing. Five Euros later and I was more at ease in my posh fleece, suddenly more Hef than Jeff.

I stayed in that comfortable zone for about a minute, when I was told that wearing swim trunks in the sauna was verboten. What's worse than wearing Speedos in a foreign country surrounded by flabby strangers? NOT wearing Speedos in a foreign country surrounded by flabby strangers.

But I quickly embraced my pioneering spirit, cast aside my prudish-by-comparison North American upbringing, shimmied out of my remaining shred of dignity and plunked myself down au naturel in a glass-front sauna, accompanied by two women and two men. We all sat (one girl was lying down) silently sweating away our inhibitions while I contemplated how alternately liberating and terrifying the experience was.

Overheated (no, not in that way - for every one attractive female figure, there were about 10 palate-cleansing bodies comprised of too much skin and hanging bits), I moved back into the Speedos and went into the aforementioned domed pool area (swim wear in the pools was mandatory).

The indoor pool dome is easily one of the coolest places I've been, with ambient/chillout music, dark alternating red/blue/clear lighting underwater, couples silently murmuring to each other and singles floating in their own contemplative worlds. Picture your favorite late-night lounge, except in water.

Indoor pool area

After a few trips back to the sauna and the pool, a (robed) spot at the bar for some water and a snack, and some interesting sights, I emerged back into the rainy cold a very relaxed new member of the FKK movement. I'm just not sure where to carry my card.

Sights and Sounds (ok, no sound, but words)

Day 1 at the ITB Berlin Travel Trade Show. This thing is huge, with pretty much every country on every continent represented, along with companies that depend on the travel industry and numerous workshops covering the future of wellness to blogging in the industry to UNESCO conferences.

And yet as it turns out a trade show is still, at its core, a trade show.

• Hapless employees manning (or womanning) the booths stare back at passerby with a look of either "Please come talk to me to help me pass the endless tedium" or "Keep moving because I hate my life."

• There is here, as in life, a clear delineation of the haves and the have-nots. Abu Dhabi has a plush 2-level booth including a mysterious stairway flanked by two comely lasses (when asked what's upstairs, they respond only with a mysterious "meetings"). Eritrea, meanwhile, has two short stools and free pens.

• There are the oddball trade show vultures, who try to get their hands on anything that isn't bolted down. Gummy bears, posters, three-headed highlighters, you name it. I have no idea what they do with all this stuff - maybe there's a thriving black market for trade show flotsam.

Here are some of the sights...

Moments before this, the child sitting here was whisked away by Madonna

Part of Colombia's section. Really not sure what to make of this

I guess "Colombia: Way Less Shootings Than Before" was too subtle

A lonely booth

Please write your own caption in the comments area. Winner gets a Berlin U-Bahn map (slightly used)

In the middle of the exhibition, exhibitionists.

This was a packed room. Clearly, blogging is the new black

Somehow Chuck Norris is omnipresent

Moroccan artist working with coloured powders - click on the picture to see his work more closely

Only slightly more popular than the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians

Cool painting

Estonia's slick display area - a photographic forest

No sign of the Jersey Shore crew, thankfully. There might have been a situation

Haggling over haggis?

I have no idea what the fat pirate was representing

A long day ends well