Cologne Part 1: Fluid Time and Disorderly Beauty

I am officially half done my trip. I announce it with pride, as though I've accomplished something wonderful and praise-worthy, as if I were on some noble quest like Frodo, or Shrek, or Nemo's dad. And maybe I am but just don't know it yet.

I certainly don't feel any older or wiser - if anything I've regressed back into a childlike state. Today I wandered around town gaping at everything I came across, and then I bought an icecream so as to fit in with all these icecream-gorging Germans. I gleefully devoured the thing, deliberately taking my time so that it would get all drippy and gooey and sticky and I'd make a total mess of myself. It was terrific.

I will say this with some shame: I've started counting down the days before I come home. It's not a question of wanting to skip the next two and a half weeks, but more in that I'm looking forward to looking back on this trip. A strange notion, but very true. This entire experience has caused me to understand time as more fluid than human beings treat it. At any given moment, we are free to experience and explore any point in time of our choosing, either the past through our memories, the future through our imagination, and of course the present through our actions within it. It's a wonderful thing, really. But I'm getting off topic. I know what you really want: pictures! They are somehow out of sequence, but true beauty spurns order.

I have to say, Cologne is breathtaking.

I was never very keen on the whole love lock phenomenon; a little cheesy for my taste. And yet, standing before the actual fencing crushed under the weight of all that love was kind of spectacular.

My view in the Köln Philharmonic. I didn't get any pictures of the actual production, because you never want to be that guy, but it was good one. I was too far away to tell, but I'm reasonably sure a number of the tutu-wearing dancers were men. It was a comedy - who knew dancers could also be tricksters?