Cologne Germany 🇩🇪

Cologne is the fourth-most populous city of Germany and the largest city of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia with nearly 1.1 million inhabitants in the city proper and over 3.1 million including surrounding areas.

Cologne is worth visiting for its unique combination of ancient history, striking architecture, modern culture, and Rhineland charm. The city has over 2,000 years of history, dating back to Roman times, and that legacy is visible everywhere – from the ruins under the streets to the soaring spires of its world-famous cathedral.

The locals are famously friendly, and there’s a strong sense of local identity, especially when it comes to beer (Kölsch), carnival celebrations, and dialect. The city is also known for being liberal, inclusive, and welcoming – Cologne Pride is one of the biggest LGBTQ+ events in Europe.

With a compact, walkable centre, an excellent public transport system, and loads of green space, Cologne is easy to explore. Whether you’re diving into Roman archaeology, admiring cutting-edge art, shopping along the Schildergasse, or sipping a cold Kölsch by the Rhine, Cologne promises a richly rewarding experience.

We decided to take a walk along the Rhine River with a boat tour scheduled for 10:45.

Bike riders are every where and when you need to walk it up stairs there’s a handy rail. Don’t make a move they’re flying by…

Or just carry it

Hohenzollern Bridge and Love Locks

One of Cologne’s most photogenic spots is the Hohenzollern Bridge, which spans the Rhine just beside the cathedral. It’s covered in thousands of love locks left by couples over the years – a romantic symbol that has become a quirky tradition. The bridge also offers one of the best views of the cathedral, especially at sunset (might try that tomorrow.)

Every where you look you’ll see the Cologne Cathedral.

No visit to Cologne is complete without seeing its iconic cathedral, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the finest examples of Gothic architecture in Europe. Towering over the city with its twin spires, the Kölner Dom took over 600 years to complete and remains the most visited landmark in Germany.

Time to catch our boat or is it? Back through the tunnel…

The Captain won’t take the boat out because we’re the only two travelers with tickets. Can we come back in an hour for the next tour….with a drink ticket to entice us.

Back through the train station and it’s starting to rain

A few fun stops

A penguin bar

Back to the river. It’s gloomy with threats of rain but we’re going down the Rhine for a glimpse of Köln

Crane Houses

The architecture of the future — that’s what El Lissitzky called his famous utopia of horizontal skyscrapers back in 1924. By offering maximum usable space on top of a minimal substructure, it would make two-level urban development possible. And as a “cloud hanger”, it would be the architectural antithesis of traditional vertical skyscrapers. This idea, which was formulated by the renowned Russian avant-garde architect more than 100 years ago, was ahead of its time in terms of its technology. But the skyscrapers he envisioned were not built back then. Many decades later, three skyscrapers that are more than 60 metres high stand out from Cologne’s cityscape and rise above the Rhine like gigantic upside-down L’s, playing with the idea of a “floating” horizontal line. They are the three Crane Houses in Cologne’s Rheinauhafen (Rheinau Harbour).

Sporting lots of glass, concrete, steel and high tech, the Crane Houses impressively reflect our modern age. At the same time, they are striking symbols of the history of this site — through their association with the traditional loading crane that is often found in port facilities. Cologne’s Crane Houses thus combine the past and the present, industry and residential units, new beginnings and retrospectives, utility and art.

A place of pilgrimage for fans of state-of-the-art architecture

If you’re a fan of contemporary architecture that is sustainably shaping today’s cityscapes, you should put a visit to the Rheinauhafen on your list. As you stroll beneath the Crane Houses, each of which is supported by a glassed-in staircase column, you’ll have a unique and exciting chance to look at these buildings from the bottom up.

Three Crane Houses: North, Middle, South

The three Crane Houses were built one after the other between 2006 and 2010. Only two of the three buildings look similar; they’re the ones that are used for commercial purposes. The protruding balconies of the third Crane House clearly show that it’s a residential building. All of the 133 luxury apartments in Crane House North were already sold before its construction was complete.

The Crane Houses have different numbers of floors, but they are almost identical in height at 61.6 and 61.9 metres respectively, and are 70.2 metres long and 33.75 metres wide with a total utility and living space of 47,500 square metres.

The architects of the Crane Houses

The Crane Houses were designed by the Aachen-based architect Alfons Linster and the Iranian-German architect Hadi Teherani from Hamburg. Teherani was inspired by El Lissitzky’s cloud hanger designs. He’s also known for his “Dancing Towers” in Hamburg and the “Spin Tower” in Frankfurt.

In 1992 these architects won the first prize in the idea competition for the redesign of Cologne’s Rheinauhafen. However, the foundation stone was not laid until 14 years later, after it had finally been decided to use a steel-frame structure for the Crane Houses. This is the same type of construction that is used for building bridges.

Who lives in the Crane Houses?

In the commercial parts of the Crane Houses you can find IT and consulting companies, bars, cafés, surgeries, creative and media agencies, law firms and restaurants such as Ox & Klee. The identities of the private individuals who live in Crane House North is a well-kept secret. It’s said that a number of celebrities such as Lukas Podolski have bought apartments there, but whether they actually live in them is unknown.

Really love these buildings.

It’s definitely time to use our drink coupons

Back to shore and time for lunch

Found a local bar and ordered the “special” may not do that again without asking for more details or better translation 🤪

Onward

What’s that AMAZON PRIME DELIVERY!!!

A electric pedal assist truck

Didn’t need to deliver we picked out our outfits for Lago de Garda

I like the lion

No need to stop we have a load from the mothership yesterday

We walked over to the shopping street…overwhelmed and way too peoply

We walked back to give our cobblestone traveling feet a break and enjoy an early evening.

Before we say good night we came across another somber reminder of atrocities in human history.

A Stolperstein is a ten-centimetre concrete cube bearing a brass plate inscribed with the name and life dates of victims of Nazi extermination.

Simply put, Stolpersteine, or Stumbling Stones, are small Holocaust memorials. Each one commemorates anindividual victim of the Holocaust and contains a small bit of information about them. These 4×4” brass cobblestones are usually inlaid in the ground outside that person’s last known residence. (Though they can be placed in other places as well.)

The information each one contains can vary, but typically Stolpersteine include:

• The person’s name
• Their birthdate
• The date on which they were killed/arrested/other (if known)
• The manner in which they were killed (if known and applicable)
• Which concentration or death camp they were deported to and/or at which camp they were killed or their other fate (if known)

The information on the stones is minimal, but that’s part of the artist’s intention. 

We must learn history or risk repeating it.