Yesterday I basically passed out when I hit the bed. I didn't have the
energy to undress or brush my teeth or anything. I eventually woke up
enough to do these things at some time in the morning, and Inna left at
5am to go back to the states (flying out of Cologne).
I finally
got up around 8:30 am or so, showered and traipsed downstairs to check
email and try to plan the day a little. I gave up on planning and went
to the Dom, the miraculously-preserved gothic cathedral that Dominates
the landscape here. The Dom was beautiful in the early morning light,
quiet, and mostly empty. And of course I ran out of batteries as soon as
I started taking pictures. So, I went on a quest and found a place that
looks a lot like a Best Buy and bought 4 AAs for about 5 euro.
After
trying to follow various walking tours poorly marked on maps, I gave up
and just walked around. Since the town was so damaged in WWII, the city
has rebuilt, and the town feels very young. Outside of the fact that
everything is in German, and there are cobbles, it could pass for an
upscale suburb of Chicago, even.
Eventually coming back to the
Dom, I sat and read a copy I'd made of what Lonely Planet had to say
about Cologne. A guy came up and spoke to me in German, asking where I
was from. He didn't speak any English, so I had to use my incredibly
sparse and grammatically incorrect German to try to communication. He's
Kurdish, 35, and works in a restaurant here. He thinks I'm very pretty
and objected to my assertion that I wanted to walk with a "halb-metre"
between us. He also commented on my "Angst" (fear) which was my
discomfort...I was somewhat uncomfortable. I didn't find him attractive
and didn't want to lead him on, and I'm told in
more...religious...countries, that showing skin was taken as an
invitation. So, I was a bit worried. He wanted to hold my hand and I
shied away and he talked about how in Germany if people are not married
they'll decide to have sex with each other after only knowing each other
an hour. This happens in the states, too, I suppose, but I assume it's
mostly local to a certain age bracket, i.e. my students. He said he had
a Ukranian girlfriend for 6 months and asked if/when I'd had a
boyfriend (very annoyingly, Freund is ambiguous as either boyfriend or
male friend). He said I seemed confident and was good at explaining what
I meant with body language and what German I could cobble together. I
had no idea what the word in German for "safe" was so I had trouble
explaining that I disagreed with his assessment of Copenhagen as being a
ghetto (same word in English and German), even though it was dirty
(schmutzig). From what I gathered, Cologne is very multicultural and
liberal, unlike regions of germany like Munchen (Munich) and Bavaria.
We
parted ways and I felt sort of bad for being a typisch (typical)
American, raised in our culture of fear...but this kind of wraps into a
conversation (rather inappropriate) I'd had in the castle with math boys
about how I know a LOT of women who've been raped, and I have worked
very hard to be very careful around men.
:/
And now I'm
hiding inside to recover from my sunburn. I'll probably venture forth in
a bit to scrounge up dinner and maybe check out the cathedral of St
Ursula who was killed by an arrow after getting married and trying to
retain her chastity. Weird.
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