Despite daily bombardments during WW2 the Hohenzollern Bridge continued to function as one of the most important bridges in Germany. The bridge was finally destroyed by German military engineers to hamper Allied troops as they began their assault on Cologne.
Following the surrender in May 45 repairs began, by 1948 it was fit for pedestrians to once again use it to cross the Rhine.
Nowadays it is the most heavily-used railway bridge in Germany with more than 1,200 trains crossing daily
1914, Europe is on the verge of war. Vrnjacka Banja a small Serbian town
A boy named Relja an officer in the Serbian army facing imminent deployment to fight on the front lines of WW1.
He had recently fallen in love, Nada was her name, they were inseparable and became engaged.
28th July 1914, Austria declared war on Serbia. Relja was forced to say goodbye to his fiancé and off he went to defend his country.
Nada was heartbroken, but she believed in her heart of hearts that Relja would survive the war and they could continue from where they left off.
An abrupt and not very romantic end. Relja went to war in Greece, he fell in love with a woman from Corfu, he dumped Nada and never returned to Serbia.
Nada was heartbroken, she never recovered from her grief. so the story goes she died young and alone, of a broken heart.
Her betrayal was soon on the grapevine, (they didn't have instasnapagram whatsapp bollox in those days), the other girls in town were understandably pissed off by this turn of events, and went into a panicked frenzy buying shit loads of padlocks upon which they wrote their names and those of their betrothed before attaching them to the bridge where Nada and Relja used to meet; hurling the keys into the river, to ensure a life of lasting fidelity.
I would have suggested a cock cage would be more appropriate....just to be on the safe side.
The craze hit Cologne as late as the 2000's and now thousands of locks sparkle on the Hohenzollern Bridge in Cologne.
In 2015, An anonymous physicist who actually has too much time on his hands and who needs to get himself a girlfriend to while away the time with, calculated, based upon "the density of locks per sq.metre" that there were somewhere between 50,000 and 200,000 locks, it is also said that an estimate in 2025 is at least half a million in place.
I wonder what the ratio of, "still together" v "fuck I have had enough of you" stands at.
Always Mr. Romantic
