COLOGNE AND THE SCHLOSS EFFECT
In the end, we ran away from the schloss the next day, canceling our second night. The getaway cab cost us 35 euros, the necessary price to get back into the center of Cologne. The schloss wasn’t really close to anything but the schloss itself and, of course, rumours of other guests. But there were some good things...
Here are some good things:
- The stone walls must have been more than two feet thick.
- It was a real schloss even though it seemed pristine enough to have been built yesterday. It was built way back in the 1700’s a gift from a very rich man to his, hopefully, appreciative wife.
- Despite it’s 'castleyness' the room still managed to be small, warm and cosy.
- The restaurant we had to eat in, as we arrived late and were close only to the schloss, was Italian and full of all the missing people. Not what you’d expect given the enormous architectural assertions of the schloss itself. The restaurant was a surprise buried down a long imposing hallway. It was warm, intimate, low ceilinged with lots of wood accents, walls of wine bottles and of course some expensive but delicious food. We ate in a pub the next night to balance the budget.
Here are some bad things:
- The schloss ate the guests.
- Marooned in the schloss the next morning, far from everywhere but the schloss, I tried having a breakfast that would not cost an arm and a leg. I wanted a pastry and a coffee. Apparently no-one had ever wanted anything but the full breakfast before. I ended up in the deserted foyer that should have displayed telltale signs of life. No such thing. Just me and a barman and incredulity that I should be wanting a simple coffee and a pastry. I had wanted to be inconspicuous but this wasn’t possible. I was the only visible human that was not employed.
- That thing you get from expensive establishments where collective aloofness, arising from the monumental architecture and its dazed human counterparts, results in an uncanny but profound separation from life itself.
- Vast, echoing, staircases that would have seemed more appropriate in opera houses, although I have reason to believe that castles made this error repeatedly.
