Rock in Köln

A while ago, I had the distinct pleasure of watching an all girl AC-DC cover band performing in a German prison.

More recently, I was invited to watch one of the band members, who happens to be a friend of Vera’s, perform in her own band, playing in a club in Köln, or Cologne.

The music style was described to me as being of the melodic metal variety. I am not really a tremendous expert on the various metal genres, but I have seen some pretty non-melodic metal performances involving a lot of screaming and general anger, so assumed this would be the opposite of that.

I was happily right, in that there wasn’t so much of the screaming and anger, and you could, if you tried really hard, discern the words. I couldn’t discern the words, despite them being in English, because my ear drums were in the process of being perforated by the giant speaker stacks.

I was aware that lyrics were there however, which was a marked improvement on the thrash metal concert I once attended by mistake.

Some observations on going out in Germany. One, Germany has not quite gotten around to properly outlawing smoking in public venues. Well, actually, they tried. Legislation was put in place to make it illegal. And then a loop hole was discovered, whereby a venue just had to register as a smokers club, and it was back to business as usual. Apparently this loop hole is in the process of being closed. In the meantime, depending on where you go out, be prepared for some fug. It’s all very noughties.

Second, if you’re going to a metal concert, ear plugs are a good idea. Small rooms and giant speakers result in a gigantic wall of sound that will surround the next few days of your life in acoustic cotton wool. With ear plugs, you may even be able to work out what the singer is on about. I didn’t have ear plugs.

Third, doner kebabs. If you’re going to go out in Germany, you need to have a kebab at the end of the night. I can safely say that the large Turkish community present in Köln have made it their business to ensure that kebabs are actually an almost gourmet item, featuring delicately soft bread and meat that is recognisable as such. You could eat this stuff sober, which is saying a lot for a kebab. I can only assume this is the case Germany wide.

Finally, never, ever, ever, mention the beer. Wherever you are from in Germany, your local beer is treated with reverence. Other beers are worse than mud. One of the bands playing that night was from Munich, and he attempted to discuss with the crowd the topic of Köln’s local beer (Kölsch, for those of you interested), a subject he managed to get roughly four words into before being booed silent. Mentioning the beer therefore is not a good idea – you are expected to hate all beers other than your local beer. 

And on that happy beer related note, I end. Our time in Germany is coming to an end in the next week or so – after a trip to the UK for a wedding it’s off to France and a whole new series of adventures involving, most likely, cold. Until the next time…

Today’s post was partly made possible thanks to the support of only-apartments, who provided the following message: No hurries, no stress, no waking up early to have breakfast. Just get one of the apartments in Madrid and enjoy your holiday your way.

Kölsch in Köln

I was hoping to be writing an insightful, witty and brilliant piece on the wonders of going out drinking in a foreign city today. I intended to sparkle brilliantly on ponderings such as the cultural differences that I noticed on the evening. Much humour would have been had.

As it is, the very act of researching the cultural differences has left my brain a soddled mush of a thing, so you are instead going to get, well, the below. I will try. Be gentle.

Firstly, I had heard it said that continental Europe starts their drinking somewhat later in the day than the UK. I can now confirm this to be true. By the time we left the house to hit Cologne, it was nearing midnight. In the UK, if you head out at midnight, you are likely to be wandering darkened empty streets from closed pub to closed pub. 24 hour drinking is, in theory, legally allowed, but most pubs still adhere to an eleven or twelve finishing time, at which point you need to find an overpriced club to drink in. For this reason most people in the UK are out much earlier, with the mindset that as much as possible must be drunk before the doors are closed.

Germany does not have such complex drinking restrictions, so the night was still young when we left the house, despite it being nearly the next day already. We had prepared ourselves by consuming a number of Kölsch’s at home, for the journey as it were. Kölsch, for those not in the know, is the beer local to Cologne. Other beers are probably available. These are not mentioned in polite company.

We wandered, remnants of our home beer in hand (another wonder of Germany, drinking on the street is entirely legal) to our venue for the night, a local and somewhat alternative venue by the name of the Underground, which, contrary to the name, wasn’t.

Upon arrival, I was quickly whisked to the on site sausage stall, and provided with a large pile of currywurst and chips. Another uniquely German idea, currywurst is your average giant German sausage, smothered in spicy curry sauce. Presumably the intention was to  give me strength for the night ahead. Strength was needed. As well as a huge outdoor seating area, where multiple parties were carefully engaged in beverage review activities, there were two dance rooms, plus a whole room dedicated to table football. Which is a game to be taken very seriously in Germany.

Strengthened by sausage and more refreshing Kölsch, we hit the dance floor. The music was skating dangerously close to grungey metal, with the result that the dance floor was less about dancing and more about trying to survive in the mass of bodies. To the uninitiated, it may have looked just like a large fight set to pounding German metal. Perhaps, in fact, it was. Memories are a tiny bit hazy.

Some carefully trying to avoid being trampled later, we retired outside. It was a fairly warm evening and the surroundings were genial. Coloured lights lit up the courtyard area, much jollity was being had. Conversation flowed, all of it, I expect, brilliantly sparkling and witty. It was a rather wonderful time.

However, as with all wonderful times, they must end, and the time arrived whence we opted to quietly stagger home. I am incredibly lucky to go out with a girl who shares a love of anchovy coated pizza (amongst other things), so we stopped off en route for a romantic pizza in a nearby kebab house. The chap who created the pizza was a genuine artist, forming the pizza base from actual dough in front of our very eyes before lovingly coating it in lashings of cheese, tomato sauce and those little salty fishy wonders. I quietly hiccupped my thanks at him and trundled home, whereupon the pizza was devoured before the bed was hit.

Later on in the day the morning dawned beautifully. I slept through this, and woke up as the afternoon was just coming around. It was a blisteringly hot day, just what you need when your skin feels like all the moisture in it has been surgically removed.

Luckily the “day after drinking” regime is no different in Germany to the UK, so we staggered to the nearest cafe and ate as much fried food as we possibly could, accompanied by strong black coffee, at which point I started to feel a lot more human.

We left Cologne in the afternoon sun, with the top down in the convertible, the temperature in the mid twenties, and some suspiciously bad German hip hop on the CD player. The green leaves of the trees flitted overhead and I wondered to myself, as I often do, how I had managed to get so lucky as to be able to experience moments like this in my life. Even if the day seemed a mite fuzzy around the edges…

Cologne Vacations

German love, pt 2

It turns out that there is more to this love thing in Germany than merely taking some pieces of silver birch and tying them to your lovers house. A little bit further down the line, once the tree thing is out of the way, it may be that you end up getting married. (I know, we’re skipping some key bits here).

Once you are married, the obvious thing to do to confirm your undying devotion to one another is to buy a padlock, optionally inscribe it with some lovely message and your names, attach it to the Hohenzollern Bridge which crosses the Rhine, and throw the key into the aforementioned river. Thus is your love forever sealed.

Interestingly the operator of the bridge threatened to cut all the padlocks off (there are a lot of them), but backed down when the locals got upset. Love prevailed.

I learnt about the locks on a trip into Cologne yesterday, which was when I made the connection, after seeing a lot of places selling perfume, that this was in fact where the Eau of the name comes from. Sometimes I’m not overly bright. We also visited the most visited building in Germany, the Kölner Dom, or Cologne Cathedral for those of you whose German is progressing at the same rate as mine.

I had thought that buildings like Durham Cathedral, which took something like fifty years to build, were tardy in their construction. Or the new Wembley Stadium. Or whatever we’re building for the London Olympics. Well, all of these construction efforts pale gently into insignificance when you learn that Cologne’s Cathedral took 632 years to build. Some exciting statistics accompany the cathedral. It has one of the highest gothic vaults in the world, the next highest one, that of the Beauvais Cathedral, fell down. It has eleven bells, the largest of which weighs in at 24 tons, and is the largest free swinging bell in the world. A previous bell had been cast weighing in at 27 tons, but it wasn’t in tune. It even managed to avoid being flattened during the war, largely because the allies found it to be terribly helpful as a way to spot Cologne, which didn’t fare quite as well. Still, generally impressive stuff.

As with any building of this nature, the main question to be asked is if one can climb  to the top of it. The answer is yes, pretty much all the way to the top, to a viewing platform located 98 metres up one of the two spires, (which are 157 metres high) via 509 steps. The view from the top was excellent, a 360 degree view of the city, plus you could see past Bonn to the South, as far in fact as the Seven Mountains, which I intend to climb at some point in the not too far off future. Rumour has it that there are dragons there.

We spent the rest of the afternoon / evening wandering around Cologne in the wonderful summery weather we seem to be having, before meeting up with Vera’s sister and working our way through a crate of beer, some pizza, and a copy of Moulin Rouge. Yes, I attempted to sing most of Ewan McGregors lines. No, I wasn’t as good as him. Darn him and his generally overall amazing life. Anyway, a most cultural day. More to come, I imagine.