Day 5: Padlocks are heavier than trains?

We took a walking tour of Cologne today and saw the "Old City", the Rhine river and lots of other little historic places. We also saw one of the two bridges across the river, the one for trains, that had thousands of locks on it. The legend is that if you and your lover take a lock, engrave your names on it, lock it on the bridge and then throw the key in the river your love will last forever because you can't ever unlock the lock. The bridge is owned by the DB railway company though and they kept cutting all the locks off. This made everybody upset and hen they asked why they were told that the locks would make the bridge too heavy. Needless to say after that little bit of "wisdom" became common knowledge the DB authorities decided they might ought to reverse their decision and now people have started putting the locks back. After the walking tour we went inside the Dom. There are some beautiful stained glass windows and at least three pipe organs in there! Behind the alter they have a gold sarcophagus that holds the remains of what is belived to be the three wise men. Once every year on January 6, "epiphany", the corner is opened and you can see the tows of one of the bodies. Not only is the Cologne cathedral an attraction for tourists, it is still a working cathedral if you will. they hold regular services there five times a day. Another interesting bit of info about the cathedral is that during WWII the entire town of Cologne was basically flattened but the cathedral was left almost completely unscathed. This was because the cathedral was used by Allied planes as a landmark and directional cue.