Exploring Germany

Big Birds

Here we go again. Yes, those are passenger 747s out there, a whole row of them. Germany’s Lufthansa is the world’s largest operator of these old birds.

Did you know that the original 747(-100) was introduced in 1969? Boeing manufactured more than 1,500 of these big boys. American carriers abandoned the jumbo line in 2017.

Only a few dozen are still used as passenger planes. The rest have been scrapped, converted into freighters, or, as in the case of the Stockholm airport, converted into a hotel (Check out their “Jumbo Stay”). I can’t imagine that. Who can sleep on a 747?

Aachen, Germany

Aachen, Germany. Burial place of Charlemagne and bloody memory site from WW2.

Despite this train station pix, it’s really quite beautiful here. The city seems to be nestled into rolling forested hills. Hints of orange and yellow suggest autumn is in the air.

The geography is a bit more robust than what we’ve experienced in Belgium.

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Happy endings and not so happy endings

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Happy endings and not so happy endings

Vicki and I found two seats among the group. It was a warm crowd, members of a Methodist congregation from somewhere in the deep South, just a peach short of the Georgia line.

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A Bad Kohlgrub arrival

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A Bad Kohlgrub arrival

It was a short drive from Oberammergau to the village of Bad Kohlgrub. There, at the base of Hörnle Mountain, Marcus delivered Vicki and me to the Hotel Shillingshof. We pulled our rollybags out of the bus and waved goodbye to Marcus and the driver.

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We did but we didn't do Oberammergau

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We did but we didn't do Oberammergau

We walked into town dragging our rollybags. Across the river we found the village of Oberammergau rimmed by mountains as full of boutique hotels, galeries, and kitschy shops. I fingered my phone hoping to find an open wifi signal and a message with further instructions.

Steeple climb

Steeple climb

The awful happened.

Work on the Köln (Cologne) Cathedral sputtered and stalled. After 300 years of labor, this “structure of hope” outpaced its resources. It was unfinished, unfunded, and unroofed in places. The 25-meter wooden Domkran was idle atop of the South Steeple, an arm with no muscle. To make matters worse, the archives (read: building plans) were lost to French revolutionaries in 1794. The vision of a grand cathedral, conceived in the middle of the 13th century, was all but lost.

Structures of hope

Structures of hope

A light rain was falling in Köln (Cologne) when we hopped off the train. I zipped up my jacket and got final instructions. We aimed to meet at six for dinner.

“Do you have some Euros if you need to go to the bathroom?” She was taking good care of me.

I jangled the coins in my pocket. “All good.”

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Josephus knew about it and them

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Josephus knew about it and them

For those who are curious about the landscape of the biblical world, the Rhine River may seem to be a stretch, a reach, a foul ball. The Rhine (Grk Ρήνος, Lat Rhenus) is an unlikely entry in a Bible dictionary or atlas. It is unrecognized in the biblical text. And yet, this waterway and those who peopled its banks were known in the New Testament world, more by reputation than experience.

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This is us/them

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This is us/them

I sat with Moriah and Peter in a 160-year-old restaurant in Köln known as Brauerei zur Malzmühle. While we chewed crispy pork knuckle, grilled pork belly, and raw minced pork (do you smell a theme here?), a local family settled into a stained wooden table adjacent to ours. Somehow we stood out as foreigners and became a subject of their whispered conversation.