From our hotel balcony, the towers of Cologne Cathedral watched over the city.
On earlier trips, we would have walked similar distances without question, but the rain—and our small children—made that seem impossible.
We took the metro rail instead.
~
Stepping off the train, we followed the crowd to the escalators. Me, backing the stroller onto the moving steps, one hand on the rail, one on Avery’s seat—an act that felt illegal at home but ordinary here.
The cathedral overwhelmed us the second we stepped outside. It rose in thick Gothic columns of ashen stone, gargoyles, and the blackened backsides of its stained-glass windows.
“Do we need tickets to enter?”
Before I’d finished asking, Avery was crying from the cold, and Corbin stood beside us with rain dripping from his hood.
Dani touched my shoulder.
“Let’s go to the cathedral entrance. Someone there will tell us where to go, if we need tickets.”
We walked across the plaza then, bouncing the stroller step-by-step to the foot of the building.
I raised my camera once, then put it away again. Avery was crying, and Corbin had fallen behind.
I put my camera down to help him, and together, we hurried to the shelter provided by its stone walls.
“Tickets?”
The officer pointed at the dark interior, but then answered a different question.
“Remove your hat inside.”
I didn’t understand or didn’t process, just happy to be out of the rain and cold, so I walked in anyway.
He stopped me again and pointed at my head. We were already out of place.
~
Inside, the cathedral escaped scale entirely. Even my widest lens couldn’t hold it, and I soon stopped trying.
Rows of pews cascaded into the distance, ending at a gilded shrine holding the gifts of the Three Magi.
A walkway wrapped the perimeter, with small chapels branching off—each dense with paintings and stained-glass. Under gray skies, the light filtering through them flattened everything.
Cologne Cathedral is an active place of worship. Priests moved quietly through the cathedral.
The kids ran and yelled and played with the toys they’d stuffed in their pockets.
Corbin’s Lizards and Spider laid on the pews.
Avery’s Hippo and Lion rolled on the floor.
Priests passed us every couple minutes, to give disapproving looks and asking for an impossible “quiet.”
If one settled, the other erupted. There was no way to succeed here.
~
On the way out Corbin stopped. He dropped his toys, and looked up, his mouth hanging open.
“Look. The cathedral. The windows, the paintings.”
“… I am.”
His little voice barely rose above the background.
His awe, it lasted for five seconds before he went back to playing on the floor.
Five seconds—but enough.