The undulating circus net makes every step an exaggerated, elongated, elastic bounce.
It’s the perfect gait to collide into and climb five giant transparent spheres suspended beneath the glass rooftop, 25 metres above the airy, white atrium.
I’m at the Kunst 21 contemporary art gallery in Dusseldorf, romping like a kindergartener in this elaborate art installation.
It’s called In Orbit by Argentine artist Tomas Saraceno, who now lives in Germany, and it’s meant to be experienced as well as admired.
That’s why Kunst 21 made In Orbit an interactive piece of art, a participatory, tactile playground resembling a sea of clouds or planetary galaxy.
It weighs three tons, but it effortlessly gives the impression of being weightless.
As soon as I can, I don the required jumpsuit and special shoes to enter In Orbit and frolic.
It’s a surreal, otherworldly blast – the most fun I’ve ever had in an art gallery.
Kunst 21 is located in the northwestern German city of Dusseldorf, population: 650,000, in the circa-1880 neo-Renaissance edifice that used to house the Westphalia Parliament.
The contrast of staid history and contemporary, interactive art is not lost on Kunst 21 or anyone who visits it.
Kunst 21 wants you to experience art, interact with it, physically confront it and have a good time doing so.
My interplanetary interlude is also in marked contrast to the culture I’ve just been lapping up in Dusseldorf.
It included Europe’s greenest building (the Ko-Bogen II, a five-storey trapezoidal office building with an exterior and rooftop of shrubs); the modern, curved Dusseldorfer Schauspielhaus theatre that gained fame when it was the featured architectural wallpaper for the Microsoft 7 operating system; and, of course, a lunch of currywurst and a glass of Riesling.
To continue the rooftop-fun theme, our group catches the half-hour train to Cologne, another iconic German metropolis, to climb the 701-year-old Cologne Cathedral.
It’s billed as a behind-the-scenes, physical excursion.
As such, we start by climbing up a 70-step, medieval, narrow, steep, stone and spiral staircase to the 20-metre-high vaulted innards of this UNESCO World Heritage Site Gothic masterpiece to learn about its history from guide Matthias Deml.
Stealthy navigating two narrow passageways, we find an opening to peer into the church’s main gallery – an arched and stained-glass wonder that Deml declares the most beautiful view of the church.
We agree.
Then it's up an elevator supported only by scaffolding to a height of 45 metres where the flying buttresses support the walls and massive windows of this house of God.
We catch our breath and ascend 42 steps to a catwalk to climb another 62 steps up an open, iron, spiral staircase to emerge at the open crossing tower connecting the nave to the transepts.
The view – this time Deml calls it the best in the city – is awe-inspiring with sprawling Cologne and the River Rhine to one side and the cathedral's imposing southern spires to the other.
Our rooftop adventures prove exploring historic Europe is about way more than just the typical sightseeing.
While Dusseldorf and Cologne are both large cities and tourist destinations in their own right with international airports, most Canadians will visit the cities after flying into Germany’s global hub of Frankfurt.
Both Dusseldorf and Cologne are a short train ride from Frankfurt.
