Our excursion to Cologne (Köln in German) took place on the eighth of September. Cologne is a major metropolitan center with over 30 museums and it is Germany’s fourth largest city. It is also home to the famous Cologne Cathedral. As soon as we got off the morning train, we were greeted by two tour guides and they took us to various sites around downtown Cologne. We learned that it is rumored that the Cologne Cathedral buries the relics of the three wise men and it took 632 years for its construction to be finished. Cologne is also the site of a very large festival known as “Carnival” which occurs annually and dates back to when Cologne was a colony of the Roman Empire. At the end of the tour of the cathedral and the city, we walked around and tried the local cuisine.
After lunch, we broke off into two groups and toured two different museums. The first visited the Romano-Germanic Museum where the emphasis was on the historical development of the city. Cologne was originally a colony of the Roman Empire and this is where its name derives: Colonia Claudia Ara Agrippinensium. The other group took a tour of the Museum Ludwig where the emphasis was on the significance of modern art in Cologne. The city has hundreds of galleries displaying many different forms of art and they serve to maintain Cologne’s status as a cultural center in Germany. At the end of the day both groups gathered at the cathedral once again to tour the upper levels of the structure. After a long ascent filled with narrow archways, heavy doors, and steel rafters, the tour culminated at the very top of the cathedral. The panoramic view that this spot offered was incredibly scenic as we could see several kilometers in every direction. The excursion to Cologne proved to be very intriguing and many in the New Europe Program will definitely be returning in the near future.
Written by Emilio Garcia, NEP Fall 2011
