Before I went to Cologne, everyone was all, 'There's nothing to do there!' 'Go to a real place instead!' ''It's super lame!'
And they were absolutely fucking correct.
Grapeseed?! Even their fucking crops are uncool.
You said it, street sign.
All of my photos are overly zoomed-in, to crop out as much of the surroundings as possible.
Once you get downtown, it's even worse.
Vertical strip malls punctuated by obsolete technology like horse-cops and cobblestones.
Deliberately narrow streets so you don't have to see it all at the same time.
See? Zooming again just to kill time. It's a citywide solitary confinement sentence.
Cologne's one claim to fame is this fucking upward sprawl. Old, check. Dirty, check. One photo is enough, but I took four. Out of sympathy.
Someone in Cologne told me that if humans disappeared tomorrow, this church would be one of the only structures left standing on earth in 1,000 years.
Maybe in Cologne, it just feels that long.
Rottin' in Denmark 
I’ve been there and to some extant, I agree, though the Cathedral is magnificent. While there you may have read that city was completely leveled during the war. My dad told me that (he flew a bomber) they were told NOT to bomb the Cathedral, but everything else must go. I also recall….I think, that the residents, after the war decided to rebuild a modern city rather than reconstruct the old as much of Europe decided to do.
So, except for Krakow, Poland and Prague, for example and a few other cities whichwere not much damaged, what we see as charming old cities, have largely been rebuilt.
I think the idea is to visit Cologne when the Christmas markets are on, because that will distract you from the city itself
Nearby Bonn is way more boring.
I am from San Francisco and lived in Cologned for almost a year. I got major depression while I was there. It feels like everything is 20 -30 years behind. It’s neither an international city nor a vibrant town.