All distances on the Rhine are measured from the source. Today I caught my first glimpse at 714 km. I'll try to remember to make reference to these location markers if I can as I go up river.
The weather started out crummy this morning; overcast and cold. More like a California winter. The GPS did its usual dance sending me up hills and down roads which weren't the most direct. There are good uses, like finding a destination address and bad uses, like almost everything else. I'm hopeful that paralleling 15' from the waterway is going to make navigating pretty obvious. Sometimes, for various reasons, it will be necessary to deviate around obstacles which will up the risk of getting lost a bit. If I'm lost less, I won't feel so bad about stopping periodically along the way.
I'm staying in the Cologne Deutz hostel and it's huge. Of necessity, much less personal than the others I've stayed at but this one is staffed 24 hours a day. Tomorrow I'll try for Koblenz and it's hostel. This is a sweet system and they don't bat an eyelash at the bike. Holiday Inn didn't either, but because it's vacation time, and that was an all business town, the place was empty. Perhaps if it were their peak season they'd have sent me and my bike packing.
I wandered around Koln a bit. Took the subway after I figured out that you can't buy a subway ticket from a DB ticket machine. DB is the train system. Duhhh. Dinner was great. The contrast between the east and west is stark and a bit surprising. As I've mentioned in a previous post, consumerism has run amuck here. There are a large number of kids with hair that sticks straight up and many, young and old have really bad die jobs.
By the way, there appear to be more driving schools and hair dressers than any other businesses. The Germans are pretty intense when it comes to driving so the schools make sense, but what's the deal with all the hair places? And why the disconnect and all the bad hair I see? Maybe I'm just old.
Saw the Koln Dom; pictures below. At 6:00 pm the bells did a big production. The place is undergoing massive repairs.
The brass medallion is a Berlin artist's project to allow families and friends to document the places where Jews lived prior to the war, and to indicate to where and when they were taken by the Nazis.
There are quite a few opportunities for recreation and extensive public art.
The bridge across the Rhine which connects both sides of Koln has this fence covered pretty completely from end to end with padlocks.
Man there are a lot of noisy kids here in this lobby. Oh yeah, there is one down side to YOUTH hostels. I'm the outsider here, in more ways than one. Nice of them to have me here. The locations of these places is always great. I've been able to walk into downtowns in all cases so far. The number and variety of programs they have for kids is simply amazing. They make a huge commitment to kids.
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