Over the weekend, I took a trip to Cologne. I was once again able to do the couch-surfing thing, and stay with a friend of a friend. Not only were they all cool people, but once again it saved a bundle on hotel and other expenses, plus I got a personalized tour of the city. It also worked out really well for this particular weekend, because we got to go to the Kölner Lichter fireworks event. Between that and the museums, it was another excellent trip.
The train rides up and back were uneventful, which was nice. A slight delay on one of the connections, but since it was a relatively straight shot it didn’t turn out to be any sort of a problem. When I arrived on Friday, I dropped off my stuff, and we headed to the Lindt Chocolate museum. The only point of reference I have for a chocolate museum is Hershey’s, but that’s more like an amusement park ride for grandmas than a bone fide museum, not to mention Hershey’s so-called “chocolate” is hilariously un-chocolatey.
The Lindt museum, like the chocolate they make, was the real deal. It contained not only walk-through exhibits of the specific chocolate making process, but a lot of supplementary chocolate-related exhibits, as well. There was an entire section on the development of chocolate advertising in Germany, an exhibit showing old-timey shops and vending machines, the history of the consumption of chocolate through over hundred years, and a greenhouse you could walk through, maintained at rainforest conditions with fauna from the rainforest. The most interesting part of the exhibit is an actual working chocolate production line, where they go from raw ingredients to finished, packaged pieces. At first I assumed it was a simulacrum of the process, but they actually have a few people towards the end, sitting in what amounts to a fishbowl, doing their part of the job. It’s cool to see everything running, but even better was when the wrapping machine got a pretty major jam, and we got to stand there for ten minutes watching them try to fix things. It’s nice when stuff works, but just in terms of museum-interestingness, that was even better.
After that visit, it was past closing for most of the other museums, so my friend showed me around the alt stadt (old city). The city is another fantastically old one, having been founded in 38 BC, so like all of the cities I’ve been to around here, there’s a lot of culture packed into a small space. We spent a good hour or two walking around all kinds of back alleys and seeing points of interest. (And naturally I forgot to take my camera with me that evening, so I don’t have anything to show for it.)
Saturday morning we headed back to the center of town, and saw the Cologne Cathedral first thing. Cathedrals are always an incredibly impressive sight—which is rather the point, I suppose, if you consider where they came from, and the purpose they originally served. It’s a testament to their effectiveness when even today, with all our modern technology and 100+ story skyscrapers, these buildings still inspire the awe they do. Of course this also means the place was packed with tourists. Any place with lots of tourists is also the natural home of the busker, so not only did I get a bunch of pictures of the cathedral, but I also got a bunch of pictures photobombed by a low-budget Jack Sparrow. Of course he asked for money right after, but at least he wasn’t pushy about it, so I can respect that.
I think the scaffolding makes it look sort of quasi-futuristic, like something out of a cyberpunk novel.
Yarr, harr, fiddeledee; do what you want ’cause a pirate is free.
After the Cathedral, we visited the Cologne Museum of Applied Art, which was fantastic. Applied art is a general term for objects with a function: the design of things such as furniture, utensils, dishware, radios, televisions, etc. They had an excellent collection with examples from the 1400′s to modern day, with half the museum being devoted to the modern era. I gave a bit of a personalized art tour for my friends, who were a bit wary of modern art—I think I was able to convince them that it at least has merit, even if it’s not something that’s immediately clear.
The highlight of Saturday, however, was the Kölner Lichter (Cologne Lights) festival. This annual celebration is a fireworks show and an excuse to hang out, drink and have fun. In all these things it was phenomenally successful, and I’m really glad I decided to visit that weekend in particular, so I could see it. I got a couple of decent pics of the event, and more can be see more on the official Köln website. According to news reports, there were over 100,000 people at the event itself, and more than a million who watched it on TV. The fireworks show itself was probably the most impressive I’ve ever seen, and ran a very long 31 minutes, set entirely to music.
Clearing 100,000 people out of a one kilometer radius around the Rhein River is a pretty major undertaking, but the crowd control people actually did a really good job directing the flow of foot traffic. In addition to this, my friend knew exactly where to go, which saved us a huge hassle. We walked to the second U-bahn station in the direction opposite of where we wanted to travel (across town). Since most people were taking the train from the center of town out to the edges, this allowed us to jump on a train heading in the right direction, but before it got to the center. We boarded a nearly empty train and got seats. Two stops later there was a huge crowd of people waiting to pile on the trains as they came. (They were running extra trains, so one was going past every five minutes or so, which also helped.) The extra walking we had to do out of our way really paid off in the end.
The traditional German banana on a stick.
The Cathedral and the bridge we walked across to the other side of the Rhein
Fireworks from the Kölner Lichter
Sunday was a more casual day, since we stayed up late on Saturday, and because I had to catch my train back to Speyer in the evening. We visited the archeological site of the Roman praetorium in Speyer—the seat of government during the Roman empire. The site is only partially excavated and it’s already quite large, with the museum and related artifacts being integrated into the site—itself underground. In addition to the foundation of the Praetorium itself, there was also another tunnel where you could walk through part of the original Roman sewer system. It’s pretty awesome to think about how you’re walking through a tunnel that was built literally 2,000 years ago.
The foundation of the Roman Praetorium
In the Roman sewer ducts
In addition to all the museums, we also went bar hopping. This is more relevant than it may seem. There is a type of beer known as Kölsch which is brewed exclusively in Cologne, and many bars have their own version of it. It’s pretty good stuff—though if I’m perfectly honest, Weissbiers (wheat beers) are still my favorite, along with stouts like Guinness which, I have found over the course of several conversations, most Germans can’t stand. Anyway, Kölsch is a light golden beer, pretty crisp, and it often packs a hoppy punch. (Some is more hoppy than others, but all of them have that pretty strong taste.) Although it wouldn’t consider it a favorite type of beer that I would actively go and seek out, none of the five or six varieties I tried were disappointing. Like with chocolate, Germans just don’t have the patience for bad beer.
In addition to the bier trinken, we also ate lunch (both days) at this one really amazing currywurst restaurant. Currywurst is a Berlin invention which basically consists of sausage and curry ketchup. Less basically, it can be made with varying degrees of spiciness, or different types of sausage, served with or without salat (coleslaw), fries, etc. A lot of currywurst is sold from stands as a kind of fast food, which is how I tried it when I was in Berlin. This restaurant in Cologne, however, mixed things up with a selection of about ten types of sausage, sauce, and spiciness levels—and all of it was amazing. I’m fairly certain it’s not possible to order anything bad there. It is, however, possible to order something extremely spicy, which is interesting because of how hard it is to get spicy food in Germany. In fact, it’s the spiciest food I’ve found anywhere so far in the country. It’s interesting because unlike in America where “medium” salsa means “blows your face off”, “sharf” in Germany seems to be just like a little bit of flavoring that may or may not actually have any spice in it. So I can eat “spicy” food in Germany and still taste everything else, which is nice. Anyway, these guys had sauce that was genuinely American-spicy as well as everything else on the spiciness spectrum, and the flavor was fantastic.
I’ll chalk this up as another incredibly successful city visit. Between the museums, the fireworks, and the restaurants, I can definitively say that this trip was:
