After leaving Boppard in the morning we discovered that Rhein quickly stopped being quite as pretty. Koblenz was nothing in particular (though it did have some kind of a castle), and after that we were in industrial land. However, we did have our hopes set up high for Köln, though I've been warned that it has been damaged badly during the war. We even skipped Bonn so that we could get to Köln earlier, though Bonn wasn’t really all that promising anyway.

Köln turned out to be a bit of a disappointment, however. The parts of the city we saw, we just really really ugly. The downtown (ironically called “Altstadt” – “Old Town”) was damaged badly in the war and was rebuilt with hideous pseudo-medieval buildings. The kind of buildings that must have seemed “medieval” looking in 60s and 70s but now just scream 70s. Add to that an omnipresent construction.

However, Köln does have a beautiful cathedral, and the ugliness of the surroundings can’t destroy completely the impression it makes. Conveniently, the cathedral is extremely easy to get to: you just follow the signs from the highway and end up in an underground parking right underneath it. So, one could theoretically just drive into Köln through a major road, park under the cathedral, walk up the stairs, take a look, go down and get the hell out. Maybe that’s what we were supposed to do.