The Hohenzollern Bridge has also seen many ups and downs; many historical marks of Cologne in particular and Germany in general have been recorded here.
The bridge over the Rhine River, built in 1907, was completed in 1911. It replaced the old Synagogue Bridge, which could no longer accommodate the increasing traffic of Cologne at that time. The bridge is a witness, one might say a “veteran,” due to what it endured during the Second World War.
Hohenzollern was heavily damaged when the German fascist army deliberately destroyed it to hinder the advance of the Allied forces attacking Cologne in 1945.
The bridge was rebuilt from 1955 to 1959.
After that, the bridge was only used for trains and pedestrians.Currently, it remains the most important railway bridge in Germany and also an unmissable tourist destination when visiting the city of Cologne, alongside the famous cathedral known as the Cologne Cathedral, officially named the Cathedral of Saint Peter and Saint Mary.
At that time, we arrived in the city of Cologne on a Wednesday, and only saw a few scattered tourists coming to look at the locks on the Hohenzollern Bridge.Perhaps, due to the lack of space, couples had to go elsewhere to hang their locks!
I also didn’t see anyone selling locks. Is it because the trading spirit of Europeans is not as strong as that of Asians?Or is it because the Cologne authorities have banned adding more locks to the bridge to protect it from the weight of countless locks, so they no longer sell locks?
Many years ago, when visiting Namsan Mountain in the capital of South Korea, we also encountered similar love locks. But the difference is, when we climbed the mountain in Korea, we still saw many couples together hanging locks on the railing.
You can even see people selling locks. Love locks are sold in various sizes.The average price of a lock is about 5 US dollars, not cheap, but really, isn’t it worth it for the vows?
In South Korea, according to a travel brochure, there is a custom that if a woman gets married, her future husband will buy a lock and attach it to her house gate!
Then my mind wandered off to… Paris. Previously, the Paris authorities ordered the cutting of numerous locks on either side of the Pont des Arts, one of the 37 bridges spanning the Seine River flowing through the French capital, and called on lovers to express their love in other ways, no longer by attaching locks to that bridge!
However, “love locks” are still a familiar term to many people, especially couples in love. Hohenzollern is not the first and only bridge known for the locks of those in love.
Many other bridges also mark love with various types of love locks.Besides the Pont des Arts bridge over the Seine River in Paris, France, which has stopped being a lock bridge, there are still other bridges that are “actively locking.” For example, the Milvio Bridge in Rome, Italy; the Tretyakovskaya Bridge in Moscow, the capital of Russia; the Mala Strana Bridge in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic; or closer to Vietnam: the Love Bridge in Zhangjiajie, Hunan Province, China.
