Noreen Nanz of Cologne GERMANY

8. Featured Traveller
(Germany) 

 

 Noreen Nanz

English Teacher, Piano Teacher

Cologne GERMANY

"Try to meet some natives"

Title: A Whiff of Cologne

Other countries visited:  Most of the countries surrounding Germany - Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Austria, Switzerland, Czech Republic.  Luxembourg, Spain, Portugal, Hungary, Italy, Greece, Israel, Egypt, Australia, three hours in the Bangkok airport, and three hours in the Kuala Lumpur airport.  Of course, I've been to Canada - more times than I can count.  I grew up in Minnesota!

Nationality: USA

Country of Residence: Germany

Favorite means of transport:  bicycle

Countries I wish to visit in the future:  South Korea, Japan, Poland, Scandinavian countries. 

Farina Perfume Museum ~ Cologne

City covered in this blog entry:  Cologne

I'd like to give you a little whiff of Cologne.  Did you know that the fragrance is named after the city I live in?  The inventor of what we call Eau de Cologne was Giovanni Maria Farina (1684-1766).  As you can see, his name is Italian.  His factory still exists, and is the oldest perfume manufacturer that still exists.  Today it is a perfume museum, and I often take visitors there - they have tours in English.  

Farina was, like me, an "Imi" - what the people of Cologne call - not an immigrant, but an "imitation" -  someone from outside of Cologne who comes here to live and imitate the Cologne lifestyle.  As you can see, the Kölner believe that only the natives can get it right. They are very proud of their lifestyle.    

Cologne Cathedral (Courtesy of Köln-Touristik)

In the days of Farina, it was hard to immigrate to Cologne.  You had to be Catholic, and you had to have income and a trade useful to the city.  I'm not Catholic, but I do have a trade - the English language, and I make money for speaking it.  

I do not imitate what many people call a Kölner lifestyle, but I know many who live and love it. Some of them are even my friends.  They drink a kind of beer called "Kölsch".  I must say, I do like Kölsch.  Then, they speak a language called Kölsch.  I can't speak it, but I do have a postcard of famous Kölsch expressions hanging on my fridge.  My favorite is:  "Et es, wie et es." In German, that is, "Es ist, wie es ist."  It sounds very profound when you translate it into English:  "It is as it is."  What the people mean is, Things are as they are.  Don't get all worked up about it, since you can't change it anyway.  And I think there is a lot of wisdom in that.  Kölner drink a lot of Kölsch so that they won't get all worked up about it.  And they do manage to remain pretty easy-going, most of the time.  They have the reputation of being the most light-hearted people in all of Germany, drunk or not.  There is more beer drunk in Cologne per capita than in any other German city, thanks to Karneval.  During Karneval (same holiday as that in New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro), Cologne doubles in size, becoming a city of at least 2 million.  You see people dressed in silly costumes like clowns, pigs, jailbirds, or any other conceivable thing, walking down the streets, singing nonsense songs that are only sung in Cologne.  Here you can see an example of this.

I don't like Karneval because of all the rowdy drunkenness, and I can't get into the silliness. My son tells me, though,  that if you drink a lot of Kölsch, it can be a lot of fun, hopping from crowded brewery to brewery, joining arms with strangers who become brothers for a couple of hours, singing along to the music.  There are more brew houses in Cologne than anywhere else in Germany, and you can always strike up a conversation with somebody there, even when Karneval isn't being celebrated.  

A lot of Kölner, other "imis" and I try to escape during Karneval, fleeing to the Alps for a ski trip, or flying to the Canary Islands for sun and sand.  I usually stay home and go for a walk in the woods, or hole up at home, cooking gourmet meals with my husband, dining in the dining/living room, and then watching movies I've downloaded from the internet.  But sometimes we use the occasion to travel to some nearby country.  Belgium and the Netherlands are just an hour's drive away.  Paris is a five-hour drive away.  

Much as I love being able to travel just about anywhere in Europe easily from Cologne, I love coming back to the city, just like the natives.  I always look for the spires of the "Dom", whether flying or driving back.  I love the "Dom" - Germany and northern Europe's biggest cathedral.  It is the most popular tourist attraction in all of Germany.  I've been in there many times - on a tour, going to a church service, taking visitors there.  Every time I ride the tram into Cologne, I try to get a seat next to the cathedral side, just so I can see it again.  It looks so majestic, towering alongside the Rhine.     

Interior of Cologne Cathedral

There's lots I love about this city.  It's very cultured.  There are lots of museums.  You can go to really good concerts here, in any music style - classic, jazz, or rock.  It's great for hiking and bike riding.  There are beautiful forests in and around Cologne.  I can get together with fellow Americans any time I want through the American International Women's Club.  I love to eat good food - I am a foodie, and in Cologne there are wonderful restaurants of all kinds. Just outside of Cologne, in Bergisch Gladbach, where I teach and used to live, there are more Michelin star restaurants than anywhere else in Germany.  My husband and I ate once at Schloss Lerbach (http://www.schlosshotel-lerbach.com/en.html), and experienced perfection.  The food there is prepared in ways I could never, ever come close to replicating, and the whole thing is a fantastic aesthetic adventure.  It felt like entering something holy, like heaven, being there.  This, of course, is the epitome of fine taste.  But that's another thing I like about living in Europe - there is so much elegant taste, so much of what is solid, old, time-tested tradition.  Life is a bit slower here.

I love walking on the cobblestoned streets.  There is a lot of the old in Cologne.  Most of it has been restored - 90% of the city was destroyed in World War II, but there it is again.  The ancient survives here.  Cologne has been a city ever since the Romans first came here 2,000 years ago.  Now that is old!

But not stuffy.  Cologne is never stuffy - it's too dedicated to silliness to ever be stuffy. Comfortable, old, a bit dirty, comforting, yet inspiring.  People don't beat each up here over ideological differences here.  It is the most tolerant place I know.     
   
I like to travel by bike whenever I can, and there are good bike trails, even along the Rhine.  The weather is usually pretty mild, but it does rain a fair amount here.  Still, the minute the sun comes out, the people flock to the outdoor cafés and beer gardens.  

I like to shop at the farmer's markets - there are many in and around Cologne.  I also buy my meat from an organic farmer near Cologne.  We get eggs and homemade pasta delivered to our house.  We go walking with our dog in the fields - five minutes' walk from our house, and yet we live within the Cologne city limits!  

Cologne Cakes*

In my own blog, I focus on my thoughts and experiences of being a pilgrim, someone on a journey through life.  In one respect, you could say I simply ended up here in Cologne.  I came here because someone offered me a free trip if I'd watch her son for a couple of months.  It sounded great - I wanted a break from my job in New York City.  I fell in love with Germany, and then with my husband.  I went from infatuation to disappointment.  Now I would say I have a mature love for the place I live in.  I see its strengths and weaknesses.  I don't try to run away anymore when life is hard.  This is the place my journey has taken me, at least for now.  And it's a place you can settle down in, as well as pass through on a summer's day.

* Cologne Cakes~ One of the lovely cakes you can buy in Cologne bakeries.  This one with spires of the Cologne cathedral!

Note:  

I've written a book about Cologne, also called A Whiff of Cologne.  At the moment it's in my computer, but I plan to self-publish it.  If you like what you've read about Cologne and want to read more now, send me an email and I'll send you the manuscript.   

Contact information:  in Facebook

Email:  noreennanz@yahoo.com
Blog:  http://noreen-masterpieceinprogress.blogspot.com/

* * * * *

Are you a traveller who would like to share your travel story with our blog and our readers?  Then, I'd love to hear from you! 
Please email me at fromatravellersdesk@gmail.com

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Finding Rest for the Soul

My name is Noreen Nanz - Irish first name, named after an Australian ancestor.  I'm not Irish, but I am part Celtic, and  have learned to love my name.  Actually, it's a form of "Honora", which means Honor, something I find pretty noble to be named after.  My last name, Nanz, is German, but I'm also not German, although I live in Germany.  My husband is German.  As I say in the introduction to my blog, I am a hybrid, which is probably true of most of us Americans. 

I never thought I loved traveling, and I still don't really think of myself as a traveler,  but more of a pilgrim.  I'm on pilgrimage, wherever I go.  Pilgrims contemplate, I suppose, and I do spend quite a bit of time contemplating.  When you think of contemplatives, you don't usually think of them out on the road having adventures, but perhaps rather cloistered in a cell somewhere, oblivious to the world.  I did read a definition of two kinds of spirituality once - there is the one kind, that closes itself off from the world to find God, and then the other, that opens itself up to the world, finding God in everything, eager for more and more.  I fit into the latter category.  And I do love traveling.  Each time I get back from a trip to somewhere, I'm eager to go off somewhere else.  I think I'm restless.  And I inherited a sort of restless Wanderlust from my father.  It's my mom's fault that I'm Celtic.  Celtics are also known to be on the move.   How can we find rest when we're such restless souls?  One of the riddles of my life.

I met my husband Peter while in Germany.  I'm still there, and now we have a 25-year-old son.  I don't think I came to Germany on pilgrimage, when I think about it.  I think I was actually running away from the bad things of my life in New York City, more than looking for God.  But, they say, God has a sense of humor.  God probably sent me there.  It is, in many ways, the perfect place for me to live.  Life here is pleasant and comfortable, and Cologne, the city where I live, is easy-going.  Cologne is also only an hour away from both the Belgian and Dutch borders.  And only six hours' drive from England.       

***

Since Freddie asked me to write my blog for Christmas time, I think I should tell you about one of my favorite trips at Christmas time.  We went away for a few days, right in the middle of the week, in 1993.  I was living with my family in Brussels, Belgium.  My sister had come to visit us for Christmas, and I was excited about showing her a European Christmas.  We were just getting used to our beautiful home which even had a fireplace.  I was looking forward to opening up presents in front of a crackling fire.  Later we were to do just that, but before that day was to arrive, there were a thousand other things to do.  I was singing in a madrigal choir - we had just given a concert.  I had directed  the children of my husband's colleagues in a Christmas program.  I was an organist in our church, and I still had the entire Christmas Eve candlelight service to prepare for.  I had some English students I still had to give lessons to (my main job is as an English teacher).  Then there were the presents for my family.  Our son, who was about seven, had a long list of gifts he wanted me to buy, mostly toys.  And there was the cooking, too.  I was a pressure cooker about to explode! 

But I had a friend who owned a little house in Canterbury, England, and she had agreed to let us stay there for a few days before Christmas.  I thought it was probably crazy to go there at this time, with so much to do, but I agreed to it. 

"Mind you," she said, "the house is very small.  There is only one room with a good view of the cathedral, and that's the bathroom." 

Canterbury was only a stone's throw from Brussels.  Two hours at most on the motorway, and then a short, restful, 1-1/2 hour ferry ride.  Canterbury is only about a half-hour drive from the ferry, once you dock at Dover.  Door-to-door, about four hours' drive from Brussels.

We arrived in the evening, walking into a tiny, ice-cold house, but we were prepared to love it.  It certainly had character.  You had to heat up each room with gas fireplaces.  How English!  

We all walked together into the bathroom.  The view made us stop and stare.  There was something romantic about going into this of all rooms, the largest one of all, to gaze through the black night at the cathedral, shimmering like silver, illuminated by floodlights.   

Then we went outside and checked out the town.  A river ran through it.  Along the edge, and throughout the town, were ancient half-timbered houses. The Christmas lights strewn over the pedestrian zone in zig-zag fashion, were big round colored bulbs, not dainty and white like those in Belgium or Germany.   It was a welcome novelty, looking at all that color.   There was lots of greenery decorating the shop doorways.  We passed a doll store with dainty porcelain dolls, some of them with real human hair.  One of the dolls stole our hearts.  She wore a red velvet dress, her skin was pale, her hair long, curly, and black.  And she was on ice skates!  We bought it for my mother-in-law, who loved porcelain dolls.

We found a music shop and bought a tin whistle.  Then we went on a shopping orgy for English foods at Sainsbury's, my favorite English supermarket.  Sainsbury's is proof to me that the English know how to cook a good meal after all.  And they bake well, too!  We bought things like shortbread, scones and clotted cream, a cream as thick as butter, sinfully loaded in calories, but oh so good on desserts! 

I've been asking my husband and son, who's visiting us now for Christmas, what they remember of that little respite in Canterbury.  Their highlight is the same as mine - a Vesper service at the cathedral, where we each found rest for our weary souls, exhausted from preparing for Christmas.

I have always loved the Christmas music of the English cathedral choirs the most of all.  When I was a teenager, my parents bought a couple LPs of English cathedral choirs singing carols, and we used to listen to them each Minnesota Christmas time as we decorated the Christmas tree together.  I love the pure, innocent voices of the boys, the intensity of timbre that pierces the heart.  I love the soprano descants soaring over the melody like birds.  And I swear, I find the English versions of the same carols lovelier than the American.  "Away in a Manger", "While Shepherds Watched Their Flocks by Night", "O Little Town of Bethlehem" - they all sound better to me in the English version.  My dream was to go to England one day for Christmas.  Well, at least I was in England during the holiday season, even if it wasn't for a Christmas service.

That evening we sat down in the ancient carved oak choir stalls and waited in the darkness for the choir and ministrants to appear.  The church was dimly lit by candles and a few chandeliers.  The choir marched into the sanctuary, singing a carol, dressed in white cassocks and black frocks, sitting opposite us.  Such beauty!  Peace began to trickle into my heart as I surrendered myself to the readings,  to Mary's prayer - the Magnificat, to the boys and men, undergirded by the solemn pipe organ, to the music.  I fervently prayed the "Lord's Prayer", letting its words fill my heart.  I marveled at how everything in England, at least in the cathedrals, is real.  Real pine boughs decorate the altar.  Real poinsettias give color to the church.  You hear real pipe organ music, not a fake electronic imitation.  Real oak choir stalls and pews have been there for centuries.  Real stone pillars support the ceiling.  Real boys sing, real candles light the church. 

Filling myself with the reality of God, with the faith and peace this church has imparted for a thousand years, I found rest.  Refreshed, I left the church, ready for the remainder of the Christmas challenges. 

***

There is a modern English carol I have come to love especially, written in 1947 by Elizabeth Poston.  One of the stanzas in "Jesus Christ the Apple Tree" (the text was written by an American from New England in 1784) goes,

            I'm wearied with my former toil,

            Here I shall set and rest awhile;

            Under the shadow I will be,

            Of Jesus Christ the Apple Tree.

May we all find this kind of rest this holiday season.

***       

You can see a version of "Jesus Christ the Apple Tree" sung here by perhaps the best cathedral choir of all, Kings College Choir from Cambridge, England: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cm3fZDZxiko

Here is a link to the Canterbury Choir singing the music of Thomas Tallis, an English renaissance composer: 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UIbZCZafNE&feature=results_video&playnext=1&list=PLCB1A2C3651D5720F

You can also get a good look at this magnificent edifice.

And here is a glimpse of the medieval city of Canterbury.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpcl0T-Ei3w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aV8z0PmgVM&feature=related

***

You can visit Noreen Nanz's blog at:  
http://noreen-masterpieceinprogress.blogspot.com/

Author Bio: 
Noreen is a Cologne-based author. She is an American of Cornish origin, married to a German and living in Germany.  She has published a book entitled, "Betsy's Goodbye" which is now available and can be ordered online. Visit her blog 'masterpiece in progress' to read more of her stories.