A note to travelers: If you have a good face, find a restaurant where a member of the opposite sex who is about your age will service *ahem* I mean serve you. I went to the student district for dinner the night after my arrival in Cologne and wandered into one place that sold a cheap calzone and was soon seated by a pretty girl and then served by another looker, both of whom were probably there on after-school jobs. Anyhow, despite my inability to speak German, they were keen to attend me and deliver an obscene number of complimentary bread rolls with my meal. The next night, hoping for a repeat, I came in and was served by an older woman. The service was blatantly normal and, more important, I only got half as many rolls. Now, maybe someone was dropping hints the night before or maybe I’m reading too much into it and the kitchen just happened to have a bunch of spare bread that night. I don’t know for sure, but, hey, what have you got to lose for trying? If it works out, you have pleasant company and everything works out better. If not, well, it’s a normal night.
As I’ve traveled more and more I’ve noticed how, wherever you go, people are generally the same. Yes, the sense of humor and maybe the values change, but people still have the same basic traits. They laugh. They cry. They cheat. They steal. They love. Everything. I have discovered very little else about these different places. During festivals and other cultural events, yes the differences will be stark, but otherwise not so. I guess that the only real benefit to travel is for business, special markets, study, and bragging rights.
I’m saying this because Cologne turned out to be a very normal city with people going about their daily lives (as they did in Rome and Venice and London and… well you get the point) without a care for the architectural and cultural wonders around them. Well, I wasn’t going to follow their example. Determined to enjoy the city’s exoticism, I set off to the Hiroshima Nagasaki park.
I walked through the shopping district and stopped by three very nice, grand churches and each one failed to move me. I ducked into a clothing store wanting to see if the styles actually looked anything like what they wear in New York as the sign outside advertised, only to discover that, despite the male mannequins in the window, they only sold girl’s clothing and, no, it looked nothing like the New York fashions. Only then did I realize just how bored I was. I had just seen a great church, but I really didn’t care. I had just walked unabashed and alone through a woman’s clothing store and didn’t bat an eye. Maybe it was only my periodical depression hitting me again, but I remembered feeling the same way in Rome as I strolled about the ancient ruins. I might just be a homebody, I thought. I don’t want to be, but maybe I am.
I soon came to the mother of all churches in Cologne: the Dom. It was impressive and beautiful, with it’s imposing scale, impossible to capture on my camera without having to cross to the other side of the street across the plaza, and the mesmerizing streaks of black on the stone that looked like burn marks crawling down the church’s spires.
Disappointed and dejected, I returned to my hostel to discover that I had totally forgotten to fill out the FAFSA and CSS Profile (necessary forms for applying for university financial aid) and that the deadline was in three days. Whoops. Well, that meant an early start the next day. In the meantime, I had a date with the girl I’d met in Rome. To be brief, it was cuddly and cozy despite the rain until we met up much later to go for drinks with her Mexican friend and two Australian guys. By the end of the night she left with an Aussie and I left, again, disappointed and dejected. I had a feeling that this would be a recurring theme during the trip. So, drunk and fatigued, I returned to the hostel around two in the morning to find the lights out and everyone asleep, or so I thought. I had just taken my shirt off and hung it in my locker when the bathroom door behind me opened, illuminating me and revealing yet another attractive girl. A little stunned and not just a little muddled, I started stammering a quiet apology, saying that I would get out of the way while she just sort of stared. Then a couple of shadows to my right stirred and spoke out to me. The girl from the bathroom moved to them and sat on their bed and they invited me over, so I deposited myself on the floor. These three (two girls and a guys) were all from Spain and were quite keen to talk to an American (I’m beginning to wonder why, I mean, what makes us so different?) and I realized that I still wasn’t wearing a shirt. I hugged my legs and crossed my arms over my chest as if I were some shy, half-naked girl. At least I felt like one. The guy introduced himself as Gael, the girl from the bathroom was named Adela, and the other girl was Paula, all visiting from their university in Granada. They offered to take me out drinking with them the next night. “Sure!” I said. “I’d love to.” I could always use good company.
The next day I settled myself into a nearby Starbucks, buying a mug of tea as an excuse to stay there (the hostel’s internet was pathetic), and started to work. I did the entire FAFSA and CSS forms in one go, doing my best to estimate our financial situation from what I knew and could gather from my parents across the pond. I did not leave my chair for six and a half hours. I didn’t really notice the time pass by, but I was stressed and even a little frightened, as this would have been my only chance at affording some of my universities. I could not believe that I had been so careless. Anyhow, after sitting for so long, skipping lunch, estimating the wazoo out of our funds, and being threatened with imprisonment and a hefty fine if any of the information was fraudulent, I was hungry, tired, and terrified of my unstable psychological state. I was only too eager to later go out for a few beers on the town with the Spaniards. We hopped from bar to bar, me mostly chatting with Adela who, wouldn’t you know it, was studying journalism and wrote a current events related blog. So we talked about music and writing as we walked through the shopping district, discovered that the pub-crawl that someone had suggested to them was rather pricy, and strolled with beers in hand (yes, it’s apparently legal in Germany to drink in public) back to the student district and its surplus of bars. Some time during our second stop, Paula started talking about a massage machine. Now, their English was passable, maybe even good, but I don’t think that she quite knew what she was saying when she called it an “orgasmatron.” Gael and I were almost on the floor laughing. From there we met with some of their other Spanish friends for cocktails (had my first mojito) and proceeded from there to yet another bar. Things were far more… interesting that night and I left satisfied and giddy.
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