How easily historians use the term catastrophe and how quickly this man's mind turned to the past. I find this peculiar because Cologne strikes me as a city not overly shaped by its past, at least by German standards. Cologne has made a lot out of its city centre, despite the many pedestrianised streets that catapult their visitors straight back to the West Germany of the 1950s. There is something outdated about them - not because there are no cars, but because they seem to be populated exclusively by old ladies dressed in anoraks with apparently not much else to do other than go shopping or drink weak coffee and have a piece of Sachertorte. But there is more to Cologne than a time trip back to the 1950s, perhaps because it has a big media industry that attracts youngsters (Charlotte Roche, the TV presenter and author of the notorious Wetlands, is based there) and because it has very strong local traditions (a peculiar mix of Carnival, beer brewing and Catholicism).

You can almost feel a change in atmosphere when you leave Cologne and travel south along the Rhine, as I did recently. As soon as you get to the banks of the Rhine and pass the huge cliffs underneath the rock known as the Loreley, you are immersed in German Romanticism. Many still know by heart Heine's poem "The Loreley", which begins: Ich weiss nicht, was soll es bedeuten,/dass ich so traurig bin ("I know not why I am so sad"). Driving down the windy road and looking over the river in the evening light, you would half expect to see a boatman crashing his boat because he was watching a mythical Rhine maiden and not the approaching rocks.