Art & Architecture Trip - Day 14

Today was rather uneventful except for our "City Rally" after lunch. Emily and I were partners in this treasure hunt across Koln. We were told to find some information about certain places on a list that Georg and Christa gave us. The locations listed included items near the Cathedral, Ebertplatz and Ulrepforte. Some of the places we had to go were quite interesting. We had to find out the professions of goblins, the location of a Roman-modern statue, the location of John F. Kennedy's June 23, 1963, speech in Koln, the distance of the moon from Grosse St. Martin (389,998 km and 100m), the event captured in stone on the wall of the medieval city, the number on one of the gates of the city and (the most interesting piece of information) the meaning of three letters and date "on St. Severin's Church." We were actually the only ones that discovered the graffiti-like scrawl on the door of the church which said "19 CMB 85." We asked a German nearby what it meant and he said that it stood for Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar (the Three Wise Men). We also had to find a date on a building in Ulrepforte, the material used on a fountain at Ebertplatz, the meaning of the existence of a boat at the city gate at Ebertplatz and (lastly) the number of Turkish restaurants on one of the streets in the area. Emily and I budgeted our time well - and we finished at almost exactly the 1630 deadline. Throughout the entire event, Emily and I never really got lost - and we got on the correct streetcar each time. Actually, the hardest task of the day was trying to locate Christa's appartment! We ran around the Lufthansa complex three times before we found a door. Despite this, we actually returned first to Christa's Rhine side condo - and we received the most points for our efforts. Christa and Georg treated us to cake and soda while we waited for the others to arrive. The rest of the teams had horror stories to share about getting lost (one team never found anything on the list!). What a great "city rally"! After dinner, we went to see a play on the south side of Cologne. It was in an old chocolate factory - soon to be destroyed. During the course of the performance, we sat in chairs sitting in water (yes - the entire place was submerged up to ankle level). People gave us plastic bags before the show to protect our shoes... I returned home at 2345 and read a little - sleep at 0100.