This week’s #ForTheLoveOfTravel essay comes from Köln, reflects on a city shaped by art, architecture, culture, and unexpected discoveries. Written by Adrijana Husic as a letter to our Editor-in-Chief, Milo, the piece follows museums, historic streets, riverside walks, and chance encounters, she explores the beauty of travelling without a rigid plan and the stories that emerge along the way. Part travel diary, part cultural exploration, and part reflection on curiosity itself, this essay is an invitation to slow down, wander, and see a destination beyond its landmarks.

Voice Message from Köln – and all those dots

Is it Köln or Cologne, do you wonder as well? Or are you thinking: hasn’t she just returned from Istanbul? Yes, you are right, Milo. My suitcases are living their best life, never really sure if they are packed, unpacked, or to be packed.

One must wonder how she thought of going to Köln, rushing from an event to the airport, must I say. Well, the beloved algorithm knows its job. You know how thrilled I was to visit the Yayoi Kusama Museum back in January in Tokyo’s Shinjuku. That afternoon was bittersweet. As much as I loved it and was so happy to witness it live, I expected more. One Instagram ad, two months later, and I was building a whole 72 hours around a massive, career-spanning exhibition featuring over 300 works that tell Kusama’s life story. The universe has a sense of humour, so here is yet another voice message you didn’t ask for in your collection.

So far, Germany, for me, has been Berlin and Munich. And you know me: a new city, a concert or an art exhibition is always a why not. And here we are.

Seventy-two hours in a city that is a mixture of everything: people, cuisines, and most of all architecture. Walking around it, you genuinely feel like you are moving through different eras at once. A roller coaster. But somehow, it doesn’t hurt your eyes. The “Black” Cologne Cathedral alone, started in 1248 and completed over six hundred years later in 1880, pulls you into something so ancient it makes your own century feel briefly embarrassed. Then you turn a corner and find buildings that are plain, ordinary, almost deliberately forgettable, but still home to Louis Vuitton and Longchamp stores.

Cobblestone streets combined with modern ones, a contrast that works and makes you question whether we have progressed in design at all. That question came back repeatedly during the museum hunt these days. One thing that amazed me around the clock was the greenery, not only parks but all those buildings and rooftops insisting on life and colour, pressing back against the grey stones and the glass that tries to swallow the sky.

The people: the mixture of every part of the world, visible on the street, in the food, in the fashion. Buzzing, sunlit, alive. Which brings me to the weather. From thirty-plus degrees in Montenegro, I packed a leather jacket for Köln. The city could not make up its mind, which felt oddly familiar (hello, Podgorica!), so we had it all. Sun, wind, a bit of rain.

Museum Ludwig deserved more than a day. It wasn’t only Kusama, the other exhibitions like The Haubrich Collection, Modernism and Expressionism, A Pop Art Collection for Cologne, and Pablo Picasso pull you in too, one artistic roller coaster after another. And beyond Ludwig, Köln has small museums for everything: jewellery, furniture, different collections that most people walk past without knowing they’re there.

The Kusama exhibition itself was something else. A combination of digital art and her paintings from the very beginning, her story told alongside her work, from the earliest drawings of a girl in rural Japan seeing hallucinations of dots and flowers, all the way to the Infinity Mirror Room that holds you inside it like a question you cannot answer and wouldn’t want to. If not as crowded as it can be, every corner would be the perfect spot to stop and reflect. And this is what Kusama does perfectly: inviting you to question her life, your own life, and the world itself. It is always about the dots you need to find, put together, or not. And the colour you add is the expression of your deepest feelings, good or bad, just as this extraordinary woman has been doing since 1934.

The museum shop was mostly about the books (me love it!). The one we discovered while wandering the vibrant and trendy Ehrenstraße, the bookstore Klaus Bittner, was a true jewel of this trip. A few more kilos in the suitcase, but who is counting? MediaMarkt didn’t disappoint either and added a short laughing episode. You would naturally find me in the LP section, and while I was holding my freshly found Nirvana MTV Unplugged in New York, I couldn’t help but laugh at the K-pop section, fully double-secured. More protected than anything else in the entire store. As if those albums might make a run for it. What a publicity stunt! We will talk about K-pop in one of the next voice message sessions. I feel you would cut me off here.

The Wallraf-Richartz-Museum was not in the plan, but it came as a gift, given we crashed several street weddings beforehand and arrived without presents either way. The building alone was another architectural surprise. Seeing history right there in front of your eyes, from the Middle Ages through the Baroque to the 19th century, ending in full flower, is a completely different experience. Munch’s Melancholy stopped me completely: a painting that looks back at you with the patience of something that has been waiting a long time to be properly seen.

We could have stayed hours if we were not eager to wander the little streets of the old town. MAKK, the Museum of Applied Arts, was also a happy accident. The jewellery collection was fun, but the furniture and design floors were the real surprise. Beautifully curated, and a perfect contrast to everything happening outside on the crossroad of cobblestones and dull streets. The question of where we are with what we make today stayed with me long after. Do we progress, or is it a backward journey?

Going to Motorworld and seeing the Michael Schumacher Private Collection brought me back to about seven years old, watching Formula 1 on television or street kart racing from my grandma’s balcony, completely certain that nothing in the world was more exciting than that. This stop reminded me of exciting Baku, a city circuit, a completely different experience from anything else in the sports world.
Food in Köln is its own kind of surprise. You can find everything: Asian, European, and of course the German kind, which means at some point you find yourself in a beer hall with heavy meat that is exactly as serious as it sounds and as loud as you can imagine.

We were more into small coffee shops and various brunch places. And these do not fail. But one thing does: asking for an Iced Americano in these three days became a secret grail search. Jokes aside, asking for a double espresso and lots of ice somehow makes more sense here than an Iced Americano. I had no choice but to adapt.

The city is wonderfully walkable but also connected by trams running above and below: U-Bahn, S-Bahn, regional, and you need to understand which is which. Getting lost is not that hard, and missing which stop you should take is part of the experience. The Rhine carries itself differently from my forever fav Bosphorus, less drama and more patience, and the Hohenzollern Bridge Love Locks and Germany’s only cross-river cable car give you the right distance to feel the whole city breathing at once. Skulpturenpark Köln does the same on land, where you walk, pause, and either read the message the artist intended or find your own. I am not a fan of zoos, so I skipped that one, but Flora und Botanischer Garten Köln was worth a quick stop and coffee before the flight home.

Seventy-two hours later, I had six new books, all Japanese authors, and Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged in New York LP with me. For me, dots kind of connected. And for you? A voice message, with Nirvana’s Come As You Are playing in the background.

I see your question mark here: no, the next voice message is not coming from Japan. But soon. Might be.