So, I guess I’m writing this entry several days late but two days in advance. As way of explanation, it’s Tuesday. I’m going to get to internet on Thursday. But the things I shall be recording will involve the doings of the past weekend. So let me get to describing my surroundings. I’m in my backyard, sitting comfortably in the shade of our bamboo plants (yes, bamboo plants in the Netherlands) and watching the birds, as my headphones play "Leaving on a Jet Plane" into my ears (it’s set to play my "Summer ’08" playlist). For some reason every time I come outside it starts to get breezy and overcast. So I may be going back in a bit. Surprisingly enough, it hasn’t rained too much or drizzled at all in the past few days. Speaking of the past few days, let me start on Saturday.
Saturday: First pic is the one I took the day I went, the second of the cathedral is one my da took when he went a few weeks ago.
The family and I drove up to Cologne, Germany. The drive took about an hour or two, and once there, we took to a parking garage, unloaded our backpacks, and prepared to walk to the cathedral. What greeted me there was something on such a scale as to leave me awestruck. The twin spires of the Cologne Cathedral stretched to the sky, ascending into the heavens on the backs of ancient, long-dead saints whose benevolent gestures were occasionally made unclear by the fluffs of distant, roosting pigeons. The gray sky only made the age-old building more imposing, the spiked towers proclaiming the aloofness of a God far beyond the ken of man. Bah, forget "beyond the ken of Man," no, these towers proclaimed haughty superiority, rather like a creaky, powerful seneschal to an aloof and mysterious king. God was up, God was far, God loomed above, meting out divine punishment on ignorant, unknowing mortals.
Speaking of mortals, the plaza that stood at the base of the cathedral was teeming with life. Tourists of all sorts congregated there, oohing and ahhing over the architecture, or watching the mimes that stood stock-still in various costumes and face paints. A man in silver-gray paint and robes stood like a statue of a king of old. He stood stock still, a small brass jug at the base of his portable platform clinking with the occasional coin as someone paused to take a photo. A man in a British Navy costume out of Pirates of the Carribean stood there as well, while a woman dressed as an angel faced the opposite direction. All of the mimes attracted attention, but the other distinguishing patrons of the square were several artists who knelt on the stone ground and sketched out reproductions of famous artwork. However, the cathedral loomed over it all, still the never-moving centerpiece of generations. However many different food stalls sailed in and out, however many different mime-characters took to their platforms in the square, however many pigeons came and sat on the ancient Roman fountain in the square, the square, the cathedral, and the fountain would remain the same. The darkness of the stones ensured that.
But back to the cathedral. Both saints and gargoyles were nestled in every available crevice and niche. There were more saints than gargoyles, though. Inside the cathedral’s surprisingly small doors, the ceilings arched up dozens of feet to various points. Of course, the cathedral was in the typical cross-shaped layout with the Shrine of the Magi at the very back of the nave. But we’ll get to that in a bit. Rows and rows of lit candles flickered around a shrine where wooden statues of Mary, Jesus, and several bystanders showed the scene of Mary holding Jesus’s crucified body after the body was taken from the cross. So, the emaciated form of the painted-wood Jesus lay in the shrine above the rows of candles, lit in prayer for people around the world.
Beyond and to the right of the kneelers and candles was the main length of church and pews. The pews were old, not as old as the cathedral itself, obviously, but old-looking indeed. Hell, anything looks old to me, I’m 15! In any case, the pews and their kneelers led to the crossing point of the cross-shaped building, where the priest stood. Forgive my ignorance of Catholic terminology. Beyond the crossing point stood the gold-covered Shrine of the Three Kings, where the bodies (or at least several key parts of the legendary three kings of the New Testament- you know, Kings with Gold, Myrrh, and Frankincense) were interred. Those of you who have read "Lamb" will remember the names Balthazar, Melchior, and… erm, I forgot the last one.
In any case, the shrine is truly a thing of shining gold and jewels. In fact, the only thing that it falls behind in the shinyness category is the shrine that I saw in Hong Kong where a shred of the Buddha was supposedly kept. Funny how the worshipping/glorification styles of religions can overlap. I mean, okay, Christians aren’t worshipping the Magi, but still. Anyhow, the coffins were gilded with gold, if they weren’t solid gold themselves. Before priests began the Mass, they would make a little bow towards the three coffins in the shrine.
You know, it’s kind of funny. These coffins are being paid extreme respect, but these kings didn’t really do much. I mean, sure, they probably financed young Jesus’s lifestyle, and they were, I guess, some of the first Christians, but what were they really? Not many people know. Astrologers, some speculate, right? Well, if they were astrologers, doesn’t that go against the whole concept of… well, a lot of Christianity? You don’t see my pastor going around reading the stars. And all they did was follow the stars. I guess they were "told by God" that the baby Jesus was born to be a King over all, but still. What about the shepherds that came to worship the God-made-child? I don’t see a shrine to them anywhere. Just because they didn’t give major material gifts doesn’t mean they weren’t worthy of recognition for being believers in Christ, or God, or at least following Angel orders. It doesn’t make much sense! Sometimes those little bits of Christian history amuse/confuse me. Please don’t hit me, those of you with determined religious beliefs… *winces*
Anyhow, that’s the main body of the cathedral. To the right of the crossing-point stood a large statue of St. Christopher with Jesus on his shoulder. The poor saint looks absolutely agonized, carrying the cherub-faced 100 ton (well, I’m elaborating on the original story, of course) Jesus on his back. The guy looks absolutely pitiful. And the Jesus statue looks almost fiendish, smiling there while His weight is causing this guy agonizing pain. Again, another wonder of the Church. Because of the Three Kings Shrine, this cathedral has kind of become a place for travelers, hence the addition of the St. Christopher statue.
Beside the statue is the entrance to the crypts, where rich people and priests were buried through the ages. It’s distinctly chillier down there, and I was glad to get out of there quickly. I mean, it was well-lit, but it was still… weird. You couldn’t see anything- it was just one small room with fairly blank walls (blank but for the names engraved on them), but the idea was still creepy. Out of the crypts, we crossed the edge of the crossing-point to walk down the left arm of the cross. That is, if we’re talking about left being left when you walk from the bottom to the top of the cross. So, if the cross was standing upright, the left arm if you were looking at it. Down there was a small chapel that housed the oldest crucifix in Europe. As is the typical design of cathedrals, the pews, the priest-speaking area, and the nave aren’t the only part. Around the main body is a surrounding area where there are biers of dead Archbishops and other figures as well as various small shrines to several saints. Portions of tall stone walls and even parts of the arching ceiling had Latin and German all over them.
Î haven't the foggiest of what it means, but that's up for translation! Have fun! I just took a picture of the shiny latin. XD
Large biers with the typical stone effigy lying on their tops were the resting places of at least one knight of ages ago and several archbishops, whose names were recorded on the effigies, biers, or the wall. After going around and looking at the beautiful heraldic mosaics (mosaics of various family crests on the floor) on the floor as well as the dead archbishops and others, we escaped outside once again, to the main plaza and the surrounding area.
In the square we rested a while, then headed off to the Roman-German Museum, where, for the most part, the good parts of the informational placards were in German. They translated the basics for those English speakers, but I was glad to have been able to read the German. There are so many Roman relics from the area in and around Cologne- Jupiter columns, tombstones, carriage fittings (enough of the carriage fittings remained to actually reconstruct one), earthenware, glass, burial urns (there were a couple with the ashes still sealed inside), sign-stones(instead of posts), bits of statues, etcetera. It was so great! From our two years of Latin I could remember the layout of some of the gravestones (remember, on those random non-reader inserts in the Ecce Romani books?), and besides, they kindly put the full Latin scribing on the placards, translated them to German, then gave an explanation in both German and English (the English being more concise and not half as interesting). I was so glad I could mainly get the idea from the German! I couldn’t fully translate each entry, but I could figure out what they meant in a general way. It was great.
After the museum, we went souvenir shopping, and suffice it to say I bought several German things to deck out my room and backpack. Ja, Deutschland! Oh, speaking of Deutschland, the fight for the 2008 Euro Cup is on! I watched the most recent Deutschland-Poland and Netherlands-Italy games, where Deutschland pwned 2-0 and the Netherlands totally geown3d Italy 3-0. It was so great!! I think I’ve gained a new appreciation and slight obsession with soccer. Why do people even like American football in comparison?!? Soccer is so much more eventful and pumped (as opposed to waiting for American football to go somewhere and actually do something…)! I mean, sure, US football takes considerable skill and bulk, but football seems to take a different kind of skill. You’ve got to be fast and flexible and strong, as well as have a good head for bashing into people and flying all over the place without considerable padding. Football’s such an… American sport. Big and obnoxious. Not that I have anything particular against big and obnoxious, but I just wish that soccer was more popular in the states. (Hell, I like big and obnoxious! Cue the butch bikers!)
Speaking of big and obnoxious, there are virtually no SUVs here. I mean, it’s to be expected- everything about Europe is skinnier than the United States: the people, the streets, the cars… It’s so nice! I love it here, even though I feel rather chubby most of the time.
So, that was my rambly bit on Saturday. Now for Sunday.
Sunday:
We went back to Eindhoven Saturday night, and then left for St. Goar, Germany, in the morning (the ‘rents figured that even a full tank of gas was cheaper than rooms for the lot of us). The drive was considerably longer than the one to Cologne, but was well worth it. After about three hours of driving in our little Fiat, we got to St. Goar on the Rhine. My god, it was amazing. Sprawled above the city were the ruins of a giant castle that was centuries old. And the city itself was sprawled along the banks of the Rhine, the river flowing mid-size and fast, carrying barges of materials downstream. The sky was bright and the breeze was blowing, as it always is here. Several fluffy white clouds meandered across the sky in small herds, and the leaves of the trees rustled in quiet murmurs to one another.
The castle was called Burg Rheinfels, and it sat above the Rhine like a great big fish (sorry, it’s a Pratchett joke…). Its sprawling expanse originally took up the entire hillside (Arizonans, think a little bigger than A Mountain when I say "hill") as well as quite a bit of where the city of St. Goar sits today. Its tall, faded red walls (the local stone, I don’t know what it was) were half-ruined after the French who took it temporarily bombed it. But now a lot of the red of the tops of the walls were obscured by various plants and grasses growing on the crumbled ruined bits or on parts of the walls themselves.
The family and I ascended into the castle main, where you could get in for a small fee. The inside was definitely something out of a storybook- no, not those princess castles, but more of a… medieval castle with typical fortifications and everything you could ever need inside the walls. There was an apotheke (roughly translated to drugstore or medicinal storage place, esp. coldrooms where medicines were mixed), a slaughterhouse, places for cattle, dungeons (of course), cellars, large halls, various arrow-slits in the walls as well as places to pour burning pitch and oil in the case of a siege (which happened fairly often between the rivals families in the area), and plenty of wells and food storage areas. Burg Rhinefels was originally the place where people could not break in- partly from fortifications and partly because of the fact there was so much storage for foodstuffs as well as places to raise livestock within the walls.
I can’t recall the entire history, but after the original family dwindled out, the castle slowly fell into disrepair and then into the hands of the French. The French put troops there, and after they were done there (I can’t recall exactly what they were doing in the castle), they bombed the place so that nobody could use it as proper fortification again. After the French left, it was handed over to some wealthy fellow, and after a while the castle became property of St. Goar, the city.
The castle is still rather impressive, due to its size and sheer strategic area. It was placed on the Rhine, of course, because the landowners could tax the trade going in and out, as well as control the trading port there. On occasion you’ll stumble on the random trebuchet ammunition (a pile of age-old round balls covered in grass and dirt), and you can peer over parts of the broken walls and through arrow-slits to get a good view of the landscape. The arrow and burning oil slits are on the inner as well as outer walls, to provide maximum security, should one of the walls be breached.
Outside the castle, the hills leading to the Rhine are green, and in some cases, the location of wineries and vineyards. The grape plants cling tenaciously to the almost 45° slope, their eerily straight rows giving the hill the appearance of having a cornrow-like hairstyle. I wondered how on earth you would harvest those grapes without falling to your doom.
The houses that are spilled in rough lines at the bases of the hills are old, built on houses that were there before, which were, in turn, built on the houses that were there centuries ago. A rock stands in the river, the famed ex-location of the Loreley, a siren whose beautiful songs apparently lured a lustful prince to his death. To exact vengeance, the king ordered the woman hunted down, and when she was cornered by his troops she called to her father the Rhine, and was swept away and never seen from again. A statue stands in her stead.
The river, the houses, and the castle all have a timeless quality about them, and after we ate lunch I wandered down to an old set of stairs that led down to where a beach used to be. However, the course of the river had changed ever so slightly and now wavelets were pressing against the bottom step, where you could see rocks fading under the water’s surface to the deeper parts of the river. I sat and wrote for a bit, ruminating on the history of the place. The very stillness of the entire situation was very… peaceful, and I’d do anything to go back there again. The sky was slightly overcast, and the wind was crisp but not cold. The river before me churned its way along its course as it had done for generations of writers, workers, and great minds. Just thinking that I was yet another young, idealistic writer on the banks of the river Rhine was a wonder to itself- how many people looked out here and thought along the same lines I did, thinking about others, about the world, about themselves. I remember seeing in the castle museum that several prominent writers stayed at Burg Rheinfels when they were writing. It’s pretty intense. So, I enjoyed my 15 minutes of non-angsty thought process before I was pulled away by the parents, because it had begun to drizzle. After driving around for a while afterwards, we headed home, for Eindhoven.
And that, folks, is the concise story of my weekend (yes, concise. What? I had the urge to describe stuff!). I’ll probably add more on Eindhoven life later, but I think my hands are cramping. So I leave off for now, hopefully I’ll be able to get online soon.
Thursday morning:
I just woke up (yes, just, as in, about three minutes ago). Looking outside, I didn’t feel too bad about things. After all, it was bright, that’s good, right? Wow, comma overload… Anywhoo, I then looked outside with glasses on and saw the drizzle-drops on my window. Wonderful. At least the shopping area/internet caf is about a ten minute walk at most! Nothing much has happened my week, other than the weekend, so the previous five pages or so of text should suffice. My apologies for the length, but the ramblyness seems to sort of be my style… In any case, I am safe and fine, and hope to have fun on my limited internet café time! :D
Thursday Afternoon: Okay, I'm at the internet cafe, at the outrageous price of 3 euros per hour. So I'll try and get to everything quickly, 'cuz I've only got an hour and this keyboard's pretty cruddy. Okay, that was hastily put up, hope it works! *crosses fingers*
Oh, I'll be even farther from contact for the following week, since I'll be in France for the major part of next week. Hopefully I can find a cheaper internet cafe there!
Love you all!
