Where are we now?

Just back from a little break.  So where can this be?  We travelled by Eurostar and high speed train.

We had never been to this country before.  Despite some intensive practice on Duolingo, I found my fifty year old O level was not even up to the details on menus, let alone the longer words on museum displays.

We did not actually try the Currywurst, but we certainly ate a range of other types of sausage, some of it what we would have called luncheon meat - which, I suppose, made it eminently suitable for the lunches when we ate it.

We had one night in Cologne en route, and had already decided that the cathedral was all we could manage.  It did not disappoint.

Flying buttresses and Gothic arches.  It was only completed in the nineteenth century, but to the original design.  Miraculously, it survived World War Two with only some windows lost.

The exterior is clearly being renovated piece by piece.

This piece of scaffolding, high up on one of the spires, seems to defy gravity.

Many of the figures have been restored.  But the real wonder was to hear the great bells reverberate thrillingly across the whole square.

We watched the play of light on the stonework of the façade as we ate our supper at a pavement café opposite.  (Bacon, egg and Rosti, since you ask.)