WYD - Day 3

Her Hotness, Delia Gallagher, is extremely busy because she's spending some time with the Pope and the young pilgrims (some with very colorful shirt!). In lieu of her daily imaginary blog, a friend who lives and works in Cologne (and is not attending WYD) is filling in with an actual account:

Salvete!

Today feels just right to speak Latin, because I had the craziest day in months so far!

Today the pope arrived in Cologne and I was scheduled for work, because both my boss and I thought he'd arrive on Friday when we worked out the working schedules some time ago... I got up an hour earlier today and thought I'd avoid most of the pilgrims this way.

Well, the train arrived at the station and was already packed with pilgrims (mainly Hungarians today), but not too packed, so I could get in. In the morning I usually avoid Cologne's central train station and get off the train earlier, taking the tube instead -but today the tube wouldn't operate properly, crashed by too many pilgrims. Instead I had to walk, and since my workplace is several miles from where I was at that time, I called my boss and told her I was going to be late.

Fastforward 45 minutes: I managed to cross the bridge over the river Rhine, but there were so many pilgrims at that time that I couldn't get off the group anymore, which was heading for the cathedral instead.

Another 30 minutes later I found myself standing in front of the cathedral, thousands of pilgrims around me and new ones arriving with every second. The whole place was so packed that I couldn't move my arm to call my boss again, because at that point I realized that I was not going to be late anymore -I was not going to be there at all! Suddenly I realized what's up with all those people: they wanted to see the Shrine of the Three Kings in the cathedral (to get a letter of indulgence, those visiting the World Youth Day have to do a pilgrimage to the shrine). The pressure lowered a bit and I called my boss, who said I got the day off and didn't have to make up for it. Since I could not move spontaneously anyway, I got pushed into the cathedral and had to do all the pilgrimage with them. Thankfully I have seen the shrine dozens of times before, so I could get away from them in the choir and leave the group behind. Nevertheless it took me almost half an hour to simply pass through the cathedral.

When I got outside again (after getting a button which proves that I've done the pilgrimage, too), I was standing right in front of the train station -only police cordoned off the stairs leading down to the station. To get to the entrance, I'd have to walk around the whole cathedral again... There I was, standing foolishly in front of the fence. Luckily one of the volunteers, probably mistaking me for a lost pilgrim, led me to a small flight of stairs off the masses where I could get "downstairs" and sneak through a side-entrance into the station. Ten minutes later, I was sitting in the train, still wondering how this could happen...

This is a very brief account of what happened, and gives no credit at all to the atmosphere. Imagine tens of thousands of people assembling, all of them singing, chanting, shouting, cheering. Everybody speaks a different language, one out of twenty is holding a flag. They all move into one direction and you cannot move elsewhere, even if you are trying to. It's hot, the sun's shining, people are pushing forward. Lots of them seem to range somewhere between ecstasy and a mild form of mass hysteria, emotionally. All of them try to get into the cathedral, try to touch the stones of the building or the bronze doors... I must confess that I felt slightly claustrophobic at times. I mean, I "survived" the R.E.M. free concert in Cologne in 2001, when the place was so crowded I had to stand on one foot only for 35 minutes, because I couldn't lower the other one again, but today came very close to that.

If there wasn't the button I got, I'd think I made it up myself...

Thanks for letting me share it, bud! You know who you are!