Smelling Cologne: Deep in the stink of it (a continuing series)

The first thing you notice as you descend the stairs (unless the escalator is working, which it often isn’t) is the smell of cigarette smoke, sometimes the stale, raunchy odor of walls and floors and rooms filled far too many times with the stuff so that now the simply, dirty stench has permeated the fiber of the place and will likely remain there unless or until the city fathers find the money to repaint the place, not likely to happen unless that particular lobby needs greasing. On other occasions the smell is recent, even active as it was this past Sunday when HH and I went for a ride on the public transportation in and around Cologne.

I have a bone to pick with the Cologne city fathers and with my fellow citizens: I don’t care one bean in hell if people want to smoke – it’s none of my business – I’ve smoked most of my adult life but that right to smoke ends where my nose begins (to snatch an old saw) and particularly so in the already dank, airless tubes and tunnels of the public transportation system where prominent “No Smoking” signs are posted everywhere. Maybe Sunday was a fluke, but in every station and on every platform on which we stood, waited or walked through, there were sleazeballs smoking. Old sleazeballs, young sleazeballs, all shapes and varieties of sleazeballs. Those suckers didn’t care – they needed to suck their stuff and damn the rest of us who were trapped in the subterranean tubes with them. I’m angry at these sleazeballs for being careless, selfish, well … sleazeballs, but I’m also angry at the authorities for failing to even make an attempt to enforce the laws against smoking in the transit system.

The quality of life in a city is measured in the small things as well as the grand and I am beginning to find some serious shortcomings here – smoking isn’t the only problem that needs to have some light shined on it!

More anon …

Yesterday ...

We bounced on black bubbles, cobblestones smooth and ancient, peddling from the market in the warming sun, my basket popped and creaked and sang to me of streets that are almost home.

Smelling Cologne ...

Yesterday the sun was shining from behind a soft gray cover of mist, cooling the air and scenting it with celestial dust that made you want to breath very deeply and move just a little faster than usual.

The cold's come back

I had decided a few months ago that I wouldn’t be planting any new flowers in my flowerbed at the Brüsseler Platz until it was really and fully Spring. My German fellow gardeners scoffed at my timidity and went full-steam ahead with their plantings. Following more than a week of bright, warm weather - this week it snowed.

HH and I went to the playground today in the Brüsseler Platz and after tossing the odd dog dropping from the beds we set about working our way around the square from one side, where one finds the Hallmackenreuther Café, to the opposite side and the Café Chinoiserrie. These two bar/cafes are both memorable and to have one on each side of this space is a blessing.

Some days I feel like sipping the slow buzz at Hallmackenreuther - slim smokers with laptops and things to do, and some days I find myself in a Chinoiserrie state of mind, more contemplative, herbal tea in a warm cozy corner.

Today it was neither of these as HH wanted to be outside, to rock and rock and rock he did for a long, long, longer time than I could hold on. The playground vehicle he mounted himself on resembled a huge seesaw resting on railroad-strength steel springs. He announced that this playground contraption was the Continental Airlines direct flight from Cologne to New York and so we got on board and HH, as pilot, began what might have been a realistic 8-hour recreation of the actual transatlantic flight, had I not finally lifted him from his ersatz cockpit and carried him home for dinner.

The cold had reached deep down inside me, found every single slip of an opening in my coat and snuggled it’s damp, chilled nearly solid air up next to my very bones. If I don’t have pneumonia tomorrow morning it will be a minor miracle. HH on the other hand was all decked out in his snow suit and except for his hands, which were as cold as the ice-cold metal grips on his playground aircraft, he was as warm as toast. Why is it that we dress our children so much more sensibly than we do ourselves?

During the course of our flight to New York a number of my fellow gardeners passed by and we chatted about mulch and late snows and what a chicken I was not to plant anyway.

Sitting in the playground on the Brüsseler Platz on a Saturday afternoon in Cologne is just about the best way I know to get in touch with my neighborhood. Recently I was speaking with a friend about schools and had some questions. She told me in a very matter-of-fact tone, that I needed to spend more time on the playground. I’m sure someone has written a thesis paper on the subject but it was and is still remarkable to me the amount of work and communication and networking that takes place on the playground while our children are burning calories at a mercifully rapid rate.

Today was satisfying on many levels. I got a chance to chat briefly with some of my neighbors and in the process allow myself to feel almost at home here and HH got the chance to play as loudly and long as he wanted. There is something about being out of the house, even with cell phones, that changes the nature of play, whether it’s between adults or children, or in our case, between a very little boy and a not so young father. Today in the dingy cold of a winter afternoon, HH and I had a handful of minutes together that were priceless. It was worth the cold and more.

© GermanDiary 2007

New face ...

I don't normally write about fashion here but I've begun some research on the subject in the course of which I came across this model. I don't know here name but she was the stand-out a few nights back at the "Chic Belgique" fashion show here in Cologne. A number of young Belgian designers teamed up with local stores from the Belgian Quarter in Cologne for the the show. Everything this model wore that night looked good ... It could have been the luck of the draw but I think it was her.

Note: The terrible pictures here are mine - taken with a small format digital camera from the corner of the room at maximum zoom.

Smelling Cologne

How do you describe the scent of a city?

Recently a regular reader (you know who you are) left a comment here, the subject escapes me at the moment, but it started me thinking about something I’ve been noodling over ever since: Does this city have an identifiable scent?

I live in Cologne - also know as Köln, Koeln, Colonia – I’ve seen it written and spelled a number of different ways. It seems the word “cologne” entered the public vernacular a century or so ago as a generic term defining a lightly scented liquid, not as concentrated as perfume. The original Eau de Cologne, or Cologne water, was invented by Jean-Marie Farina and produced here in Cologne in the 18^th century and was a favorite scent of the Emperor Napoleon among many others. One can still buy a fairly direct descendant of the original from the French firm Roger & Gallet under the name Jean-Marie Farina scent.

So much for the word “cologne” and how this ancient city’s name has become associated with the world of fragrance, now on to the question of just how the city smells.

Over the course of the next few weeks I’ll be making notes of locations and their smells around town and will attempt to come up with an overall description of the aroma of modern Cologne.

Consider this a work in progress…