Christmas in Cologne

I can remember very little of our few days back in Ameglia before we set off for Cologne for Christmas other than endless hours in the Internet Cafe in La Spezia checking trains and flights and a long conversation with Arne which filled in a lot of contextual detail of life in the boatyard here.  At one stage I gave up on cheap flights and we were about to book train tickets to Cologne, including the overnight sleeper from Milan for 300 euros each way for two, when bingo, I hit the German Wings web site.  This got us flights from Milan to Cologne for a ridiculous nineteen euros each way.

Arne looked in on the boat one afternoon clearly wanting to talk and gave us a much clearer insight into his life and aspirations.  Far from being the easy going drifter he at first appears I think he really wants to settle down with the Mother of his child, but by his description she is unstable and unwilling to commit to a family life.  Overall, he seems to be a frustrated man cresting forty and starting to ask uncomfortable questions about his life and what he has actually achieved.  Giovanna the owner of the marina and his employer is obsessed with money despite substantial personal wealth and her husband is a womaniser who had little to do with the business until a separate boatbuilding business of his own failed.  Mustafa lives in one small room on the top floor of the leaky old building which houses the marina offices.  Arne has tried to encourage him to move to better accommodation, but Mustafa is motivated by saving money to send home to Morocco.  The blue Mercedes is Mustafa's, though we have never seen him drive it – it is the status symbol to demonstrate to his Moroccan family his success in Europe.  Much of this has the ring of truth, but filtered through Arne’s quite jaundiced outlook on the world.  Arne also told us his approach to personal hygiene – “you don’t actually need a shower more than once a month”.  This too had the ring of truth judging by the odour that lingered in our saloon some time after he had departed.

Our trip to Cologne was uneventful, the biggest hitch being that we misread our local bus timetable, stupidly thinking that buses actually ran on a Sunday.  In the end we got a taxi the four miles to Sarzana station, which cost slightly more than one of our air tickets.  We stayed overnight in Milan, which gave us a chance to really appreciate the magnificence of Milan Central Railway station.  It’s a vast cavern of a place, a temple both to railway technology and Mussolini’s Italy, complete with overblown references to Imperial Rome and a memorial to the fallen in Abyssinia.  The arches covering the platforms outdo those at St Pancras and on arrival I felt distinctly under-dressed.  More theatre set than Railway Station I should liked to have emerged from the platform through a veil of smoke and steam in a homburg and crisp double-breasted suit with Sue on my arm in full length furs and high heels, a perspiring porter following behind with a trolleyfull of monogrammed trunks, suitcases and hatboxes.  Well, a chap can dream can’t he?

The flight from Milan was on time and very much like an air trip costing ten times as much.  Frankly for the price we had paid I had expected wooden seats and hanging straps.  I almost felt guilty and on arrival in Cologne refused the complimentary chocolate biscuit to help preserve German Wings profit margins.  Nicole met us in central Cologne and drove us to their house in the suburbs.  Although we had only spent a couple of weeks together in August it felt like meeting up with long lost old friends.  They are both teachers and have been married for about three years.  Thomas is around fifty and Nicole around thirty and currently taking a career break to look after young Joshi, now two years old.  They returned to Cologne from their boat in Barcelona in early December, partly to enjoy a traditional German Christmas with Joshi and partly I think as break from life on a small boat with a young child.  They live in a large semi-detached house in an area very like an English city suburb.  Thomas was brought up in the house and took it over when his Mother died a few years ago.  He gave the place a complete makeover, so now it is very smart, modern and minimal.

We arrived on the 23^rd December, the day before the main festivities in Germany on our Christmas Eve, called in Germany “Helige Abend” or Holy Evening.  I helped Thomas get in the last stocks of beer while Sue helped Nicole bake biscuits in festive shapes to hang on the Christmas tree.  Later we all went off to a nearby high street to buy the last few bits and pieces for the festival, including some tiny red apples also for dressing the Christmas tree.  While we were out Thomas and Nicole took us to a traditional Cologne pub “the Golden Cabbage” where we drank “Kolsch” the local Cologne beer served in test tube like 0.2 litre beakers.  This system works remarkably well, given enough waiters, as the beer simply issues from the bar in an unending stream of small beakers and the beer stays fresh.  I suspect many Germans don’t really consider beer as an alcoholic drink and I’m sure it’s possible with this system to get completely pissed whilst having no idea of exactly how much one has drunk.  However, thanks I suspect to the German Purity Laws which prohibit beer from having any additives or preservatives I don’t recall getting a hangover during our five days in Cologne.

On the 24^th Nicole’s parents (Joshi’s “Oma” and “Opa”) arrived in the morning bringing with them theChristmas goose which had been slaughtered a few days before.  Joshi was then put to bed for his usual lunchtime nap and so the Christmas preparations could begin in earnest.  While he slept the tree was put up in the living room, dressed with candles, apples, chocolates and biscuits and an improvised star made by me from some cardboard and silver foil.  Then the presents were assembled under the tree.  After Joshi’s nap we all walked to the nearby Lutheran church for the Children’s Service.  The Church was a severe modern building and the young female pastor conducted a very open service for the children, who were allowed to play in the aisles and take part in a nativity play.  Many of the children were too young to have a clear idea of what was going on, but one young lad of about ten with Downes Syndrome thoroughly enjoyed his role as a Shepherd.

By the time the service was over it was getting dark and we walked back to the house in the gathering twilight.  When we arrived Joshi was kept occupied while the Christmas Tree candles were lit, then the living room doors were flung open and we all sang Christmas songs as Joshi, his eyes wide with amazement, took in the magic of the scene.  Joshi was then given his presents to open, including a little table and chairs from Mum and Dad and a tricycle from Oma and Opa.  Oma and Opa, also a teacher, the head of a school, are besotted with little Joshi and perhaps most touching was Opa’s personal present to Joshi.  At the end of the second world war when times were hard and things were in short supply Opa’s own father had made him a horse and cart and a stable.  Finding the old gift in the loft Opa decided to renovate the toy and give it to Joshi.  Joshi seemed to sense the importance to Opa of this symbolic act of handing on the past and crouched patiently with Opa as he carefully demonstrated the toy.  Afterwards the adults swapped presents and we settled down to the Christmas goose, cooked to perfection by Thomas, accompanied by red cabbage and kneudel a kind of savoury steamed pudding and some excellent wines.

The 25^th was more like our Boxing Day, a time for chilling out in armchairs and helping Joshi to play with his new toys, punctuated with a stroll to help Joshi try out his new tricycle, which has a very useful long steering handle at the back, which a responsible adult can use as a manual over-ride when Joshi gets tired and starts going round in circles.  Oma and Opa left to go skiing that afternoon and on the evening of the 26^th Thomas and Nicole held a dinner party for us and several other friends.  Thomas and Nicole’s cooking was excellent, as ever, but the high spot of the meal was a box of cakes made by Christophe, a French pastry chef and the partner of Berndt, one of Thomas’ oldest friends.  The box and lid were made of peanut brittle and inside were layers of little cakes in the shapes of animals, the first being a layer of tiny swans. 

On the 27^th we left for Milan where we stayed for a couple of nights before heading off to Ameglia.  Thomas and Nicole and Joshi especially, gave us one of the most magical Christmases I can remember and it was a privilege to share it with them.  Joshi is a very special little boy, a smile is never far from his face and he is quick to forget his hurts.  He has enormous natural charm and is rapidly developing the wit to use it.  He is very lucky to be having so much attention at his age from both his parents during their trip to Barcelona and to have so many caring adults around him.  But then those around him are very lucky to have Joshi too.  Never having been to Germany before it was great too to learn a little more about German society and Thomas and Nicole and their friends.  I am sure we shall meet again.  One of the great lessons for me of our trip so far has been not how different the cultures of the major Western European countries are, but how similar.  From my conversations with Thomas and Nicole and their friends I might add that the post-war generations of Europe actually have more in common with each other than with the generations of their own nationalities that have gone before.

Venice

We travelled to Venice by train, changing a couple of times.  The Italian national rail network “Trenitalia” is remarkably like the old British Rail but with an occasional touch of faded grandeur.  Our first stop was at Viareggio, where we had an hour to kill which we spent in the station cafe.  Annexed to the cafe is a large waiting room with a baby grand piano in one corner, tasteful arrangements of plastic flowers and a display cabinet containing mainly empty champagne bottles for some reason.  We sat at a table next to a group of smart old ladies and a middle-aged couple with learning difficulties.  Two of the old ladies and the middle aged couple were still there when we returned to this waiting room ten days later, so it clearly is the place to go in Viareggio for those with time to kill and not too much money in their pockets.  Anyway, I had just left Sue in search of the toilets when in walked a distinguished old chap in a dark overcoat, clearly a regular, who boomed his order to the bar and sat down in my seat, despite Sue’s protests and a scandalised clucking from the old ladies in which the word “bimbo” came up a lot (the Italian for “young man”).  He turned out to be a charming old rogue who made it clear that at his age he was entitled to his regular seat whether it was occupied or not.  At one point he declared in a loud matter of fact voice to the crowd in general “the world will be a better place when I am dead!”  Returning from the toilet I caught Sue’s amused smile and sat meekly at a vacant chair making a threesome round the table.  He gave us each a boiled sweet and the ice now broken a conversation developed in English and Italian between ourselves, the old boy and the old ladies.  He declared what a delightful city London was because there were so many Italians there and how wonderful Venice was.  At one point he stated “I was at Stalingrad you know”.  I don’t know whether the Waffen SS took Italian recruits but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that the old git had been an enthusiastic volunteer.  Well anyway this is I think what happened – our Italian is now at the stage where instead of getting into simple misunderstandings we are capable of really quite complicated ones.  But whatever the true meaning of our conversation we left for our train uplifted by the indomitable spirit of one old man who was prepared to be himself and didn’t give a toss who knew it.

The rest of the journey was uneventful, apart from getting off at the wrong station in Prato which resulted in a hectic bus ride across town only to find that our connection was thirty minutes late anyway.  By the time we crossed the lagoon the last glimmers of the sun were fading from the clouds and we arrived in Santa Maria station in darkness and the Venetian rush hour.  We dragged our cases through the station concourse and out onto the station steps where the fourteenth and the twenty first centuries collide.  I’d been to Venice once before but the scene still brought a tear to my eye.  The station fronts straight on to the Grand Canal whose banks are lined with fine palazzos, churches and brightly lit shops.  The Canal itself was like a busy high street, only full of boats not motor vehicles.  Its black water was churned into grey froth by so many water buses, taxis and working barges that it seemed amazing that their propellers could actually get a purchase in the agitated foam.  The large water buses (Vaporetti) were full of commuters heading for the railway and nearby bus station.  They were dressed like the commuters of any North European city in hats, coats and scarves, preoccupied with their own thoughts, their sheer ordinariness contrasting starkly with their extraordinary surroundings.

We dragged our cases through the throng, up and over a steep hump-backed stone bridge across the Grand Canal then down a smaller alley by a canal to our hotel – the Sofitel Venice.  It’s like any other bog-standard four star business hotel anywhere else in the world, except maybe the service is a little below par and the price is 50% higher, even in this, Venice’s short so-called “low season”.  But to us it spelt PARADISE, an en-suite bath and shower, marble-topped vanity shelf, hot water, crisp linen and a large well sprung double bed.  Although tired we were unable to contain our desire to see something of the City and unwilling to pay for an over-priced supper in the hotel, so we went for a stroll.  Walking Venice at night is one of the greatest pleasures the world has to offer – a medieval maze of narrow alleys and canals with ancient, mouldering buildings three and four storeys high, shutting out the sky.  Around each corner a fresh feast to the eye – a small square (campo) with a sixteenth century well, or a medieval church the size of a cathedral squeezed in cheek by jowl against more humble tenements.  Eventually we found what turned out to be the perfect restaurant to end the day, a rough and ready student haunt, fashionably undecorated with brown peeling paint and old wooden tables and chairs.  The place bubbled with noise and laughter and there was a steady stream of pizzas, spaghetti with mussels and fritto misto (bits of fried fish and squid) flowing from the kitchen.  Behind the counter a crop-haired barman in a grubby T shirt and with a mischievous twinkle in his eye fixed drinks and assembled them on tin trays, muttering jokes to the waitresses about the customers.

About seven the next morning, as dawn was beginning to filter through the curtains of our room, I was awakened by the unmistakeable sound of air-raid sirens going off around the City.  Even in our supposedly post cold war era the noise still freezes my blood and since September the 11^th who isn’t haunted by the possibility of a dirty nuke being set off somewhere?  As the fear of Armageddon subsided from my mind I thought “Acqua Alta”, the high water that afflicts Venice several times a year when low air pressure and the wrong combination of winds send the waters of the Adriatic flowing across St Marks Square and seeping into the rest of the City.  Sure enough the sirens turned out to be a flood warning and by eight o’clock I could see from our terrace at the top of the hotel, workers putting out duck boards in the streets below.  By ten o’clock the water was over the pavement in front of the hotel lobby as a group of bewildered looking Japanese tourists were being assembled in the foyer.  The high water afflicted the City every day for several hours around lunchtime for the next three days.  My over-riding impression is of how the Venetians just take this in their stride, putting on their wellies and making their way to work across the duckboards, taking in the cafe tables and chairs as the water starts to wash across the pavement and sitting in their shops reading a book until the water retreats far enough for them to open up for business again.  For us the floods kind of added to the fun, trying to pick our way from one landmark to another without getting our feet wet and looking out from St Marks at the tourists in the Square below making their way along the tiny duck boards like ants in a flooded colony.  But this year has been the worst on record for Acqua Altas and it must be very wearing for the Venetians and God knows what it does to the fabric of the City.

We spent our ten days doing the tourist trail, walking the City and hopping on and off the Vaporetti both in Venice itself and the outlying islands of the lagoon.  When we weren’t sightseeing or eating out we generally spent our time taking long, luxurious hot baths.  What can one say about Venice that hasn’t already been said?  If any of you haven’t been – all the superlatives you have heard about the City are true. 

For me Venice poses two intriguing questions – first, how the hell does it actually stay up?  It has been in decline since the Great Plague of 1630 and travellers have been writing about its physical and spiritual decay since at least the 18^th century.  From what one gathers its foundations have the consistency of a soggy digestive biscuit and many of the Palazzos and Campanile lean perilously.  The Acqua Alta is getting worse year by year and no one has yet come up with a definitive plan to defend it from the sea for a sensible fraction of Italy’s gross national product.  And yet I can’t really see Venice slipping beneath the waves like some vast sand castle.  The Venetians seem to have a talent for keeping the City patched together and for turning decay into an art form and a principal component of the City’s inexpressible beauty.

My second question is – who exactly are the Venetians?  Venice is a City with a past, but no present or future other than to trade on its past.  This means it lacks a vital constituent of the character of almost all other cities – economic growth and all that goes with it.  Thus one can visualise Londoners for example as a series of caricatures symbolic of the City’s growth – the East End barrow boy turned Eurobond Dealer, the Jewish taxi driver from Golders Green, etc.  But the Venetians?  By contrast they seem to be shadowy figures – Gondoliers, shop assistants and museum attendants – people represented by rows of brass name plates with bell pushes outside common entrance doors down dark and damp alleyways.  This sense of mystery is accentuated by the atmosphere of the City itself and its history of intrigue and paranoia. Not for nothing is the carnival mask the City’s most potent symbol and throughout Venice there are Lion’s Mouth post boxes into which people could drop accusations about their fellow citizens.  I think I came closest to answering my question on a busy Vaporetto one evening.  Stood on the crowded ferry was an old woman wearing a long coat and a large pillbox-like hat.  She had a large downward pointing nose and cat-like, almost oriental eyes.  There was something aristocrastic and inscrutable about her expression, perhaps a product of her distinctive features.  I cannot recall seeing anyone like her in the works of the great Venetian Masters and yet at the same time she looked as though she had stepped out of a painting by Titian or Tintoretto.  She seemed to know all the commuters on the ferry and passed the time of day with many of them.  I have no idea who she was or where she was going, but in my mind she was undoubtedly a Venetian.

As a parting note on the City my favourite quote from a traveller is from Edward Gibbon author of the “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” who was a visitor in the mid 18^th century:

“The spectacle of Venice afforded some hours of astonishment and some days of disgust.  Old and in general ill-built houses, ruined pictures, and stinking ditches dignified with the pompous denomination of canals; a fine bridge spoilt by two rows of houses on it, and a large square decorated with the worst architecture I ever yet saw.”

Ah well, I guess you can’t please ‘em all.