Look, kids! It’s Kölner Dom! Groß St. Martin!

After a whirlwind two days in London, it was nice to arrive in Cologne, where I would spend a whopping 3 days at Gamescom and GDC Europe. Given travel time by plane and train I arrived at night. Normally this means you miss out on really seeing a place. In the case of Cologne, however, night time was the right time to arrive.

The Cologne Cathedral (Kölner Dom), St. Martin Church (Groß St. Martin) and Hohenzollern bridge (Hohenzollernbrücke) were all fantastically illuminated and waiting for me right outside my hotel window. The streaks in the sky are seagulls and bats circling the building hunting insects attracted by the light.

The Cathedral is an amazing thing to behold. Initially started in 1248 it was under near-continuous construction for over 600 years. While wandering inside before Gamescom started I couldn’t help but feel like I was in Moria from The Lord of The Rings. (Nerd alert!) The people inside were truly dwarfed by the building. (Har har!)

The Hohenzollern bridge is covered in “love locks”, apparently a new phenomenon in Cologne but common in other European cities. It was fun walking across the bridge each day and seeing the many personalized messages on each lock. Tons more pictures of the love locks here at Just A Plane Ride Away.