Like many cities with close neighbours, Cologne has a few rivals. It may be the biggest city in its neck of North-Rhine Westphalia, but it feels the need not to be outdone by any other when it comes to entertainment. So was born the summer fireworks display Cologne in Lights. Bonn has been putting on a glorious fireworks display called the Rhine in Flames for a few years now, drawing thousands to the banks of the mighty river on the city shores to watch a truly impressive light show. The mayor of Cologne wasn't going to let this go unchallenged for ever though, and this year managed to get several hundred thousand marks worth of funding but together to put on a fireworks display of its own. And while some who had been to both still gave Bonn the nod in the competition, I was pretty impressed with the show in Cologne. A full fifteen minutes of lively fireworks set to first classical, and then pop music exploded directly in front of me and a group of other trainees. And I do mean directly. By sheer luck we had chosen to wait right in front of the barges that were launching the fireworks. Now, the Rhine is big, but even though the barges were moored on the opposite bank, you could see the tongues of flame shooting off them seconds before the giant clouds of light burst above, and the sound was deafening. The last song had a thunderous drum finale mirrored by an obscene amount of white fireworks. They must have set off as many in that last twenty seconds as they had in the previous fourteen minutes, and you could just feel the shock wave hit you.
I finished this evening off by going to a very cool pub with one of my German colleagues from work, Tille. He had been there the night before briefly with a visiting friend, but all of us are new to the city and on the lookout for places to go, and I think I'll be back there again. You enter one of the old brick buildings several hundred meters from the Rhine along the cobblestone streets of Cologne's inner city, up a flight of stairs, and into a room finished completely in wood, from the paneling on the walls to the benches and the giant tables made of wood that could easily have been used for a ships hull if the carpenter hadn't found it first. The unique item that any good pub in Cologne needs to separate itself from its 3000 competitors, lies in the way it serves the traditional K�lsch beer, namely in three foot tall plastic towers. Each table has a firm base that these clear plastic towers (tubes) can be attached to. Your waitress brings one of these five litre monsters, fights to get it onto the stand without dislodging a chandelier or two with her ungainly cargo, and then leaves you with a tray empty glasses. The tower has a tap, and you pull your own pints from it. This was a real high point for Tille and the others who come from southern Germany where the typical 200ml K�lsch glass would never be taken seriously in a bar. Here you don't have to constantly order drink after drink, you just pour it yourself at your leisure. Very nice.
;)