My wife and I spent Christmas in Cologne. My overall reaction to the city was to wish that I could have seen it before World War II. It has the most impressive collection of Romanesque churches I’ve ever seen, and there are some neighborhoods, typically around the churches, that are very nice, but large parts of the city are characterized by featureless buildings speedily constructed with mediocre materials after the war. If you’ve ever seen photos of the war damage, it’s easy to understand the immediate need to rebuild, but still . . .
The cathedral, to me, is just too large and overbearing. It was finished during the late 19th Century, which figures; it is a perfect example of imperial architectural bombast.
The day after Christmas, we decided to visit Liege, just across the border in Belgium. The (grossly overpriced) train trip took about an hour. There was no sign whatsoever of the national frontier. The city was a complete change of pace; the language, of course, was French, but so was the culture. While the Christmas markets closed on Christmas Eve in Germany, this one was open; the architecture was more attractive; and the food looked better, too.
When we returned, I couldn’t help being impressed that one could have such a different experience just an hour’s distance away. The trip would have been longer, and more cumbersome, without the EU. There is a danger that the citizens of the EU will take this sort of freedom of movement for granted. Let’s hope they don’t.