Cologne Happenings

Last week my class took a field trip to Bonn, but since the museum we visited didn't allow bags in, I don't have many pictures of the experience.  In the absence of pictures, I forgot to write a blog post about it.  Na ja.  In consolation, here's a picture of me awkwardly giving a thumbs-up to a statue of Beethoven.

I woke up this morning to a note from my host mom saying there was a short organ concert in the Dom tonight and asking if I wanted to go see it.  However, before that I walked to the Cologne Triangle with some other people from my group.  The Cologne Triangle is a really tall glass building that lets you pay 2-3 euro to ride to the top of it.  To get there, we crossed the Hohenzollernbrücke, which is completely covered in locks.

There's some really funny graffiti 

Some really creative locks

And interesting sidewalk graffiti

After that we got to the Cologne Triangle, where you could see a nice view of Cologne.  Afterwards I headed home and went to the Dom with my host mom.  We walked around a bit and she showed me this statue that is based on a Cologne fairy tale.  

According to my host mom, there's a story about how dwarves used to do all the work in Cologne; however, they didn't want to be seen.  I guess one day a curious woman put out peas on the ground so that when the dwarves came out at night to do work, they would trip.  She heard the noise and ran out to see what it was.  When she saw the dwarves they were all "oh no..." and peaced out of the city, so now people in Cologne have to work themselves.  

We walked around for a bit before headed to the Dom for an organ concert.  The organist was from Iceland and played some old classical stuff.  All in all it was pretty interesting.  The day ended with me coming back to a giant spider in my room and my host dad having to come up and help me.  Hopefully it doesn't have friends...