Illumination Kölner Dom – Illumination Cologne cathedral

Today is the start of the annual pilgrimage of the Cologne cathedral. I had already read a while ago that there was an illumination for it that was to honour the 100th anniversary of the end of WW I. I tried to keep up with all the info and found out that on monday was the last big rehearsal. So on monday I went together with a friend and my mom and it was really cool. First they showed the lightshow (music not to be shown on the pics 😉 ) and afterwards they had only certain pics as image (not moving) for photographers. That was cool. Yesterday was the inauguration day and I was totally surprised that we could just walk in at 8 PM when it was supposed to start. I had expected long lines but nothing. Again we saw the lightshow mostly from the same angle as monday but after the first run we moved a bit more to the middle and that was a totally different experience because we were able to read all the words. There are the years 1914 and 1918. Everything begins with ‚hooray‘ as people were enthusiastic about the war. But then they found out in the 4 years to follow that there is nothing funny or good about a war. It ends with 1918 but still… then there are a lot of words that are very important in the current climate… hate and racism is too common nowadays. And then in the last 3 minutes there is an explosion of colours – that part is my favorite one…. beautiful and it is supposed to tell that there is hope and happiness around. From what I have heard from my sister today it was very difficult to get in so I think we made the right decisions to go on monday and yesterday… here are pics but to be honest: you would need to see it then the words are moving (with the music)…