On Deutschland and moustaches.

Germany is the best. I'm buzzing. Everything is great. I'm walking the street and I see old people actually sporting Kaiser moustaches from another era! This is the greatest of joys I can imagine. At the crosswalks the people stop and stand there until the man goes green, irrespective of whether there are cars coming or not. I'm not used to that level of obediance, so I must stand out. I just cross the street when it's safe like in most countries. When I do that though nobody follows me. They wait. It's not like anywhere else.

Everything here is cheap and beautiful and wonderful. I went to the city's most famous landmark: the giant Dom cathedral. Climbed right to the top of that thing, huffin', puffin' and hobbling up the 500ish stairs in the narrow, winding case. Wow, what a view. It's gorgeous. The afternoon sun blazing a path over the Rhine and into the city streets.

In the space outside the Dom, a street performer was wandering around dressed as Charlie Chaplin, doing the schtick to try for tourist tips. It looked like the guy had gone to great lengths to get his moustache just that little bit longer than would be historically accurate. I guess that look isn't as popular in Germany as it once was.

I walked back home to clear my camera. Ah, the joys of walking distance. Got back in no time and headed out again, checking out the Roman ruins that can be found throughout Köln. Found a space invader along the way. Then I went to EL-DE building: the former Gestapo prison. Wow. Real cells, real incriptions in the walls, the last pained thoughts of innocent inmates scratched in with anything from lipstick to fingernails.

This is what it's all about.

Battle Scars

I'm deep in Euro territory now and the injuries are starting to stack up. My right foot is totally fucked right now. Struggling to walk on it the last few hours. Not sure what I did to it. It's funny the whole injuries thing. Seems almost every fellow traveller I meet is carrying some niggle or another. There's always someone who's got a chronic cold, somebody with a limp, somebody coughing out a lung. It's the way of things.

Me, I'm doing okay about it all. Rode the train into Köln from Amsterdam. My streak of strange encounters with mildly famous Australians on trains has continued: first the Howling Bells on the train from London to Paris, and today I was in the same car as The Umbilical Brothers. They were mildly amusing to observe.

Train had tech problems so we had to switch, end up stuck on a cold platform, eating the skin off my dry lips for a good half hour, and late getting in but what does that matter. Köln is a lot warmer than Amsterdam. Amsterdam was like ice in my underpants. Couldn't walk the streets it was so bad. Plus there's that foot thing.

Goes nicely with my other injuries: mystery burn scar on my hand which looks increasingly worse, my usual skin irritation thing on my hands which is in full swing now, stiff neck and my cracked up lips.

Köln is pretty cool. I'm glad that I got clean linen this time. I was on a bad streak til Amsterdam. Seemed every hostel I went to I had to sleep in somebody's shadow. What can you do? Maybe my luck is changing.

I'm glad to be out of Amsterdam. I loved it there but I need to keep moving and it's nice here too. And it's quiet. I need to chill out for a while, get my mind back. Start concentrating now that I've got some space. Need to get writing again and leave behind all the mixed up thoughts I had in Amsterdam.