International Hotel in Cologne

Far across the seas, where the wind blows in a northerly direction towards the foot of the sun, there is a hotel. Now, from the outside, it might look very small - at a mere 2 floors high, it could hardly accommodate a baby elephant. But inside, oh inside, it is very big indeed.

This building has no back entrance and everyone, regardless of the colour of their skin, can walk through the front entrance as cool as they please, their feet barely touching the ground.

There is absolutely no need to show any forms of identification. People will laugh at you if you do. For the building has an endless bowel of bricks and mortar that stretch like rubber to accommodate an unlimited amount of people. It has no concept of lack - it gains its energy from the same sun that the wind greets each day – and then it stretches out some more, letting out a content sigh every time it does.

This special hotel adjusts its temperature to ensure that every guest who walks through her doors, from the coldest to the hottest country, feels comfortable. The guests all speak different languages, by the way - if one speaks in one language, the other replies in another and yet they all understand each other – completely.

This hotel belongs to everybody – because it was built by everybody – for everybody. Therefore the words, Majority and Minority have little use here – they have been done away with, ground into very fine dust with a foot pumice and blown into the wind. The dust will go nowhere in particular – of no fixed abode. It will simply disappear, finding freedom in its release, in its new role of not having to define anything – of essentially not having a role at all.

Now this hotel, this special hotel is known across the world by two names. Some call her Hotel Cologne (hotel köln) while others call her Hotel in Cologne (Consul Hotel Köln). Her name is neither here nor there, not as much as what she represents, what the people who inhabit her represent.

Some say such a hotel does not exist at all and never has. It is merely a silly myth fuelled by wishful thinking – a desperate form of escapism. Those who believe are told to wake up from their stupor and move on with the times.

Others believe it to exist as surely as there is night and day. After all, aren’t all myths borne from some form of truth? – solid truth? – a truth that time and human memory have whittled down to a paler version of its former self?

No one is right and no one is wrong. Hotel in Cologne (Consul Hotel Köln) exists regardless of belief, debate and speculation. She exists for those who need her to exist. She will appear to those who need her to. Her arms outstretched, she will remain a host to many, an enabler, a gatherer of people from all places far and wide