The Lost Posts – Part 3: In Cologne

GR, f8.0, 1/60, ISO 100, RAW

Day 2 – Essen and train to Copenhagen

Since my train to Copenhagen only leaves at 21:25 from Cologne, I had time to see friends in Essen. We walked around the city centre and drove to the Zollverein later to take pictures.

After spending the day in Essen picking my bag up, I found myself back at Cologne station waiting for the night train to Copenhagen.

Having never taken night trains in Europe before, I did wonder how the journey would shape up to be. Having only booked a seat only, I hoped it would at least be halfway comfortable. It turned out to be quite uncomfortable after all but the journey was pretty enjoyable thanks to my fellow travellers.

The biggest issue for me turned out to be a complete lack of plugs in this train. This put me in a predicament as I was not organised enough to charge my Fonepad before so will have to do without it for now and hope I get a charger in the next train.

All going well, I will have 2 hours to spend in Copenhagen tomorrow morning before heading onwards to Stockholm.

Day 1 – London to Brussels, Cologne and Hilden

First day of my journey and the first stage started from London St. Pancras. It was an early start, I got there before 8am to have time for coffee and some photography.

It felt good to finally set off to the journey I have been thinking about and planning for the past months.

Checking in and going through security at the Eurostar terminal was quick and the train left on time at 8:58 towards Brussels Midi.

During this first journey I realised that my initial plan to have Google Tracks track the whole journey will not work out as the GPS reception in trains and through the tunnels is not very good and the Fonepad has a pretty crap GPS built in. Will have to leave this part out and maybe just track my walks instead.

The journey was otherwise uneventful and we arrived on time at Brussels Midi to a grey sky and heavy rain.
My first thought was to go and seek shelter in a cafe or bar, have some coffee and maybe some Belgian beers.
Then I realised that this will not be the first time I will get rain on my trip so I took my jacket out and set off for a walk around Brussels to take some photos. I had just over 2h in total to spend till my next train to Cologne.

Most of my photos from Brussels were street photographs of people as the buildings and architecture was very uninspiring due to the grey and dull weather. This combined with the fact that I tried to keep the lens free from drops so tilting the camera up was not really what I wanted to do too often.

The ICE train left on time at 14:25 with the usual German efficiency and I managed to get my favourite seat in the train. If you ever travel on the ICE, don’t bother to book a seat but just go for the bar car and find a seat there, it’s the best place as you have a table, get served and can enjoy a coffee or beer while watching the landscape go by. The only downside is there are no plug sockets but this is not really an issue.

Arriving in Cologne to a brighter sky was a relief and meant I could pack my jacket away. Rather than taking the first train to Hilden, I decided to go for a short walk around and take some pictures around the Dom.

After my time in Cologne, I took the train to Hilden to see my parents and brother before I will head onwards to Copenhagen tomorrow evening.

Walking back home in Hilden, I saw this nicely lit shop and had to take a picture. I am very impressed how it came out and it it my favourite photo of the day.

You can see all pictures I took today on my unedited Flickr stream here, I will upload automatically all pictures there taken with the Eye-Fi card ad will manually upload the others to have as a cloud backup.

As a side note, I will try to post more of my preparations and planing stages throughout the journey and will keep the blog updated whenever possible. If you post a comment or send me an email, I will always reply as soon as I can.

The DOM

Before taking the train back to Amsterdam for my return flight to London, I had some time in Cologne and went up the Dom in Cologne and also for a wander inside the cathedral.

Bridge over the River

GXR A12-M, f8.0, 1/870, ISO 200, RAW, 21mm (Voigtlander Heliar f4.5 15mm L)

Although I spent most of the day at Photokina, I decided to write the whole report in one post so here is one of the pictures I took after breakfast on my way to the fair for today’s post.

I took it with the Heliar 15mm lens and have to say that I really love this lens on the GXR, if you have  GXR you have to get this lens but make sure you get the screw mount version as it’s smaller, cheaper and looks nicer.

Checking the Timetable

GXR A16, f4.1, 1/125, ISO 766, JPG, 35mm

1h with the CX4 in Cologne

I have not been very good with updating my blog recently, it’s been a mixture of not being inspired and an bit lazy coupled with some realld dull, grey and rainy weather.

So when I went to Germany again for the weekend and had the chance to take a CX4 out for a spin on a bright and sunny day I could not resist. Sometimes what one needs is not fantastic image quality and plenty of manual control, sometimes it’s all about having fun and some nice weather.

I decided to post a series of some of my favorite pictures taken with the different creative shooting modes found in the CX4 and hopefully some soon in the R10 GXR module. I had the most fun using the toy camera and the high contrast b&w modes.

Since I have not posted in a while it will be a longer series than usual to make up fo it.

Lonely Guest at Yellow’s

GRD, f2.4, 1/400, ISO 200, JPG

My short trip to Germany is over so I am back at the airport. While waiting for the flight to board I’ve been walking around taking some pictures.
I like the colors and light from this bar at Cologne/Bonn Airport. Since this airport is never really busy there is a quite serene feel about the place, especially in the late afternoon and evening.
While I love flying, I don’t like airports and especially wasting time at them. Going through all the security checks is a pain and takes ages without really doing much for security anyway. Most airports are modern, big and bright but also cold and without character. It is always a rush through or a long wait, never really relaxing.
It is great to see old movies where airports resemble a train station where you wait for your flight and then just walk to your plane. I know this is not possible anymore but it’s a nice reminder of what once was possible.