Churches, Perfumes and a Postcard from the Rhine...

The Köln Dom (Cathedral) looms large as soon as one exits the train station. It’s a mammoth structure built on a raised square. Its twin steeples rise heavenwards characterizing the sky line. While roaming the streets, whenever I was in doubt as to where exactly I was heading (which was rather frequent), I searched the sky line for the twin steeples, from which I re-affirmed my geographical bearings and continued to trudge along.

The Dom was built in stages over the last seven hundred odd years and is the most significant Roman Catholic establishment in all of Western Europe. And before one Gustave Eiffel decided to immortalize the Paris skyline with a structure of steel, the Dom’s twin steeples were Europe’s tallest man made structure.

Köln was raised to the ground almost overnight, when the Allied forces carpet bombed the Rhine Valley. The morning after, surviving Kölners awoke to rubble filled streets and raised buildings, amidst all this devastation though the Dom remained unscathed. Whether it was the selective marksmanship of the pilot who let loose the bombs or whether it was Providence, is something I guess we will never have an answer to.

From that night to how it stands today, Köln like all of Western Germany rebuilt itself, first with the largesse of the Marshal Plan and then by virtue of the strong Deutsche Mark. But Köln did so, with a distinct sense of character and cosmopolitan spirit. Köln struck me as a multi colored patch rug, with the aura of antiquity jostling with the spirit of the modern, the verve of a university town with the officiousness of being at the heart of a trade route, the plurality of a liberal society with the languid air of a small sleepy town.

The high ceiling Dom is filled with soft light, touched as if by an artist’s brush as it filters in through the large stained-glass windows. I lit a candle in thanksgiving for being where I was, and sat in the pews lost in the myriad colors of the stained-glass.

The place brought back memories of the St.Francis Dom in Goa. I have always had two distinct mental compartments about Churches, based on which side of the Christian Schism they find themselves. Catholic Churches have always struck me as cold and somber with the feel of a mausoleum (even if it had an air of gaiety!). On the other hand Protestant churches, have always seemed bright, airy and full of life (even when they were not!). This neat mental pigeon holing has as much to do with aesthetics of Architecture, as with the fact that being Martinian it is almost incumbent on us to be prejudiced against anything even closely resembling Don Bosco, and yes that includes Churches of the Catholic faith. So well that’s me and my blinkered self!

I spent the afternoon, sitting on a grass knoll which lines the bank of the Rhine. It was warm by European standards and people stretched out on rugs, soaking in the sun. Small ferries traveled up to the Köln Zoo and back, docking at the little pier in front of the knoll. I read a short story volume of Saki - mostly small pieces, running into a few pages at most. I had once read somewhere that the most unprofitable job in all literature was to try and write a ‘criticism of Saki’s works’, because ‘there is nothing to criticize, Saki is simply …to be read and …to be enjoyed’.

Kids on skateboards raced along the promenade at the edge of the water, while the sedate elders cycled leisurely. I looked at the ferries, old dull ones with fading paint and small tables unremarkably dotting the deck. There were bright and festive steamers too, with large decks almost at water level, bright streamers running across it and a brass band playing snatches of popular numbers. They reminded me of Florentino Ariza, probably the most uncharacteristic steam ship operator in all the rivers of this world.

‘And how long do you think we can keep up this coming and going?’
Florentino Ariza had kept his answer ready for fifty- three years, seven months and eleven days and nights.
‘Forever’, he said.

‘Forever’ I thought to myself.

When the first streaks of gray filled the sky and the steamers docked for the night, I set out in search of a Chemist shop attributed to have created ‘Kölnisch wasser’, considered Köln’s greatest contribution to the modern world. Very simply ‘Kölnisch Wasser’, is a sort of perfumed spring water, first created over two hundred years ago for the German Gentry who inexplicably had a strange aversion towards bathing!

The most generous patrons of ‘Kölnisch Wasser’ though, were the fashion conscious French who exotically re-christened it ‘Eau de Cologne’. The name stuck and the French perfumers usurped this little known Rhineland product, making it their own.

Labels: Travel