Once upon a Mainz

on Gutenberg Universität Campus

     “We all are storytellers”, Thomas drank the last sip of his Kupferberg, “we have always been. And life is a tale vaguely based on a real story. But now each and every one of us can have his or her voice heard by an audience”. We left the Kirschgarten and its typically German half-timbered buildings to go to Liebfrauen square, in the proximity of the imposing Mainzer Dom. It wasn’t an ordinary day in the  small state capital of Rhineland-Palatinate. On a stage, a group of men in historical costumes was filling a giant wooden barrel with water.

     “What are they up to?”, I asked amused. “Every year in June, since  1968 alias the 500th

Home is where the Dom is

     I arrived in Cologne with a huge luggage full of dreams and expectations. After a Bachelor degree in foreign languages and communication, and a six month experience as an Erasmus student in the small German city of Saarbrücken, I was unmovable in the decision of leaving the warm wet air of my small village in the heel of the Italian boot and relocate to the land of poets and thinkers. So I reached Cologne on the first of May, a holiday. It didn’t surprise me to find all shops closed in what was a red day on the calendar, but I was quite astonished to acknowledge that the streets were deserted. Wasn’t Cologne a city with more than a million inhabitants? Where had they all gone? Apparently, the only Einheimische (locals) who bothered to give me a welcome were the two theatre figures Tünnes and Schäl.