I guess it's human nature to love the most what we are about to leave or have already lost. Walking through the streets of Salem in springtime, seeing the cherry blossoms at the Capitol Mall and Willamette University Campus, and knowing that it will be the last glimpses of Oregon I'll get for a long time was bitter sweet.
The last five pictures are of Court Street, featuring my old home in the last two images.
Flight to Europe - April 4, 2016
The first part of the journey was from Portland, OR to San Francisco, CA. The flight to Europe started with an unpleasant surprise. The exit row I was supposed to sit in on the United flight to London turned out to be a regular one with not much leg room. Luckily my neighbor was reseated to sit closer to a co-worker, so I ended up having the whole row for myself. I even slept a little stretched out across all three seats - a first for me on an airplane. Still, the Irish coast and later London were welcome sights after crossing the Atlantic. The last leg of the journey was a short hop from London to Cologne across the English Channel (last picture below).
Back in my home town Cologne after more than 10 years - April 6 and April 11, 2016
The "Heinzelmaennchen-Brunnen" nearby the cathedral commemorates the little people who - according to legend - helped the shoemaker in his work. I always thought of my hometown fondly for building a fountain depicting fairytales instead of victorious battles and campaigns.
The Cologne Philharmonics was built underground, which turned out to be a less than perfect solution. Whenever there's a concert or the musicians are rehearsing, guards have to keep pedestrians from walking on the square above the concert hall to avoid any disturbances (the gentleman in the green jacket is such a guard).
Cologne Cathedral is one if not the best known monument in Germany - so much so that it outshines the twelve Romanic churches the city also houses. One of them - "Gross Sankt Martin" - dominated the Cologne skyline for much longer than the towers of the cathedral, which were only completed in 1880 - 632 years after the foundation stone for the cathedral was laid.
The "Overstolzenhaus" is one of the oldest patrician buildings in Germany (ca. 1230).
"Sankt Maria I'm Kapitol" is my favorite Romanic Church. Consecrated in its current form in 1049, it replaced older structures reaching back to Roman times, and it still houses the wooden doors that adorned it in the past with all their beautiful wood carvings.
These landmarks were just the way I remembered them, but so many other things had changed in the more than 10 years I hadn't been in my hometown. Discovering the new subway stations I had never seen before and the new blocks of houses along the harbor made me feel like a tourist seeing the city for the first time.
The Cologne Philharmonics was built underground, which turned out to be a less than perfect solution. Whenever there's a concert or the musicians are rehearsing, guards have to keep pedestrians from walking on the square above the concert hall to avoid any disturbances (the gentleman in the green jacket is such a guard).
Cologne Cathedral is one if not the best known monument in Germany - so much so that it outshines the twelve Romanic churches the city also houses. One of them - "Gross Sankt Martin" - dominated the Cologne skyline for much longer than the towers of the cathedral, which were only completed in 1880 - 632 years after the foundation stone for the cathedral was laid.
The "Overstolzenhaus" is one of the oldest patrician buildings in Germany (ca. 1230).
"Sankt Maria I'm Kapitol" is my favorite Romanic Church. Consecrated in its current form in 1049, it replaced older structures reaching back to Roman times, and it still houses the wooden doors that adorned it in the past with all their beautiful wood carvings.
These landmarks were just the way I remembered them, but so many other things had changed in the more than 10 years I hadn't been in my hometown. Discovering the new subway stations I had never seen before and the new blocks of houses along the harbor made me feel like a tourist seeing the city for the first time.
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