I must confess to being rather disenchanted with sightseeing. Most of the time when I go to a new city the first few places I invariably go (or get dragged off) to are churches and museums. So much so that I think in the past 3-4 years I must have visited at least 15 different churches and 30 different museums on the European continent. Maybe it wasn't the best of times to fall out of love with Church/Cathedral visiting this time around, because almost everywhere I turn in Cologne, I find a pretty, old-school church (or cathedral, I should say, since Cologne is largely Catholic). My first weekend in Cologne I was thus compelled to do what any self-respecting tourist in Cologne would do: I went to the Kölner Dom (strangely enough, I'm not too sure about what it's called in English). To say it was impressive was an understatement, to say the least. I was wandering around the Altstadt (or old city), when I managed to find my way onto the main square where the cathedral stands, and there it was, looming up in front of me. The sheer size and scale of it makes you feel like a puny little human ant about to be trod on by a gothic monster. According to Wikipedia and the free pamphlet I got, it took 600years to complete.
Thank goodness it wasn't destroyed during the bombing of World War II, or I'd figure quite a few of the craftsmen whose life's work it must have been to construct the place would have rolled over in their graves quite a number of times. Both inside and outside, the Cathedral is adorned with carvings that make me wonder at the amount of painstaking effort that must have gone into building for the glory of God. And, in the centre of it all, the object that inspired the building in the first place - the relicts of the three kings who came to see the newborn King. My realisation of that shrine actually came about quite by accident. The shrine is a sort of large-ish golden structure, encased in glass and kept behind several railings. Everyone was taking pictures of it, and I, using my swaku Singaporean instinct, decided that it must be worth taking a picture of to and so leaned over for a better angle. This old German gentleman looked at me, and then asked me if I even knew what it was. Sheepishly I answered no. He then very kindly explained the history of the shrine, and how it had actually been taken away from the Italians, and how the Cathedral was built to accomodate the many pilgrims to came here to pay their homage to the three kings. He then went on to talk about the stained glass panel that was destroyed during the war, and how since no one knew what it had looked like exactly, they decided to have a completely new design. Enter the window by Gerhard Richter, indubitably one of the most modern stained glass designs ever to grace an 18th century/gothic cathedral.
When one looks at it one instantly knows the reason why some people protested - it's simply squares of coloured glass, forming a pixellated pattern. For me, however, it seemed sadly apt and befitting of the crisis facing the church today - secularism seems to have invaded every aspect of our lives, so much so that we can't even be bothered to come up with a picture for a Cathedral's stained glass window, and Christian culture and heritage is slowly losing its ground. Melodramatic, yes, but I think it's also true.
I stayed behind for the midday prayers, before heading all the way up to the tower. I don't think I'd ever appreciated how tall the church was until I started the ascent. There is just one passage all the way up to the bell tower - a narrow spiral staircase that serves people going up, and also those who are going down. I was wondering how my legs and ankle (another story for another day) were going to stand it all the way to the top, but I somehow managed it - even the scary metal staircase that takes one the top of the south tower. The view from all around was, well, not very great to be honest, because the Cologne skyline is only magnificent because of the cathedral, and that isn't of any use when you're standing in it and looking out over the rest of the city. Nevertheless, you can see the surrounding area for miles and miles, and the Rhine looked amazing and almost fairytale like. Definitely worth the climb up, and after that, I congratulated myself with a lot of food, including a doughnut :)
A word of caution, nevertheless - it is always wise to conduct such trips with some food in your stomach. Skipping breakfast and then going up to the top of the cathedral just before you go off for lunch is not a good idea. But who, you ask, would be so stupid as to do that? I leave you, my dear readers, to figure out just who.
