Cologne, Hamburg

After an unbelievably hot and uncomfortable stay in London we traveled south to Cologne, Germany.  Our delayed Eurostar train finally got going and we were off under the channel and on to Brussels.  In Brussels we had already missed our connecting train to Cologne, but there was another one that we were hoping to catch.  It was a mad dash to try and catch this train through an extremely hot station - Brussels was even hotter than London.  Somehow we were squeezed onto the other train without us having seat reservations and we were off on our way to Cologne.

The whole purpose of this rush to Cologne was to see the Yoyoi Kusama exhibit at the Gallery Ludwig there.  It was difficult to get tickets but we had a timed entry at 4:00 that afternoon.  We arrived in Cologne just after 4 so it was another dash to leave our bags at the hotel, thankfully near to the station, and then rush across to the art museum, also nearby.  Hot and dripping with sweat we got into the exhibit.

An early piece of Kusama's

From the stuffed sock phallic phase

Kusama in New York in the 60’s

Pumpkins

The tentacle room

The polka dot room

There were pieces from Kusama’s early work in Japan, her weird hippy days in New York in the 60’s and then a lot of her more recent pieces.  It was interesting to see her progression.  Everyone likes her spotted pumpkins and there were some amazing extensions of that look - whole rooms of yellow spotted tentacles, reflecting rooms of tentacles, polka dot rooms, etc.

Later works

What was surprising to both of us was the similarity between her paintings and the Australian aboriginal art we had seen the year before.  Both employed dots, both had similar use of color.  For some of the pieces my first guess would have been this is aboriginal art.

 

Cologne Cathedral

After the art gallery, we wandered around the outside of the cathedral which was just outside the gallery which was a stone’s throw from our hotel, which was just next to the train station, which was just next to the Rhine River.  We were in the right part of town.

It was still hot (95+ degrees) so we went back to the hotel where we ate and got a great night’s sleep finally in air conditioned splendor.

Love Locks on the Hohenzollern Bridge

The next morning we had an early morning walk around old Cologne and along the Rhine.  We crossed over the Hohenzollern bridge the other side of the river.  The bridge is loaded with locks, thousands, perhaps millions, love locks, and one had to wonder if the bridge could bear all that weight,

We encountered a lot of walkers along the way.  There was an official 170km walk on the Cologne Trail around the city.  Difficult at the best of times, but with the intense heat it would be dangerous, maybe foolhardy.

Cologne Cathedral interior

Gerhart Richter’s Stained Glass

Earlier More Conventional Stained Glass

Back at the hotel, Diana was already suffering from the heat so she went back to the room.  I walked around a little and went inside the cathedral.  What a building, such high vaulted ceilings, what beautiful stained glass.  Gerhard Richter, the artist, who happens to come from Cologne, created one of the stained glass windows - a collage of different colored square pieces of glass.  Not the best stained glass window in my humble opinion.

I took Diana some food and coffee back to the hotel and then we left to walk around a bit.  It was going to be a hot one.  We walked over to the cathedral and took a closer look around.  It was amazingly cool inside when it was 100 degrees plus outside.

David Hockney’s LA pool painting

Sacramento’s own Wayne Thibaud in Cologne

We next went to the Gallery Ludwig again.  This time to see the permanent collection.  They have a wonderful collection of all art from the turn of the 20th century to the present day.  We spent the whole afternoon there while the temperature hit 102 outside.  

After the art gallery, we went to an ice cream shop and had a ridiculously large ice cream sundae - very nice.

Great St Martin Church, Cologne

Next stop was the Gross Saint Martin church.  We crept inside and it was the start of a service.  There were 2 senior male officiates, 10 nuns, 1 organist and a congregation of 2.  The nuns sang beautifully, the organist was wonderful, and we stayed listening for over 30 minutes.  

Real German Food

It was then back to the hotel to cool down for a bit before going out to dinner.  We went to the Peter’s Brauhaus, one of many such places in old town Koln.  In Koln many of the beer places serve a light beer in small glasses.  Each glass is small and cheap and they keep the glassses coming so you always have a cold one in front of you.  Alas the restaurant was too hot on this record breaking day and Diana had to go back to the hotel.  I stuck it out and had a very nice local Koln sausage with potato salad.

The next morning, our last in Koln, we were up for an early breakfast at Cafe Reinhard just in front of the Cathedral.  It was then off to the railway station for our train to Hamburg.

Cologne Railway Station

The station was very busy, very hot and most trains were delayed.  It didn’t help when our train notice dropped from the display just before it arrived causing a mild panic among the passengers.  Then it arrived from the wrong direction and we raced to the other end of the platform.  We then realized it was reversing in and so we ran back the other way.  Just the thing we needed to overheat ourselves before our journey.  I was drenched in sweat again.

Fortunately the carriage was air conditioned so eventually things settled down to a comfortable ride through the German countryside - nice agricultural land and many forests.

In Hamburg we had a hotel, the Reichshof, quite near to the station so we got settled and cooled once more in our room before heading out to explore.  

Speicherstadt, Hamburg

We didn’t really have a plan but there was a UNESCO site, Speicherstadt, that seemed worthy of a visit.  It is a series of warehouse buildings in a series of narrow islands in the Elbe estuary that were built in the late 19th century to the early 20th century.  Beautiful brick towers of warehouses with external crane housings. 

 

The Rathaus, Hamburg

By the time we got to Speicherstadt we were again hot and sweating. In our search for somewhere cool to sit and take a beverage we stumbled onto the Rathaus, the city hall.  This magnificent building with its clock tower and green copper roof dominates the square.  It has been well preserved. 

The Elbe River, Hamburg

Our next destination was the harbor area.  We had heard of a ferry line that travels out and back up the Elbe estuary, ferry line 62.  We walked for longer than we would have liked to get to the Landungsbrucken ferry landing to board the boat.  It was a pleasant, cool and breezy ride down the river with the old city on one side and the large contained port on the other.

The Opera House and Port of Hamburg 

We stayed on the boat for the round trip and returned again to Lanungsbrucken where we alighted and caught an Uber back to our hotel.  An evening meal at a nearby German restaurant was enough for the evening.  Wiener schnitzel at Das Dorf accompanied by a very pleasant beer shandy.

Aussenalster Lake, Hamburg

The next morning I took a quick walk around the hotel area - over to the beautiful Kunsthalle, a small artificial lake, Binnenalster, the Rathaus, St Petri’s church and back to the hotel.

After a leisurely breakfast at the hotel, we were off to the station for our 12:24 train to Copenhagen.  As usual there were delays, and a last minute platform change, and then after positioning ourselves at the correct end of the platform the train came in the other way around.  Nothing is simple or straightforward.

Even on the train it wasn’t so straightforward.  We stopped for a long time outside Hamburg, then changed direction of travel, then someone pulled the emergency break and that caused real delays.  One or more of the doors was not functioning and that caused a delay for an hour or more while German Railways allowed us to move ahead.  When we crossed into Denmark, the Danish Railways got involved and there was another delay of an hour.  Finally we were on our way.