Auld Lang Rhine
When I first started travelling solo, I tended to pick a destination and stick with it. Early excursions to London, Rome and Prague were just that, self-contained city breaks. But over the years, I’ve endeavoured to see more, to explore further and to be a bit more ambitious in scope. I no longer look for destinations, but for jumping off points.
Ideally, I like to spend at least a day in a place to get a proper feeling for it, to photograph it in its best light—essential as most of these early jaunts were to places new to me. But this was different: I’d already spent ample time in the cities I was planning to visit and this trip was intended only as a refresher, an indulgence, a coda. And so it was that I set out to tour Bonn, Köln and Düsseldorf in one afternoon.
Although modest in size compared to Berlin, Hamburg and Munich, they’re still big cities, and closely clustered along the Rhine they can at times feel like neighbourhoods in one sprawling metropolis. At the planning stage, to save on time and money, I’d intended to take the path of least resistance, tackling them in sequence as I travelled downriver, but in practice I would have to double back on myself, transiting Köln three times in the process.
Consulting Trainline, I planned to pick up the Eurostar at Aachen, but for some reason tickets weren’t available through the app. Nor did they appear as results on either type of machine at the station—despite displaying on the departure board—leaving me with no alternative but to approach the desk and ask a human. “That’s too expensive,” she insisted without divulging the actual price, instead booking me on a regional train that left half an hour later and took twice as long. “So I have to say thank you and wish you a nice day.”
I sat at a table with a large family, joining them just as the youngest child discovered a clump of chewing gum stuck to the sleeve of his T-shirt. He spent almost the entire journey trying to pick it off, all the while bickering with his brother in a seamless mix of German, English and a third language I couldn’t identify. Then, with spectacular comic timing, just as the announcement came that we were approaching Kölner Hauptbahnhof, he found yet more stuck to his jacket. “Come on, man! Come on, man!”
You see Kölner Dom—Germany’s most visited tourist attraction—before you even leave the station, a great Gothic colossus overshadowing the glass-fronted foyer. With the exception of a school trip to the zoo, all my memories of the city were centred on the cathedral: Christmas market coach trips and games of chase-tag around the Domplatz with my brother. Immediately, however, it was clear that the square had changed dramatically since I was last in town.
It had been reconfigured in the 2010s to update the area, remove its more brutalist design features and improve its perception after a period of decline and disrepute. The Domplatte, a literal plate, had been inserted in the 1960s, boxing in the mound and creating an enlarged pedestrian platform, but ironically making it less accessible (or visible) from street level. First, a wider and more open staircase was installed, before the plate was modified, access streamlined and the cathedral allowed to dominate from its pedestal once more.
I queued at security in order to take a look inside, my bag packed to bursting with camera equipment, then attempted to climb the tower for a better view of the city. However, short on time and instructed at a second checkpoint to stow my rucksack back at the train station before proceeding, I changed my mind and took the road bridge over to the other bank of the river instead. Why climb Kölner Dom when the whole point of visiting the city was to look at the cathedral? Especially when visibility was so poor and the wind so strong. I returned to the station along the iconic Hohenzollernbrücke—the thousands of glinting, engraved padlocks surely doubling its weight.
From Köln, it’s only 30 minutes to Bonn—once the capital of West Germany and, between 1990 and 1999, the seat of government after reunification. I wasn’t as well aquatinted with Bonn as I had been with Köln—or for that matter its successor, Berlin—but I recognised it instantly, even identifying the specific street on which we’d parked decades earlier. I’d recently read about Bonn in Ben Coates’ The Rhine, about his travels from sea to source, and was keen to spend time in the city he’d so enthusiastically endorsed.
It was suitably grand and impressive, though the compact centre struggled to match the sprawl of stately suburbs I’d passed through to get there. I was too early for the cherry blossom, the pavement cafes were as bare as the trees and the colourful buildings were darkened with damp, but wild parakeets flew overhead and if I hadn’t photographed so many in Seville the previous year I could’ve happily wiled an hour away in their company. But with the sky only darkening, I decided to once again focus on the cathedral.
Which left Düsseldorf. There was a very real threat of rain at this point, but I was able to make my way to the city’s handsome Altstat before the first drops started to fall. I’ve always had a soft spot for Düsseldorf, and while I might have spent a spring day dining out in Little Tokyo or admiring the 21st century editions to its skyline, I wanted to use the little daylight remaining to reacquaint myself with the historic quarter. The Rathaus and Basilica are both beautiful, but my attention was grabbed by something else.
Bert Gerresheim‘s Stadterhebungsmon was commissioned to commemorate the city’s 700th anniversary and does so with a ghoulish depiction of the Battle of Worringen—the cavalry riding skeletal horses and the soldiers stalked by Death himself. I waited patiently for a local camera crew to finish recording, hoping to quiz them on its detail and design, but they were more interested in reminiscing about past assignments in my native Scotland to say much about the statue. They’d been particularly taken with Lewis and Harris, but I had to confess I’d never been.
It was raining heavily now, but I decided to leave the relative shelter of the Altstadt and walk a section of the promenade, watching a never-ending stream of freight being shipped up and down the Rhine. Once upon a time, I’d done much the same—my brother and I teaching ourselves to rollerblade from one end of the esplanade to the other. I’d considered renting a pair as I’d once done in France, on Nice’s sun-dappled Promenade des Anglais, but I was older and colder now and thought better of it. Besides, it wouldn’t be as much fun on my own.
As I waited for the next train back to Aachen, I couldn’t help but feel a little lost and alone. Once again, I’d expected vivid flashbacks on each stop of my journey only to greet them with a vague sense of familiarity. Ultimately, though, the true test was still to come. For the next day was going somewhere I’d definitely remember. Home, no less—or one of them. And what’s more I’d have some company and a memory aid. I was to meet a childhood friend in Roermond—someone I’d never forgotten.