Köln Day 2 - The Day of Churches

Day two started out real swell.  Sometime between two and three in the morning I woke up to a loud and very annoying alarm.  It took me a while to place exactly what it was, but when I did I actually took time to consider what to do next.  Then something similar to the following conversation took place:

V:   [shaking Mike.]  Mike -- the fire alarm is going off.
M:  No......  [buries head in blanket]
V:   Mike -- wake up.
M:  No... I don't want to...
V:   Mike -- there probably isn't anything wrong, but for my sanity's sake, get out of bed!

There were few sounds from the hall or the rest of the building besides an occasional slam of the door, so we took a minute to put on jeans and sweaters before heading down to the main floor. 

We found just a small group of people standing around the front desk.  The wonderful female attendant behind the counter was on the phone with her manager telling him about the alarm.  Slowly, a few more people joined us -- some dressed, others in pajamas or underwear.  Mostly, Mike and I were just confused as to why we were still standing in the building and why the fire department hadn't shown up yet.  It had been quite some time since the alarm had gone off.  Eventually the girl got off the phone and told us all to go back to bed.  From the instructions she got over the phone she turned the alarm off.  "It was probably someone smoking in the rooms," she said.  Okay.  Comforting.  But, we were all too tired and cranky to say or do much else than stumble back to bed.

Happy Monday.

Anyway.

Because we had hit many of the major museums in Köln the day before AND all museums are closed on Mondays, we decided it was church hopping day.  Germany is a great place to go church hopping as it's filled with thousands of beautiful old churches and cathedrals, but you could definitely get your fill of churches in Köln alone.  Along with the magnificent Gothic cathedral (aka the Kölner Dom/Dom of St. Peter and St. Maria) and innumerable others, the city is home to twelve Romanesque churches built on the graves of martyrs and early bishops of Köln that have been preserved (or restored after destruction from WWII) since the middle ages.  We were able to visit four of the twelve, which, really, is not bad considering we did it all on foot and also spent the most of the morning at the Dom.

Our first stop was the Parish Church of the Assumption of Mary, which was just a few doors down from our lovely hostel.  This church is actually one of the few Baroque buildings in Köln, built by Jesuits in the 1600's.  For a long time, it was one of the biggest churches in the city (the Dom was not finished until 1880).

Unfortunately nearly all of the church was blocked off from visitors, but we were still able to get this grandiose view of the tabernacle. This sight in the dimly lit church along with the softly falling snowflakes coating the world outside made for a stunning atmosphere.

Instead of being able to see the church, a number of scenes leading up to the nativity were displayed in the entryway.  They were elaborately done and nice to look at despite it being the first day of February.

Here is the Annunciation where the archangel Gabriel visits Mary.

What amazed me here is that the angel actually appears and disappears before your very eyes!

And various dioramas...

Fast-forward to the nativity scene.

Moving towards the Dom, the next place we visited was St. Andreas church, which was founded around 1200.  The saint Albertus Magnus is buried in the church's crypt.

Of course the church also houses a number of paintings and statues.

These next few images are portions of wall paintings that have survived over the years.

St. Andreas Church also houses the Maccabeus shrine which supposedly holds the bones of the martyred Maccabeus brothers and their mother from the second century.

The gold panels depict some rather gruesome scenes...

From St. Andreas you can see the Kölner Dom (again, Dom means cathedral in German), otherwise known as the Dom of Saint Peter and Saint Maria (the patron saints of the city).  We headed over there next and were fortunate enough to arrive just in time for a tour conducted in English.  Being that this entry is already getting extremely long and there are several more pictures to go, I will save the Dom pictures for another post.  Well, except for this one picture just because I can't help myself...

The tour of the Dom was definitely a highlight of our trip.  Our guide was amazingly accommodating and a pleasure to be with.  We really appreciated the insight into the architecture, art, relics, and history.  Probably the most interesting bits were about the construction of the cathedral (which took over six hundred years and began in 1248) and the golden reliquary (one of the world's largest) that supposedly holds the remains of the three wise men.  Once a year the church opens the front upper panel to reveal the Magi's skulls to dispel doubts about the contents of the reliquary.  In addition to touring the church, we climbed up one of the cathedral's bell towers -- a dizzying experience -- and went down into the crypt.  Again, pictures to come.

At that point, we couldn't decide what we wanted to do for lunch, so we wandered a little bit and ended up looking for the tower of what remains of the old Roman city walls.  There are tons of Roman ruins around Köln because it was the Roman empire's northern most colony.  It took us a while, but we did find it.  They sneakily incorporated it into other much newer buildings.

On a roll, we decided to take on yet another church before lunch.  The next closest church was Groß St. Martin (Great St. Martin's Church). 

This church, founded in the 10th century, was built over 2nd century Roman storehouses and a swimming pool.  There are many excavation sites underneath the church's crypt.  Unfortunately, it happened to be closed that particular day so we didn't get a chance to go inside.  The area Groß St. Martin is located in is lovely though.  The houses surrounding it in the square were rebuilt after the war with an historic design and the streets are laid out just as they would have been in medieval times.

I had looked up a number of restaurants on tripadvisor (a fantastic site) before we had left.  On our way to Groß St. Martin we passed by Peter's Brauhaus, one of the traditional German restaurants on my list.  Starving by that point, we decided do have lunch there.  The menu was very German and absolutely delicious.  They also brewed their own Kölsch.  

My dish was some scrumptious pork with mashed potatoes and sauerkraut.

Mike had some braised beef in a raisin sauce with knödeln (German potato/bread dumplings) and a yummy apple sauce on the side.

German food can be rather simple, but from its simplicity you can enjoy each individual flavor that much more.

 Around the same area and very close to the Wallraf-Richartz Museum from the day before was Köln's historic town hall.  The building was pretty neat -- covered with tons of statues.  We wandered around the inside trying to get into various chambers until we realized that we actually weren't allowed to be in there just as a security guard approached us...

 The remaining churches in our guide book started to get a little further out from the city center, so our church hoping pace slowed down.  We decided to head to St. Maria im Kapitol next, but getting there was a bit tough because of construction and winding roads.  We also got sidetracked by a music store that had a lot of high quality wind instruments in its inventory.  We almost stayed so that I could try out some top-notch German-system clarinets (in comparison to the student models we have at school), but decided in the end that it wasn't worth buying a box of reeds or finding a mouthpiece just for experimentation's sake. 

After leaving the music store and wandering around St. Maria a bit, we decided to head back to the hostel to rest up for the evening's event:  the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra at the Kölner Philharmonie with Sir Neville Marriner, the reason why we decided to stay through Tuesday morning in Köln in the first place.  

The hostel didn't feel anymore inviting or comfortable even after a long day of walking all over the city to and through various churches, so we headed out after dropping of some things and decided to check out one last church.  St. Ursula was not too far from where we were staying, though it was located in the opposite direction from everything else.  The church honors another one of the city's patron saints, who supposedly was martyred on that very spot with her 11,000 virgin companions in the year 451 (all of the numbers for this legend vary).  Even though the church is listed as a site to visit in our book and on various Cologne tourism websites, the place was not at all welcoming to visitors.  We did not stay very long.  

Since we still had time to kill, we went back to our favorite place in the city:  the Dom.  There was only a little bit of time before closing, but we decided to see the cathedral's treasury anyway.  Their collection was extremely extensive and impressive.  Not only was there gold, jewels and relics galore, they also had displays of artifacts from excavation sites of Roman graves.  It was all so interesting and it was unfortunate that we hadn't decided to visit earlier in the day. 

Our last destination before the concert was dinner.  While roaming around the city for two days, we often walked by a Japanese restaurant, Daitokai, that had also appeared on my recommended restaurant list from tripadvisor.  We figured some sushi would be a nice light evening meal before taking in some Berg and Schubert.  We had no idea what we were in for.  First of all, the menu was just slightly above our expected price range.  In the end, we decided we would spurge on an early Valentine's Day dinner.  When we walked in, it was like being transported to Japan.  Okay, so it probably isn't really like Japan at all, but it's definitely had the stereotypical Japanese atmosphere with the teppanyaki tables (or what we would inaccurately call hibachi) and waitresses in full-out kimono dress and slippers.  

The service was great.  And, in addition to the warm towels many restaurants provide to their guests before their meal, they also gave us adult-sized bibs.  Admittedly, we were a little taken aback by this, but we were also oh-so entertained.

As for food, we opted to share a set dinner menu for one.  The staff was extremely accommodating and split everything for us ahead of time.  Of course we had to take pictures...

First course was a "salad" of lotus root, a fish "meatball" also known as surimi, and pea pods with a light dressing. 

Our second course was a yummy selection of sashimi.  The fish was buttery and wonderful. 

It had been an eternity since I'd last had tempura, so I was quite pleased with course number three.

The main course was cooked in front of us on the teppanyaki table.  In addition to some sautéed vegetables with a delicious sauce, we had Wagyu beef with black truffle shaved on top.  Like I said, we splurged.  Paired with a bowl of white rice... voilà!

Last of all, dessert -- a very special occasion.  Fruit with vanilla ice cream and "sauce" flambé.

The teppanyaki dessert chef decided to be cutesy just for us.

The final product.  Mmmm...

As you can see, dinner was quite the experience.  The food tasted good and we enjoyed ourselves.  Even though we split a dinner for one, both of us were more than satisfied.  We happily ambled back over to the Kölner Philharmonie, past the Dom near the Rhine River.  

On our way, we noticed a red carpet event (with television cameras and the whole nine yards) going on at some upscale club that was sponsored by Volkswagon (I guess they followed us from Wolfsburg).  This woman was standing right by the curb where people were being dropped off for the event.  We weren't sure if the costume was related to Fasching, but it certainly caught our attention. 

Along with that distraction, we didn't realize that our idea of where the philharmonic was located was just a little bit off.  With a little bit of hurried walking, we eventually found our way.  

Again, we had been able to choose our seats when we ordered our tickets online.  And just like the Berlin Philharmonie, the concert hall had seats that wrapped around the stage.  Guess where we sat?

Here's the view just below where we were sitting.  (See the tuba mute?)

 This is how far we were from the podium and Sir Neville Marriner.

The program that night was a Bach fugue arranged by Anton Webern, Berg's Violin Concerto, and Schubert's Unfinished Symphony.  And, as my 11th graders know (or should know since we just had finished our unit on Schubert), we today only have movements one and two of this symphony.  Marriner and the Stuttgart Radio Symphony Orchestra played the modern completion by Brian Newbould, who put the scherzo and entr'act from Schubert's incidental music for the play Rosamund.  It sounded fantastic. 

After the concert we wandered around the Altstadt for a little while until we found a place to try one last Kölsh.  We didn't stay out too late since we'd had a rather full day.  When we did turn in, we were both a bit sad that our adventure in Köln had to end and that we would be returning to reality.  Maybe more than anything though, we were mostly glad that it was the last night we'd have to stay in our hostel.