€xp€nsiv€ toil€t in Cologn€

Have money, will pee.

I thought it was really pricey to use a toilet at Cologne’s main train station.

The fee, one euro, is equivalent to almost 60 Philippine pesos, which is quite a significant amount of money in a country where the average daily minimum wage is just over 300 pesos.

That rate, by the way, is for workers in the relatively well-off Metro Manila, the national capital region.

But the Philippines is obviously not Germany, and Germans are the richest people in Europe. No wonder they are the European paymasters. What’s one euro?

Perhaps one euro is too small a price to pay to take good care of my urinary bladder.

And at least, I was able to do it German-style.

Cologne's main station

Love locks tell romantic stories in Cologne

The video below contains random videos and pictures that I took during my trip to Cologne, Germany late last year.

In the video, I attempted to translate something written in German to English. I hope I got most of it right.

Here’s a Deutsche Welle article about the love locks in Cologne.

Woman steals Cologne’s thunder

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When people are on a tower that offers a spectacular view of a city, most likely they would do these two things: marvel at the beauty of the surroundings and of course, take pictures.

Yours truly and the other participants in an online journalism workshop held in Germany late this year engaged in those activities while on a tower in Cologne.

My favorite subject for picture-taking was the quintessential symbol of the city – Cologne Cathedral.

Headstand

We were busy taking photographs when suddenly, Tanja Duettra, our course guide, stood on her head!

Tanja wows the crowd (Photo: Thorsten Karg)

I was so amazed that I had to stop marvelling at Cologne’s beauty for a while.

I had to take a photo of myself with Tanja.

While doing that headstand, she seemed to have stolen Cologne’s thunder.

All eyes were on her.

Tanja was the star at that precise moment.

From left to right: Me, Tanja and Thorsten

With Tanja on the last day of the workshop

Cologne Cathedral is a colossal church

I’ve seen so many Catholic churches, but the Cologne Cathedral is a bit different from them all.

It’s the biggest church I’ve seen so far.

The Cologne Cathedral is really massive; I found it hard to look for a place where I could take good pictures of it.

I knelt, walked far away from the church, I tried almost everything and yet I couldn’t take a picture of the church in its entirety.

The only time I was able to take a photo of the whole church was when we were taken to a tower on the other side of the Rhine River.

The Cologne Cathedral reminded me of someone’s words about church architecture: churches are an assertion of the enormous power of God.

You’d be humbled by the grandeur of your surroundings.

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Take pictures of yourself, it is fun!

Yeah, I know this bull in Cologne, Germany is much cuter

Like a zombie in Berlin's Reichstag, Germany's parliament building

When I saw on German journalist Marcus Bösch’s Twitter page a link to a piece about models taking pictures of themselves, I couldn’t help but click on the link right away and read the article.

We don’t have to be models to take photos of ourselves. Anyone can do it!

I like to take pictures of myself.

Superb background in Shanghai! The foreground? Ummm...

No, it’s not because I’m a narcissist, but because it’s easier for everyone.

I can take a photo of myself a thousand times, literally, but I doubt I’d find someone else who’d do that for me. For free.

Besides, I can get as serious as I want or as silly as I want when I take pictures of myself. I don’t get conscious at all when I do that.

And with literally thousands of pictures to choose from, it’s much easier for me to have very serious or really silly photographs.

The more the merrier, indeed.