The fourth largest city of Germany. A major cultural center of Rhineland.
A city with an impressive cathedral.
And a city where a famous perfume was created in and named after.
Welcome to Cologne!
If you arrive in Cologne by train,
the Cologne Cathedral will be the first thing you see.
It’s hard to miss.
It’s gigantic and it defines the city’s skyline. It’s a UNESCO World Heritage site.
And also the third tallest church in the whole world.
So we just went all around it
trying to find the entrance over that side.
I hope it’s here because it’s the last place that’s left.
So there’s actually two different entrances.
One is for going inside the cathedral, to see the ground floor and the church area.
And the second is over there to go up on the tower.
Climbing the tower might be very exhausting. It even says here.
And these stairs are neverending.
And here we are at the top of the cathedral. It’s at a height of 157 meters.
There are two towers here.
From the outside, it may seem like both are the same height,
but there’s a difference of 6 cm between the height of the two towers.
And the view that you can enjoy from here is amazing.
You can see out in the city, in the distance.
You do feel quite hot while climbing all the way up,
but thankfully, there’s a nice wind up here.
The Hohenzollern bridge connects the Cologne Central Station
to other European cities on the other side of the Rhine river.
It’s also famous for its popularity as a charming spot for couples.
Couples often attach a padlock here on the bridge and throw the key down in the river.
As a sign of eternal love.
You can see this bridge is full of padlocks.
And there’re padlocks attached to padlocks attached to padlocks...
In total, these lovelocks weigh 2 tonnes.
In other European cities, often the weight of these locks weakens the structure of the bridge.
However, this bridge is strong enough to sustain in this case.
So if you ever come to Cologne, try finding our padlock.
I’ll give you a hint, It’s nearby the third pillar of the bridge.
If you have time for a stroll and want to relax a bit, you can take a walk right through the Cologne Promenade.
It’s next to the Rhine river, offers beautiful sights of the old city.
The old city area behind me has nice, pretty looking houses,
but as you can see, they are very modern style.
Because most of them were built after the War.
In World War II, almost three-fourths of the Cologne city was destroyed.
There are over 90 fountains in the city of Cologne. Beside me, is the most famous one.
It’s actually based on a fairytale.
You see these little gnome statues nearby. They’re actually called 'Heinzelmännchen.'
Legend says, that in the olden times, they used to come and do cleaning and housework,
and little chores for the people of Cologne.
They used to come at night and were invisible.
So people could work during the day.
Well, according to the legend,
This went on until a tailor’s wife got so curious
to see the gnome that she spilled peas onto the floor
to make the gnome slip and fall.
Of course, the gnomes didn’t like that
And got so furious that they disappeared and never returned.
From that time on, the citizens of Cologne had to do all the work by themselves again.
While the Cologne cathedral gets all the spotlight, there’s also this smaller church here,
called the Great St. Martin.
It’s also very beautiful.
Here we have the town hall of Cologne known as the Rathaus.
There is the old building and a new building.
Schildergasse is the most popular shopping street of Cologne.
And also one of the most visited shopping streets of whole Germany.
A key highlight here is the 'Weltstadthaus.'
A giant glass building which loosely resembles a big whale.
You can get one of the most impressive views of the city skyline from this side of the Rhine river.
However, if you want an even more impressive view, you can go up on that building over there.
That building is called the Triangle Building
And there is a viewing platform located on the top floor over there.
Unfortunately, we could not get there today, because Corona has changed the opening times of the building.
Now it’s open only on the weekends.
If you want to see Cologne from a different perspective,
you might want to try the Cologne cable car.
It takes you across the Rhine river,
and offers nice views of the Cologne skyline and the Cathedral.
One of the stations is located right at the zoo and the Flora and Botanical garden.
There is almost no one who does not like chocolate.
That’s why out of all museums in Cologne, we chose to go to the chocolate museum
which is devoted to the sweet treat.
I just found my favorite chocolate here.
We can see what ingredients make up the chocolate and in what proportion.
You can vote for your favorite type of chocolate. So I'm gonna do my vote.
Let’s see, dark chocolate seems to be the winner here.
It explains the process of how chocolate is made.
Something that everyone wants to know,
all the way from the beans to the packaged bar.
you can even watch the machines do their work through glass.
Hope you enjoyed the short overview of the Cologne city.
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See you next time!