I got to Cologne yesterday morning and it has been quite an adventure. Right after I checked into my hostel room I met a really nice guy named Yusef who is Moroccan but lives in Spain... the only problem was that we didn{t understand each other because he didn{t speak english well I can{t speak spanish. We ended up finding a common language in French, so for two days now I{ve been practicing my rusty french vocabulary all day long. We{ve been walking around together and today we walked all the way along the rheine to a sculpture garden, and then doubled back to several large cathedrales and finally parted so that i could go to the kunstmuseum Koln. This museum is famous for its huge collection of modern art, and i was amazed. Ive never seen so many picassos, richters, kirschners, beckmanns, chagalls, .... on and on you name it they had it. they had an incredible balthus show, and i saw the coolest installation art by claes oldenburg... i saw my first ever sculpture by christo and painting by dali, ive saw so many artists i never even knew existed. lets not forget the video by william kentridge...wow! sorry this is a lot of name dropping... the building itself was also incredible, it was a modern art-deco interpretation with tons of stairways and secret rooms and little hallways. by the time that i finished looking around it had been 3 hours and i had a huge headache... so i went south of the museum to meander around the aldtstadt, or old town, and i marveled at the old german architecture and everything smelled like sausages.
going back to yesterday i visited the Dom Koln, which is the largest cathedrale in germany. i have pictures but i can{t post them right now... the bell tower on the dom (which i got to climb up) was the tallest building in europebefore the eiffel tower. construction on the building started in 1248, but it wasn{t finished until the mid 16th centry because they kept running out of money. the exterieur is covered in soot, so its very ominous from the outside... there{s also a shrine in the cathedrale that is devoted to the 3 kings who went in search of jesus when he was born... legend says that they are buried underneath the shrine.. but who knows?
tomorrow i am leaving to either bonn or aachen. bonn is a large city further south of cologne and is the birthplace of beethoven. aachen is right on the border with the netherlands and belgium, so if i end up there i will be riding my bike into both countries. i haven{t decided yet. but im gettig very very excited to watch some 6-day action, and then its back to school for me!!!!
au reviour...
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