I don't know if I mentioned this anywhere before on this blog but I run marathons. Not very often, after all a 26.2 mile run requires some preparation, but I try to do one once a year. Half marathons I can do every month, but a full marathon for me is a special event. Typically I do them somewhere far from where I live and plan vacations around them. The last marathon I'd done before Cologne was in Honolulu, and the one before that was in South Padre Island, Texas.
That Honolulu Marathon was in 2017. Usually I do one full marathon every year, but somehow 2018 came and went without me doing one. So in 2019 I absolutely had to do one, and there were quite a lot of options in the fall of that year. Plenty of cities I wanted to visit and could use a marathon as an excuse to do so. Eventually I had to choose between Cologne and Essen, two places I both wanted to visit sometime. I decided on Cologne because I didn't like the route Essen was using; they only had prepared a 21km route, that is, a half marathon, and while it appeared to be scenic going by the river Ruhr, the full marathon was simply doing that route twice. I don't like runs like that, with any kind of repetition, because for me they make the race feel longer and more tedious than it actually is. So I registered for the Cologne Marathon which would be happening on the 13th of October.
Cologne is a big city on the river Rhine, most famous for it's historic cathedral. It's natively called Köln in German and Kölle in the local Kölsch dialect. The name we call it, "Cologne," is borrowed from French. All these names proceed from the Latin name Colonia, meaning "colony," as it was founded by the ancient Romans before the Germanic Franks conquered it.
Friday, October 11, 2019
I traveled from Stuttgart to Cologne on a single high-speed ICE train without any transfers. I had been in Cologne's main train station three times before, but only for transfers while on the way to somewhere else. This was the first time it was my destination.
Right outside the train station is an enormous, absolutely stunning cathedral. We'll get to the cathedral in a moment.
The first thing I had to do was check into my acommodations. I was, of course, staying in a hostel. Specifically Hostel 404, so named for its address on Neusser Straße. If you look this place up on Google Maps Street View, you'll find the whole building blurred out for some reason. It's in a neighborhood called Nippes and close to the U-Bahn (light rail) station Neusser Straße Gürtel. 404 was a pretty nice place to stay, and the room with the bunks was quite spacious. There are also chests, which you can lock, to store your belongings.
Back in the city center, I stopped somewhere for lunch, which I accompanied with my first glass of Kölsch.
Cologne is known for a style of beer that originates here, Kölsch. I wasn't too terribly impressed with it; I thought it was OK but a little too bitter. Also, as you can see here, it's traditionally served in these little 25cl glasses. I heard somewhere that wait staff really don't like that, because customers who keep throwing back one glass after another keep the servers on their feet constantly.
Moseying in the general direction of the cathedral, I stopped to look at some historic statues and also went into one kind of establishment that I try to find in every city I visit, an Irish pub. This one was called Barney Vallely's. This was a place I'd stop at again. I think the better Irish pubs are the ones like this where you find the local Anglophone expats hanging out. The bartender was Australian, which I found unusual because I don't often meet Australians living and working in this part of the world, and there was a rugby match on the TV closest to me.
OK, now back to the cathedral.
It's impossible to capture how majestic and awe-inspiring it is in any photo. It's also no easy task to capture the whole thing in one photo, because of how enormous it is! Now let's go in...
This has to be the most impressive cathedral I’ve ever seen. It’s not just the size—St. John the Divine in NYC is bigger—but so intricate. Everywhere you look there are so many detailed statues and stained-glass windows, it must have taken a thousand years to build the place. Oh yeah, it did! Read about the history, it’s interesting.
Next on the agenda, that big event that runners go to a day or two before a big race: packet pickup, which in this case happened in MotorWorld, a huge car museum and special event venue a bit outside the city center. If you're not familiar with the running world, this is a huge expo in which not only do you pick up your "bib" (the number you wear somewhere on your clothing during the race) but also there's all kinds of stuff for sale like running shoes and clothes, plus tons of flyers and brochures for upcoming long runs in other cities over the coming year. I picked up a bunch of these for races all over northwest Europe in 2020. As you can probably guess, I ran in zero of them.
While bar-hopping downtown that night, I found yet another Irish pub, The Corkonian. This place I remember because of the Irish Coffee I had there. Irish Coffees necessarily are topped with a generous portion of whipped cream. The cream on this one was thicker than usual; I'd describe it as halfway between whipped cream and ice cream. If you can imagine ice cream that's been set out awhile and has melted quite a bit, but is not flavored and tastes more or less like whole milk, that should give you an idea of what this was like. Like with any other Irish Coffee, there was a long spoon provided in it, and that was more necessary here than ever.
Another thing I remember about The Corkonian: there was a certain song playing at one point which I didn't recognize but was clearly a 1980s British New Wave band. At first I didn't think much of it, but I overheard some older British guys behind me talking about it, and one said he'd seen this band live back in the '80s and thought they were real good. At that point, I just had to know, so I pulled out my phone and Shazammed it. We were listening to "Whole of the Moon" by the Waterboys. Amazing...I may not be old enough to have experienced that scene but I've consumed so much music from it that I think I'm so familiar with it (I've got Smiths and Joy Division albums on vinyl), and then something like this happens where I discover a whole artist from that era that I'd never even heard of. Looking at the "Related Videos" column in YouTube I see that The Killers and Fiona Apple have both covered this song, too.
There was one more bar I hit up which I can't remember the name of, where I had a few more local beers. After that, back to the hostel to turn in for the night.
