Craig in Cologne, Germany for Europride

Thursday, July 4, 2002

I accompanied my mom on the S-Bahn (elevated train) to the Frankfurt Airport and through check-in, then bid farewell at security. As I found out much later, someone was arrested off of Mom's flight before it left the gate in Frankfurt, and the whole plane was evacuated for a search, resulting in a lot of anxious nerves and a couple hours delay. There were no problems after that, thankfully.

I caught a train from the airport to Bonn for a brief stop on my way to Cologne. In Bonn I wanted to check out the city (which is surprisingly small) and its Museum of Contemporary History, which covers Germany since World War II. It was interesting and informative, but I would have gotten a lot more out of it if I could understand German, since all the newspaper clippings, videos, etc. were lost on me.

From Bonn I took the train to Cologne, where I had a few hours to kill before my host would be home, so I put my bags in a locker and explored the center of town. Cologne's dominant site is its cathedral, which towers over the city. Said to be the largest high gothic cathedral in the world, it was completed in 1880 and miraculously survived Cologne's extensive bombings. I was unable to fit the entire height of the cathedral into one photo, so the following is two pictures merged together:

Here you can see the inside of the cathedral. Notice how small the people are? The glass windows were of course stained beautifully.

After exploring the cathedral and nearby shops, I took the U-Bahn (subway) to Christian's home. I'd met him online, and he generously agreed to let me stay with him. Here's his photo:

I napped while Christian went to his choir rehearsal, then we went out with some friends of his, all of whom spoke excellent English and were very cool and friendly. After a few drinks, Christian was tired and wanted to go home, and had no extra key to offer me. However, I had the energy and interest to stay out, and so did his friend Dirk. So Dirk agreed I could stay with him that night, and we headed off to another bar. He gave me a tour of sorts of the gay bars, and we stayed up quite late.

Friday, July 5, 2002

After sleeping in and having breakfast with Dirk, I walked to Christian's place, napped a bit more, and then headed out with him, his cousin, and a friend of his who were also staying with him. We went to a gay boy scount camp that was set up across the Rhine river from center of the city. The walk across the river was nice, and the people were friendly. The walk back was beautiful because the cathedral is lit up at night, so it stands out in almost an ethereal way.

Christian didn't have the energy to stay out late (he'd been volunteering at an info booth most of the day) but his cousin and I went out together to a dance party sponsored by Janus, which is a gay sports association. It was really fun, with 3 dance floors and lots of people having a good time. One of the dance floors was playing schlager, which is traditional German music, to which lots of people sing along. It was cool to see. I was really struck by how strong Cologne's identity is. They have thier own songs celebrating the city which everyone knows (songs from Carneval/Mardi Gras, which is big there), and they have their own beer (Kölsch) which everyone drinks.

Anyway, we had a great time, and I also met a fun Greek guy (German, but of Greek descent) named Georg, who was visiting from Aachen.

Saturday, July 6, 2002

After sleeping in a bit, I called Michael, the German guy I had met in Amsterdam. He told me he and his boyfriend Chris would be coming to Cologne for Europride. He was just about to arrive by car with a co- worker of his named Jeff, who's actually American. So I met up with them at the cathedral, and we explored a bit and climbed to the top as well, which was exhausting, but impressive of course. Then Chris arrived (he lives in Dortmund) and we met up with him, and also with their friend Dieter, with whom they were staying. We walked around for a while and had a snack and coffee together. Here's most of the group, from left to right: Jeff, Chris, me, and Michael:

We had some Thai food together (reminded me of home) and then Jeff took off to return to Amsterdam, and Dieter took off as well, so Chris, Michael and I danced at an outdoor area for a while:

Then I went with Chris and Michael as they went to Dieter's place to drop off their stuff, and then we met up with Dieter again and went out to the bars. Being the night before Europride, there were tons of people out on the street overflowing from the bars. It was a fun crowd. Since we were all getting along so well, and I didn't have a key to Christian's place, I crashed at Dieter's place that night.

Sunday, July 7, 2002

This was the day for the big parade. Here I am with Dieter watching the parade:

Here are more shots from the parade:

               

There was a lot of political lobbying, criticism, and parody at the parade. My favorite was these guys, who made a parady of a politician's name, sounding like cleaning up, so they had a squad of cleaning guys in uniforms like this, "cleaning up" the crowd:

After the parade we went dancing in the open-air dance areas:

       

Michael had to return to Amsterdam, and I had to go to Christian's to shower and change, but Chris and I were staying one extra night, so we met up at an open-air dance party in a park and hung out there. After a while we headed back to Dieter's place again for the night.

Monday, July 8, 2002

Chris, Dieter and I had a late, leisurely breakfast together before bidding farewell, then I went to Christian's place to get my stuff and bid farewell to him. I was so relaxed after the weekend that I hadn't really paid attention to the details on getting to Paris. The trains are only once every two hours, and there was almost no space left on the train I took at 4:00pm. But it worked out okay. It was a 4 hour ride, most of which was spent getting to Brussels. From Brussels to Paris is high speed.

In Paris I stayed with Bernard, Francois, and Laurent, whom we had met at the gay carnival thing our last night in Paris. We drove to the Marais for dinner at a good French restaurant, where I had a heavy french meal complete with good red wine, and chocolate cake with decaf coffee. It felt like the thing to do my last night in Paris, but I hadn't thought ahead to the fact that we were all tired and headed home right after dinner. After a meal like that my last night in Paris, I wasn't really ready to go to sleep, but I didn't realize this until I was lying in bed and everyone else was doing the same. Without a key to the apartment, I couldn't venture out on my own, but I wished I could have wandered the streets a bit more and sat at a cafe for a bit. Eventually I fell asleep.

Tuesday, July 9, 2002

Bernard woke me as he left, and I showered and got myself out the door to the Metro to the regional train to the airport. It all went smoothly, and I spent my last euros on breakfast once I was at the gate. I arrived in SFO at 2:45pm, where Geoff was waiting for me with the new Volkswagon GTI he'd just bought the night before. It was really nice to see him, although it took a while to adjust to being back home after so long!

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