It's a state of mind.
The city of Cologne, which the Germans call Köln (and it’s their city, so they can call it whatever they like) is one of the oldest cities in Germany. As a result, it has lots and lots of churches that were originally built during very different periods in history.
We’re writing this post on a rainy evening in Cologne, while we hang out at our hotel’s bar drinking red German wine. Yes, red German wine. It’s quite good, actually. We hope to drink more of it during this trip. Oh, who are we kidding? Of course we’ll drink more of it.
In June 1963, John F. Kennedy visited Berlin to rally the West against the USSR’s newly constructed wall that was designed to separate the Eastern (Soviet) part of the city from the Western part, with dire consequences for those who tried to cross it. In his speech to an appreciative crowd, President Kennedy famously uttered the phrase “Ich bin ein Berliner” – meaning, I am a person of Berlin; I am one of you. As the story goes, the crowd both applauded and laughed at Kennedy’s words, because unbeknownst to him those words had a double meaning.
Our last stop was Mumbai, by far India’s most cosmopolitan city, though maybe not its most picturesque. Mumbai doesn’t have a lot of tourist attractions. But the international blend of cuisines made for some wonderful meals, and we managed to find some pretty interesting vistas.
Our travels through Rajasthan took us to Jaipur, Jodhpur, and Udaipur. All those names end in “pur” because that’s the Hindi suffix for “city” – similar to the Arabic “abad” (Islamabad, Jalalabad) or the Russian “grad” (Leningrad, Stalingrad) or the English, er, ah…”city.”
Bad pun, Ok, terrible pun. It’s actually pronounced OO-dah-pur. In any case, Udaipur is unlike anywhere else we’ve been in India.
Though the Pink City is no longer pink, the Blue City of Jodhpur is definitely still blue.
Jaipur, the first planned city in India, is known as the Pink City because its founder, the Maharaja Jai Singh II, decreed that all the buildings should be, well, pink.
That’s the name of an early 1970s musical in which the whole cast disrobes piece by piece, eventually revealing all their naughty bits, while performing skits about sexual mores and taboos and so forth. It has nothing to do with the city of Calcutta.
Actually, Varanasi is very ancient. It’s the oldest continually inhabited city on Earth. People have been living here since around 3000 BC. So long ago that even Star Wars hadn’t happened yet.
Sometimes you arrive at a world-famous site only to find that the reality does not quite live up to the reputation. The Taj Mahal is not one of those places.
Just arrived, saw a bit of New Delhi today, going to Old Delhi tomorrow. Lots of vibrant colors and interesting scents in this town. But none of us are really sure why they call it Delhi.