A Dear Friend in Cologne

"I'm coming to Paris," I wrote to my friend Claudia last month. "Can you come and meet me?" Claudia lives 40 minutes outside Cologne, Germany, and her reply came back immediately: "I want to see you! But did you consider the Olympic Games? I think that is not a good idea! Too crowded, too dangerous, terror warning, too expensive! Any other idea?"

I hadn't even thought about the Olympics when I bought my ticket. (Doh!) In the end, we decided to stay at her place in Gummersbach (her husband was going to be out of town), and I booked a Eurostar train from Paris to Cologne leaving a few hours before the opening ceremony. I managed to remain blissfully unaware of the fact that the entire French train system had been sabotaged until I arrived at the Gare du Nord.

Luckily, our train was only delayed by a couple of hours. I arrived in Cologne that evening and Claudia was there to get me.

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I met Claudia in the early 1990s, when she was an intern at the German-American Chamber of Commerce in San Francisco and I was working at a furniture company. We have been dear friends ever since - through heartbreak, childbirth, deaths, marriage, divorce, career changes, parenting troubles and re-marriages, we have supported each other across nine time zones and three decades. I'm lucky to have a friend like Claudia, and it's a rare treat to get to spend time with her.

Claudia and her husband Willi live in a lovely house on the outskirts of Gummersbach. They've lived there for several years, but this was the first time I'd seen it.

On my first day we drove in to Cologne, about 40 minutes away. We met her mom, Karin, downtown. I hadn’t seen Karin in nine years and it was wonderful to reconnect with her. She looks exactly the same!

It was raining, so we decided to go the art museum.

I took a ton of photos at the museum - I’m hoping to paint some copies once I get home.

Afterwards, they took me shoe shopping in the main high street. I was hoping to find some new trainers, but we kept striking out, until Karin suggested a department store with a big shoe department. This turned out to be a goldmine: I found a pair of Pumas (a German brand, I had no idea) that were super comfortable, marked down, and on sale!

After saying goodbye to Karin, we drove to a nearby village to check out a tapas restaurant that turns into a dance party after dinner, which a friend of Claudia's had recommended. When we got there, it was pretty quiet — but sure enough, at about 9:30 the DJ started spinning funk and disco from the 70s and 80s, and the place quickly filled up. The crazy thing was, everyone was our age! I’m still not sure if there are just a lot more Gen Xers in Germany than in the US (Claudia thinks there are), or if we’re the only ones who like dancing to 70s/80s music, or if it just wasn’t late enough for the younger folks to be out (we left the party at 11:30 and people were still arriving)... but it was refreshing and truly delightful to be at a party full of 50-something's who were all clearly having a great time.