File that under, 'what the hell was I thinking ...'

I was eager to take some time off before the rush of people's summer holidays left me stranded and overworked at the office. I did some fast research and came off with a plan to visit Cologne, Germany for three days. In my mind the city had a Gothic old town and a charming river bank and was a mix of old Germanic charm and Northern European design (think Scandia.) In reality, it's almost entirely charmless ... the only thing to survive the war was the cathedral and the train station. Everything was re-built in the 60s and 70s, and the cathedral's not even genuinely gothic - it was started in the 13th century, but mostly constructed in the 1860s. It's also soot black with pollution and butted up against charmless concrete buildings that house museums and train stations.

I booked into the Radisson. Suprisingly cheap. Meant to be in the city centre. It wasn't. It was dead centre between a motorway onramp, a construction site and an abandoned trainyard. There was no one in the hotel. It quite often felt that I was the only guesst there. But it's beautifully designed and the room, with walls of frosted glass and pleated soft paper was stunning. Apparently, it sells out when there are conventions at the Koelnmesse down the road, but it was surprisingly empty.

A 15-minute walk through the abandoned trainyard, across the railway bridge, and into the city centre gave me blisters on my very first day there. I almost immediately left, but it was too costly to go anywhere else from Cologne, so I braved it out. It was not all bad; there are some lovely shops, the weather was perfect, there was one charming waiter at the brewery on the banks of the Rhine, and a rather comprehensive exhibit of Die Blaue Riter at the Museum Ludwig.

It's not surprising, therefore, that there aren't many pictures. I wasn't really inspired by anything. Sorry, John, they're all pictures of buildings ...

My dreams of going to find a German boyfriend were also dashed to pieces. I went one night to 'do the gay bars' I went to three. The first was in the Rudolfplatz and apparently catered to anorexic 17 year olds. I felt positively old. The second was the 'bear' bar in Heumarkt. I went at 8.30. I was the only customer. For an hour and a half. No one even looked in. The bored bartender and I struck up a conversation (as we were the only two there.) He claims things don't really get busy until 11pm. But I have a hard time believing that. No one even looked in! It was depressing. I felt guilty for leaving him alone, but by 10 I was tired of the farce and wanted to be back in the hotel.

The good news is that someone flirted with me in the hotel bar as I was drinking a Pernod before bed. Unfortunately, she was the hotel prostitute (from what I could tell). So I gulped my Pernod and went to bed. Alone.