The gcb across the Maginot Line

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Episode 1: What are you supposed to do in Cologne, anyway?
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I had had enough of the train after a few hours, and I hopped off at the station in Köln, knowing very little about the place except that it was a reasonably-sized city and still in Germany. Also, it's called "Cologne" in English, so it probably smells nice?

Walking out of the train station, I ended up underneath Köln's major landmark, the "Dom" (Cathedral):



The two gentlemen in the foreground you'll meet soon.

Alec is unlikely to believe me when I say that I did not know when I decided to stop in Köln that it is Germany's 2nd beer-capital after München. I guess I just have a knack for these things.

Köln was a nice town, and I stayed there for almost a week. I saw some cool places, including a Chocolate Museum with a Chocolate Fountain:



That's right, more pictures of food! The Chocolate Museum was so excellent and the gift-shop so tempting.

I also saw a huge statue of a decapitated head in some park:



There was this cool fountain that was incorporated directly into the sidewalk near the river:



Oh, and since it's been a while since I posted any disturbing religious art, here's a weird tapestry in the Dom with Jesus being held on the cross by God, or being crucified *on* God or something:



Mostly, though, I wandered around Köln; found some nice cafes and parks; ate, relaxed, and sampled the local brew at a reasonable pace (most nights). The two cafes I visited most included a big, warm, popular cafe with free wireless near the University and a cute little breakfast cafe near my hostel, where I sat most mornings drinking cappuccino and having a croissant underneath the preserved northern gate of Köln's medieval wall, right on a charming little plaza where I watched the Germans wander past:



The waitress and I agreed to let each other practice one another's language on alternate days.

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Episode 2: No one believes the gcb, and no good comes of it
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A great deal of my entertainment in Köln, however, was courtesy of the strange variety of characters at the Hostel. The strangeness varied from disturbing (a red-haired German guy who stared at me with a weird little smile on his face anytime he and I were both in the common room... and he was always there) to confusing (a guy who lived in Köln but was staying in the hostel for some reason) and dangerously entertaining (a Jamaican-born Londoner named Mark who you'll hear more about).

There was an Aussie who I wandered with my first night in Köln who told me every day that he was leaving the next day... but I just kept seeing him in the lounge, reading his book in the afternoon. He was a good sort, and he eventually escaped the day before I did.

I only went out two nights in Köln, and I'm not talking about the second night because it's a bad story and I did foolish things. The first night was this group:



As you look at this photo and I describe the cast, note the amount of fun everyone appears to be having. From left-to-right:
1. (behind the camera is a Japanese-born Londoner who's name I forget, he was traveling alone)
2. Tobi, who speaks almost no English, is 19, and lives in Köln. His apartment, it turns out, was flooded, so he was living in the hostel. Strangely, he did nothing but hang out with other hostellers, even though many of them spoke no German. I was often asked to explain something to someone in English that I only half-understood from Tobi's German description. Tobi was constantly offering to show us travelers how to get to some place in Köln, and then getting us unrecoverably lost.
3. Canadian guy (name forgotten) who was quite friendly. Traveling alone.
4. German guy (I suck with names) visiting Köln to look for apartments so he could move there. He never looked at any apartments but he had a lot of fun.
5. Argentinean woman, traveling alone.
6. Kim, a talkative Australian who wandered about with myself & the Canadian a lot.
7. the gcb
8. Mark, the Jamaican living in London.

Now, if you were paying attention to the 'fun factor' you might have noticed that the last two folks in the photo appear to be having *way* more fun than the rest. That's not just appearances- Mark and I took to each other immediately, and he had the same effect on my drinking habits that Lana had had.

Every time we had a drink, people would suggest all the international toasts they had learned, while Mark and I would enthusiastically raise our glasses, "To Jamaica!!!"

We raised our glasses more often than the rest.

After Mark flirted shamelessly with the waitress in the bar pictured, Tobi attempted to take us to a really cool club or bar or something.

On the subway, we encountered a bachelorette party. Mark went to work and had the party extremely amused and slightly shocked in short order. We then followed Tobi off the subway, while the German bachelorettes traveled on. As we exited the subway, the other German guy, Mark, and myself pondered what could possibly have been going through Tobi's head to take us off that train, and what could possibly have possessed us to follow him.

As he got us lost.

While Mark gleefully chided Tobi as "The worst guide ever", (a common refrain when these two were together- Tobi had eventually figured out what it meant) we wandered what looked like an entirely fun neighborhood in search of some elusive bar or club Tobi had in mind. The Japanese Londoner and the Argentinean gave up and went back to the hostel while the rest of us found a huge, empty bar with a Fussball table. Mark and I challenged the pair of Germans, and we were both far enough gone to talk a *huge* amount of semi-coherent shit.

Of course, the Germans *invented* Fussball, and they play it, I think, starting in booster seats from age 3.

We lost about 10-2, but both goals we scored were enthusiastically celebrated.

As we wandered out in search of Tobi's still-elusive final destination, my eyes were drooping and my feet tiring. Kim & the Canadian guy announced they were headed home, and I said I'd join them.

At this point, something strange happened. No one would accept my decision to depart. Kim & Canadian both told me I needed to stay out and have another drink, Mark told me I was not allowed to leave, and the Germans looked at me like I had gone completely out of my mind. Somehow, all of these people convinced me that it was totally unreasonable that I be among the group headed for bed.

So, I stayed out for a few more drinks, which resulted in:

- walking around Köln at 2:30 am without my shirt on.
- climbing a lamp-post while the rest of the party stopped in for a snack at McDonalds, which I refused to enter.
- witnessing Mark, at 3:15 am, wandering the streets approaching *every* female he saw and hitting on her shamelessly.

Eventually, the waitress from the first bar miraculously appeared, and Mark talked her and her friend into going back to the hostel by telling them that "our house is really awesome!" and other mostly inaccurate things.

When we got back to the hostel and everyone went into the lounge, I was finally able to sneak off to my bed and pass out. I never got the real story of how the night ended.

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Episode III: Paris in pictures
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The hostel I stayed in in Paris was half hotel, and it had a different feel from most hostels. Nonetheless, I met loads of other hostelers there- as soon as I walked in, a mixed group of English-speakers offered me food they had just prepared. I also met up with a few other folks I had met previously.

I can't start telling all my stories about Paris, or I'll type for hours. So, to continue with the last entry's "more pictures" doctrine, I'll just show pictures and give some comments & brief versions of stories.



Sacre Coeur was right near my hostel, and I spent a number of evenings sitting on the steps out front with other hostelers, looking out over Paris. There were invariably some guys with guitars singing English songs with strong foreign accents, and lots of bottles of wine around.



I have other pictures of the Louvre that are much prettier, but this one of the obnoxious crowd around the Mona Lisa, looking at their cameras instead of at the painting that they had elbowed their way up to, resting cameras on strangers heads, using their flash in a brightly-lit room on a painting protected by a glare-screen (about one flash every second)... this was too fascinating to me. I tried to get a photo from the side, with the whole huge crowd, but was scolded by a security lady: "It is not allowed to take pictures of people in France!"

ok.



Here's a bit of Notre Dame and the river Seine.



They light the Eiffel Tower up at night. It's actually quite cheery! The thing always looks so austere in photos, but it does this funny light display every hour at night, as seen here in a long exposure from the top of the Arc de Triumphe:



I visited both those places with this mess of people:



Our adventures, despite finding the only reasonably-priced beer in Paris during what the owner described as "A proper happy-hour!" that lasted 8 hours, were diverse. They also included a trip to Jim Morrison's grave:



We found a cat adoption agency on the way to the cemetery that would not allow me to pet the cats, because I wasn't eligible to adopt. I think they should have asked the cats how *they* felt about me visiting.

Here's another shot from the top of the Arc de Triumphe, of one of the 13 streets that intersect there:



My friends from Barcelona, Marion and Melissa, showed me around the parts of Paris they thought I ought to see, with occasional help from Melissa's boyfriend Timothy:



They pointed me towards the Modern Art Museum, which was totally rad. The best photo I have is this little metal-headed puppet who occasionally (just rarely enough to be shocking whenever it happens) gets whacked in the forehead with this huge bell:



The top of the puppet's head is clearly going to be chopped straight off in about 5 years. The title was also excellent: "Attempt to raise hell"

Marion & Melissa also pointed me towards the best ice cream in Paris, though we did not visit. I waited for a sunny day and went to buy a couple of scoops with a friend from the hostel named Cherry who was incapable of feeding herself. We had some trouble finding the ice cream place, and Cherry verbally doubted that we ever would... but agreed in the end that it was worth the hunt, when we sat out in this beautiful garden behind Notre Dame with some tasty, tasty ice cream:



Lana stopped into Paris while I was there. Twice. Once for a couple of hours on her way to London, and once between London and Bordeaux. As we had in Budapest, we enjoyed a lot of doing nothing and missing trains.

The Museums in Paris live up to their reputation. Here's the Thinker at the Rodin Museum, which was a good one, and in a beautiful garden & house:



That's all the pictures I'm posting, although I'm told that I'll probably appear on Gomio.com, which had a little promotional party at our hostel. At which I brought back some excellent old-school fashion... with a twist. Post a comment if you spot it!

My parents are going to be immensely disappointed if I don't mention the food & drink in Paris:

There is food in Paris! Some of it, I ate. Some of it, I did not. I sampled a few wines, but did not drink much of them. I had lots of cheese (especially a particularly sharp goat-cheese that was on everything I ever ate in any restaurant) and enjoyed it. The pastries and breads I consumed in similarly large amounts, and they were quite good as well. I also had some mediocre Italian food and some "mexican" food that, though tasty, wasn't very mexican, despite a promising salsa.

Last but not least, I stumbled across Gus Van Sant filming a movie. Which is pretty weird, cuz he and I both live in Portland, and that's a long way away.

-gcb

Next stop: Dublin