Some images from Cologne this weekend

Most of Cologne was heavily celebrating Karneval this weekend, but I wasn't in that sort of mood to be surrounded by loud, racous, drunken party-making.

Here is my favorite bridge in Cologne on Saturday evening. I especially like it after dark once they turn the lights on. At a certain late hour in the early AM, they turn the lights off so you can't see it from the distance--not sure if they're saving electricity or what. If I'm seeing it on the way home on a Friday/Saturday and the lights are out, that's a signal that I stayed out too late. ;-)


On Saturday I went to our hole in the wall corner bar in the Cologne Deutz neighborhood near where I used to live. I refer to it as the Twilight Zone bar because people there are friendly. Often in my little corner of Germany, when you walk into a bar here, people don't recognize you so they turn around and stare. When I would go into a bar with my Spanish colleague and we would be speaking Spanish, this really baffled them so it would go silent, mouths open staring. Blah.

However, at the Twilight Zone bar, it's a strange little mixture of neighborhood people and always people start to talk to us, and I always learn very interesting things about life in Germany. Last night two ladies were on one side of us, and two single gentlemen so it was a group of six generally chatting and one of the women exclaims (in German), "a-ha, such an international group!" while pointing to each of us and saying the person's nationality. We were 2 Germans and 1 each: American, Australian, Dutch, and French.

On Sunday we watched a little bit of one of the parades. It was a little too chilly to be standing around outside for hours though.