Köln 10 November 2001 I woke up on time and everything this morning to go to Köln (Cologne). The trip there took about three hours. When we arrived, there was so much fog that you couldn't see the Rhein or the tops of the spires, but it cleared out pretty quickly. Our leader from the foriegn students' office (these excursions are organized specifically for foreign students) gave us a short tour in the Altstadt. We saw the Dom (it's kind of hard to miss), the Rathaus. If they hadn't had a rehearsal going on, we would've seen the inside of one of the Romanesque churches, too. There were a couple weddings at the Rathaus, and it seemed like the family waited right outside the door until the couple came out. Then they threw confetti all over the newlyweds and whipped out the champagne. It was fun to watch people who were so happy. In the afternoon, we could go to the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum. My brochure says that "the collection of medieval painting ... presents an almost seamless overview of the development of panel painting in Cologne between 1300 and 1550". There was an entire floor of panels, mostly triptychs. Only one of my friends even came to the museum and she fled after she saw the first room full of panels. She should've explored some more because the other three exhibition floors were quite different. (I learned how to recognize St. Francis, though.) The two floors above had Baroque and 18th-19th century paintings. Then they had a special exhibition in the ground floor which was called "Miracle de la couleur". A guy named Corboud collected all these paintings and loaned them permanently to the city of Cologne so that they would stay together. His collection is of Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist paintings, 1860 to 1900 or so. (Since I've never heard of Neo-Impressionism before, I'm thinking that Neo-Impressionism is Post Impressionism translated badly in the museum brochure.) A lot of really impressive stuff. There was a lot of pointilism, so people were often backing away from paintings to get a better view, absorbed in the painting and not looking to see if anyone was standing behind them. It was pretty crowded and there were some really loud guided tours going on. In the upper floors, I got as many rooms away from the tour groups as I could and then revisited the rooms I'd missed. I only had two hours total so I was a bit rushed. Reading the brochures now, I realized I didn't see some paintings they have by artists I like a lot, but it's okay. Here are a few pictures from Köln.
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