Köln

Cologne isn't quite what I'd expected. I thought it'd be bigger at times, at other times before I came over I thought it'd be more of an old German city. Instead what I've found is something of the in between. Make no mistake, it is a big city - geographically speaking - but I figure the tourists are pulled to it only for its churches and museums. Cologne is modern - if you arrive at the Cologne/Bonn Airport like I did and take the train/tram all the way into the city all you see is infrastructure which looks modernesque, some a bit dated, but nothing which seemingly dates beyond the fifties. Yet when the tram went past the Rhine I got treated to a skyline of the old city, with the tower of the old Rathaus and the Kölner Dom and I started getting a feel of what this city is like - young and old, with people from a lot of different backgrounds all congregating together.

It feels nice knowing that foreigners aren't that much of a rarity - although on my way to work I get people staring at this Chinese girl who's obviously found a job in an office (given the jacket and my entire getup every morning). And I don't think the place is as hostile to a person whose native language isn't German as England is to a person who doesn't speak English. I still do feel like an outsider looking in - more so than in Bristol, partly because of the language, and also partly because, despite my protests to the contrary, I am Asian enough to feel a bit unsettled by European tradition.

Hence the blog. I don't know how long I'll keep it up for, or if I should even have started it at all, but who knows what will come of it? Maybe I'll be able to create a cohesive picture of my time out in the land of Kölsche beer, and maybe this blog will lapse into oblivion like all my other blogs. Time will tell...