Expat Bloggers Meetup - Church of St. Ursula, Cologne

Last Summer, we met up with fellow English-speaking bloggers in Germany.  The meeting destination was Cologne, and we spent a weekend seeing some of what the city had to offer.

Of course in Cologne, churches are the thing to see.  it's the heart of Catholicism in Germany.
They do have "the Twelve Romanesque Churches of Cologne" (plus countless others), after all.

We have already posted cool photos from the famous Dom (cathedral), and the Great St. Martin Church.
Our last one was the Church of St. Ursula.  (Wide photo courtesy of Wikipedia): 

There is a unique top to the tower, with a mixture of yellowish wood and a crown-shaped base for the cross:

Inside has the "typical" large stained glass windows towering behind the altar...

...with the crucified Jesus hanging around...

...plus a few other icons scattered throughout the interior...

...and various statues and busts above and below.

So, at first, the Church of St. Ursula appears to be your normal Christian house of worship.  Except the bones.

LOTS of human bones.

A large reliquary, connected near the entrance of the church, contains thousands of bones.  They are are main "decoration".  Below, they cover almost the entire top of the wall above the altar in the reliquary:

Why?  The church was built on the site containing ruins of an old Roman cemetery.  It was here where the legend of St. Ursula claims that 11,000 martyred virgins were buried.  And we all know what to do with relics of thousands of martyred virgins:

In case you didn't notice in the photo above, these (below) are what lie on the shelves:

Here's a little more help to see the shelves, by zooming in:

The different sizes and shapes of the human bones are used to create designs and letters/words:

Here we have ribs, joints...

...major limbs...

...and others that require Gray's Anatoms to identify.

It's quite interesting, really, and the room is always very quiet and peaceful (but nowhere to sit).

All four walls have a large display/collage of bones, so the scale of the collection is quite, um, impressive.

It was a great last stop during the weekend in Cologne.  Definitely worth a visit on your next visit.

Expat Bloggers Meetup - Great St. Martin Church, Cologne

Last Autumn, Frau A and I attended our first English Bloggers Meet-up in Germany.  The group's 2011 meeting was held in Cologne, where we had a wonderful tour of the Dom (Cathedral).  After the Cathedral tour, we had some further activities and meals in the Altstadt (old city).

First, I noticed a funny sign outside the Cathedral selling a book "Hooray, we're still alive!" about post WWII years:

Then, we walked past the Hauptbahnhof (main train station) just outside the Cathedral...

...and down towards the Rhein river.  Some trees were already starting to turn brilliant colors:

We walked along the Rhein for maybe 5 minutes before arriving at the Great St. Martin Church:

Cologne is arguably the center of Roman Catholicism in Germany, and there are a lot of churches to see.  In fact, St. Martin is one of the twelve Romanesque churches in the city!

St. Martin's foundations go back to about the year 960, with the current buildings being erected as early as 1150. 

St. Martin's history also includes ties to a Benedictine Abbey, fires and reconstructions, and WWII and rebuilding.

It's obviously much smaller, less dramatic, and less "fancy" than the big Dom, but also almost no tourists!  The simplicity and quite made for a great contrast with the overrun Cathedral.

This lady stopped for a prayer and was right at the light's edge, from light to dark.  Beautiful.

After a while for photographs, looking around, and quite comtemplation, we left and headed out for a late lunch.  The hot topic of discussion at the bloggers' table:  photographic equipment of course!

One of the bloggers had a funky lens that had a 45-degree mirror at the end of the barrel... to see around corners.  (below: the lens is pointed right, but the mirror is facing my camera and captured me)

Lunch was at a Turkish place, and we loaded up on hummus, tzatziki, etc.  This is quite typical, since there are so many Turks and a strong Turkish influence in almost all major German cities. 

Frau A and I like the Moroccan-style lamps:

After a hotel pause (read:nap) we met for a late dinner at a Cologne establishment, serving Kölsch beer, naturally.  Here was a waiter filling up a tray from a true traditional wooden keg:

Kölsch is more like smooth Bavarian helles than the hoppy pilsners served in most of northern Germany.  Also, rather than a huge 1L stein, Köksch is served in small, thiner glasses.  That makes sure there isn't a lot in a huge mug that gets warm over time.

The waiters just mark your coaster to keep track of all the smaller glasses you order.  Like the waiter above, they carry around lots of fresh glasses in a special tray and just keep replacing empty glasses at every table.

We ordered the gulash soup (Hungarian in origin, of course, but adopted everywhere in Germany) and local wurst served in a pan, with bread and mustard.  The perfect dinner.

Before we left at the end of the weekend, there was one more church to see -- this one has the bones of 10,000 virgin martyrs!  Stay tuned...

Two Tours of the Cologne Cathedral

This post has a LOT of photos, so I'll try to keep the text to a minimum.  One of the events at the English bloggers' meet-up last year was a tour of the Cologne cathedral.  What was special about this was that the guide took us on service elevator to the upper level, and we walked around both inside and outside (to a unique lookout).  The next day, during free time, Frau A and I took the more public route of walking up the stairs to the root of the spires.

Check out Wikipedia for info on this famous cathedral - started in year 1248, is the largest gothic church in Northern Europe, is Germany's most visited landmark, with the largest free-swigning bell in the world: 

The day before the tour (when we went to Aachen), we grabbed a photo from the front in sunlight...
(note:  you can see the lookout we will visit on the first tour in this photo, with a small spire above it)

...and then at night:

This is the cathedral from the "back", near the bank of the Rhein river (the entrance is on the city side):

From this side, you can see the two huge spires that are it's calling card on the Cologne skyline:
(these are the destination for the second visit the following day)

As a gothic structure, there is a lot of detail of course: 

For the first tour, we met a guide at the side of the cathedral, and entered basically through a locked construction/restoration entrance.  We immediately took the maintenance elevator up to the next level.

As we exited, we started walking through the passage that outlines this upper level inside the cathedral.
You can see the passage to the left of Frau A, and the cathedral opens up below on the right:

This is the view of the cathedral inside, from this second level (basically looking right and down from Frau A, through the pillars and over the stone edge): 

I stuck my arm out and took a few blind photos to try and get a better view.  You can see organ pipes on the left and the main altar at the far front of the cathedral:

This is the same shot processed in HDR to try and show more detail:

There were neat twists and turns through the passage:

Coming around the end, we got a glimpse of the main organ pipes...

...and now we are looking at the other end of the cathedral inside, at the front entrance:

We passed some places where light coming through the huge stained-glass windows hit the wall.  Great views.

At one point, the passage took us a bit higher...

...and we had a tremendous view of one of the windows:

Then in another narrow section of the passage, there was a stained-glass window on the left, and the light hitting the wall on the right.  Just awesome.  Got one shot with Frau A, both in regular processing...

...and in HDR:

Here is a view just with the stone and light (regular)...

...(and HDR):

When we reached the far side of the upper level, we took a door to the path wandering along the outside of the cathedral.  We were literally walking under the flying buttresses, and over the roof of the trancept (I think):

This is looking back down the first part of the path.  In the background is a bridge over the Rhein river:

The path takes a turn to continue along the outside of the cathedral.  You can see members of our bloggers' group ahead of me:

Up ahead is the guide (a student, I think, with expertise in the cathedral's architecture and history).  He is standing before the door that will bring us to the next part of the tour, with maintenance ladders on the rooftop...

On the last few meters before reaching the door, we had a great view of the Rhein:

This is zoomed-out to the bridge seen in the prior photos - obviously for trains, and not cars:

Just at the door, the view straight ahead was to the Hauptbahnhof (main train station)...

...and a bit of the city as well:

This was the view when we got back inside the cathedral:

You can see the tops of the domes in the cathedral ceiling through the scaffolding, beneath our feet!

A set of metal stairs will lead us to the looking mentioned earlier:

Looking down, you can see more of the domes in the roof that tourists are staring up at in the cathedral right now!

At the top of the stairs was a "trap door" that opened into the lookout.  This is NOT one of the two huge spires (that comes in the next tour) but is the smaller one.  (See the first photo on this page to see the difference.)

From up here we had an unimpeded view of the Rhein river...

...and the Hauptbahnhof:

Looking up in the city direction, the twin spires loom.  Next day's visit will take us up into the bottom of these:

As usual, there is always restoration going on, with scaffolding obscuring parts of the building:

With a little zoom, we could see the ladder going to the very top of a spire!

Looking down, we could see the buttresses again and the path that we walked along outside the building:

It was cool and breezy up there, but Frau A agreed to post for a second:

On the next day, we took a different "tour".  This time, it was the unguided access to the stairs climbing up to the base of the spires.

Before getting in line, we spent some time at ground level inside the cathedral:

We could spend hours here taking photos.

We had to wait about 20-30 minutes in line, pay, and then start the slow (and tightly winding) stairs up almost 400 steps (the girls ahead of us counted).  We finally reach inside of the base of one of the spires.  Looking up:

Then up further to a walkway just outside the spires that was heavily covered with metal chain link fence:

This is not just to keep things from going down - the fence was above our heads as well.

The fence got in the way for photos, but despite the blurriness it's a nice view.

Looking down from here, you can see the place/platform/lookout we were on the day before: 

And of course the views of the Rhein here were great as well:

It was really a stunning trip with the bloggers' group, and a must-do for any tourist to Cologne.

The locker system at Cologne's Hauptbahnhof

Frau A and I spent a weekend in Cologne recently.

On Sunday morning, our plan was this:  after checking out of the hotel, we'd place our suitcases in a locker at the train station, spend the day sightseeing in town, then retrieve the luggage before boarding the train to the airport.

We expected to find the typical long rows of metal lockers, where you insert some euros, get a key, etc..

Instead, we found this newer system that automatically conveys, stores, and retrieves the bags.

That morning we found the machine, put in our suitcases, and received a card identifying our luggage.
The video below was shot late that afternoon, as Frau A paid for and retrieved one of the suitcases.

The animation of the bag being run along the conveyor is pretty funny.  But it works quite quickly, no?
There's even a phone number on the machine to call if you happen to lose the card that the system gives you.

Although it's more expensive than a DIY locker, it seems to be a much better use of floor space in the Hauptbahnhof.