Cologne!

So I got into Cologne at 3:10, which was 5 minutes after Hans had gotten there so we met up at the train station and headed out into the chaos. I had been lucky it turns out. Apparently he was on a “party train” filled with men dressed up as pink fairies and several cases of beer. Mine had been pretty quiet. Anyway, neither of us had realized we’d be on the train over lunch and thus had not eaten so we figured food was the first stop. We stepped out of the train station and… Wow. The cathedral is right there. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, the Cologne Cathedral is one of the most massive churches in Europe. It’s huge. And it’s right there. We attempted to walk back far enough on the square in order to fit the whole thing in our cameras. We were almost successful. Then Hans called his friend, Becka, who we were staying with. She’s on the same program as he is (Fulbright) and had been nice enough to offer her kitchen floor to us for the night even though they’d only met once (and we’d never met) at the beginning of the year. She was nearby with the three other people staying with her. One was a friend from college who is studying in Hamburg, and who had brought two friends with her. The group of us went in search of sausages (I have eaten way too many sausages in the least three days. Wow…. Then we were handed a beer (Kölsch is the Cologne beer (also, actually, the name of their dialect)). I’m versed enough in beer to know that it was not Munich beer and that people from Munich probably consider it a step down. It’s a little closer to American stuff. We walked over to the riverfront so Hans and I could see the Rhein and then we joined the rest of the city and went searching for a bar. Let me stop for a minute and explain Carnival. It’s really Marti Gras, but Germany takes it to a different level (Well, parts of Germany. Turns out there was almost nothing going on in Berlin). They add the Halloween aspect. The streets are basically filled with people dressed up as anything and everything in the world (criminals, pirates, bumblebees and brightly colored wigs were very popular). Each of these people is holding a beer. Some of them have string tied around their necks with a little pouch to hold their beer. Some of them are wearing belts that have little pouches attached with individual bottled shots. A large portion of them are holding sausages, eating currywurst or Berliners (as they’re ironically called here… they’re Krapfen in Bavaria/Austria… this is the famous Jelly Donut JFK referred to himself as. In Munich they are powdered with marmalade inside. Cologne has a second flavor with a raspberry/strawberry type jam… much tastier!) There are also (because this is Germany and Germany doesn’t miss a chance to add alcohol when it can), Berliners filled with liquor. Now Munich, the drinking capitol of Germany, has these donuts filled with Eierliquor (eggnog liquor), Sekt, Amaretto, etc. Cologne just had Eierliquor. I’m fond of eggnog so I got one. Turns out there’s about a shot of liquor in there, which comes spilling out when you bite into it. Anyway, so this is what we’re walking through. One big Halloween drinking party. That’s on the streets. When you walk into a bar, you add dancing. This is the typical German music that, as my host sister, Lisa, put it once: “you only hear at festivals because you have to be drunk to actually think it’s good”. If I can figure out how to post music, I’ll post a couple of examples. So all these drunk costumed people are merrily dancing to the music and taking shots of beer… well, not really on the last one. That’s just what Hans and I determined. The Kölsch beer is sold in 0.2 liters in the bars. That’s a very tiny glass. Less than half of a bottle. They’re usually only 1 Euro though. Anyway, we hung out there until Amelia caught up with us and then went with Becka back to her apartment to drop off our stuff. We were going to a parade! Or so we thought. It was too far to walk and should have been about 15 minutes on the subway. (Cologne subways are actually subways/trams combined since they’re above ground more often than not and run like trams). However, this was not the case. You will think I am making the following story up but I promise I am not. There were approximately a million people waiting for the subway. Obviously that’s an exaggeration, but you get the idea. Which is why it was great when the subway showed up… already packed full. We all crowded on anyway. Doors close. Subway jolts forward. We are smashed closer to the pirates and bumblebees than we ever thought we’d be. Subway stops. We stand smashed in subway for a good 5 minutes. Doors open. People get off. More people get on. Doors close. We sit. Doors open. People start yelling to get off. People get off. Eventually we are finally told the train is broken and we need to exit. We exit. Next train is coming in 15 minutes. We figure this is probably because the same thing is happening one stop down. Train finally comes. Also extremely crowded. We crowd on. This time it goes. Unfortunately we have to transfer three stops later. We exit. Our connection is coming in 2 minutes. Not bad. 5 minutes later it’s still coming in 2 minutes. And then it changes. It’s coming in 7 minutes. Approximately 20 minutes after we get there, it finally comes. Of course it’s full. A lot of people get off though. We get on. Everyone else gets on. Doors close and we stand there for about 3 minutes before it jolts forward… and stops. Doors open. People get out. We decide we’re sticking put until someone tells us to get off. More people get on. Doors close. Doors open. People get off. People get on. Announcement tells us tram is broken and we need to get off. Again??? We can’t believe it. We get off. Next one’s coming in 3 minutes. Yeah, right. Sure enough 10 minutes later we’re finally on a tram that’s moving. And packed full. We finally get to our stop and pile off and look at the time. It’s been two hours. Becka calls her other three friends who had gone straight to the parade and asks where they’re standing. Turns out the parade just ended. Yeah… and of course there’s no way we’re getting a tram back because not only is everyone that was on the tram we just got off of climbing back on, so is everyone from the parade. So we decide to walk. It’s several miles but it’s along the river, which is pretty at least. Unfortunately by the time we’ve been walking 30 minutes or so we’re still only a third of the way to where her friends ended up. We decide to chance a different line. It’s coming in 8 minutes and it starts at this stop so it should be empty. Well, 8 minutes was fairly optimistic on their parts. It takes 35 minutes. Luckily, it is indeed empty when it gets to us. We get off at an entertainment center. Food is everywhere. As are bars… that are jammed full. There are lines outside of all of them to get in but of course no one is leaving so the lines aren’t moving. We hungrily devour Chinese food which is surprisingly really good, and then wander for 15 minutes or so away from the party to find a bar we can get into. The one we find is pretty smoky. With the plan to see the city early in the morning, Hans, Amelia and I decided we’d had enough of the party for the night and we headed back to Becka’s and went to sleep. Three of us on an air mattress in the kitchen. It was fun. We woke up at 7 because we wanted to see the Cathedral, which, due to Carnival, was only open 6 am-9 am. And by open they mean you can walk through it. The tours were all cancelled, as was the possibility to go up in the towers (each over the length of a football field in height to give you an idea…). We wandered around inside anyway. Again. Massive. From there we started to hit the other sight seeing things. Where Potsdam was filled with palaces, Cologne has churches. Over 30 of them listed on the map. We hit 5. Or at least we tried to. The first two we went to we got in fine… because it was Sunday morning and they were having services… oops. When we tried to hit more that afternoon, they were closed. As was everything else we tried to see… the Ludwig Museum is their known art museum with a large Picasso and Rembrandt collection. Closed for Carnival. There was a Roman/German Museum with Roman artifacts from the area… closed for carnival. AND… the best reason to go to Cologne other than the Cathedral is the LINDT CHOCOLATE FACTORY! Turns out Cologne is the leading producer of chocolate in Germany and the factory/museum gives FREE SAMPLES. The website had not said it’d be closed (I had double checked). We walked all the way down there. CLOSED FOR CARNIVAL!!! AHH!!!  So basically we determined you either go to Cologne to see the city or you go to Cologne for Carnival. You can’t do both. The entire city shuts down. I guess they can afford to do that due to the amount of beer and sausage they sell. Amelia took a train home at that point as she’s ending her semester in Munich on Tuesday (same as me, but going home for good). Hans and I wandered around a little more, taking advantage of things they couldn’t close (such as the original city wall and a couple of city gates). Then we took an evening train to Düsseldorf to check into our hotel. Cologne was, obviously, completely booked for the weekend. We crashed at 9:30 and woke up nice and early at 6:00 to catch breakfast at 7:00 and take a subway to the center of Düsseldorf. It was just barely dawn and the streets were empty. We walked around the Altstadt (old city center) and then to the river and circled. Went back to the hotel, checked out and took a 9:30 train to Cologne. Rosenmontag (Rose Monday) is the day of the huge parade in Cologne. I mean huge, too. It’s a 6 hour parade. Well, we were on the party train to get there. There were no seats left so people were crowded in the aisle. The train was blasting Carnival music and the middle aged prisoners beside us were taking shots of vodka. Yes, I did say 9:30 am. We met Becka and a friend of hers (the other three had gone home the day before) for the parade. Let me just say, wow… It makes me wish I’d been to the New Orleans parade just to compare, but I have a pretty good feeling this one would have been really hard to miss. I mean, come on, 6 hours! And let me tell you about the candy. I’m used to getting thrown smarties and tootsie rolls. They throw chocolate bars. I’m not talking about snickers fun size (though they throw those too in the form of Bounty and Tolberone). I’m talking about 100 gram full sized Hershey bar type chocolate bars. They were throwing large boxes of truffles. I’d love to know the candy budget. It was awesome. They also throw individual flowers (probably roses due to Rose Monday…), which was really cool. Basically candy and flowers everywhere. And everyone is yelling “Kölle Alaaf!” (Cologne first! or something in their dialect) to get the floats to throw the candy. Meanwhile the guy with the loudspeaker is telling us all to greet each individual float as it comes by (by screaming this) and telling the floats to “let the candy scatter like you’re scattering seeds!” (something like that… it’s a German phrase and that’s my best explanation). There were some really intelligent guys who were actually profiting off the parade. Most people were just leaving their empty beer bottles/shot bottles on the ground. We saw quite a few people walking around with huge bags and collecting these bottles. When you buy glass or plastic bottles in Germany, they add a “Pfand” (deposit) onto the price for the bottle. If you return these to the supermarket, you get the Pfand back. It’s often 15-20 cents. Considering the number of bottles on the streets, these guys were going to make a fair amount of profit. Anyway, we left the parade around 2:30, which was good because we had to get back to the train station… which meant we actually had to cross the parade three times. This is easier said than done since we had a lot of police officers trying to prevent us from doing just that. We did eventually make it with 20 minutes or so to spare and then I caught up 3:30 train and Hans caught his 3:50 train back to Munich. It was good to sit down, and I was, by that point, looking forward to a 10 hour plane ride of not-walking. Anyway, got back to Munich at 8:30. Funny how Munich Hauptbahnhof (main station) now feels like “home”. Travels at an end for now… back to the US.

Pictures:
Hans and I at the Rhein
The Cologne Cathedral
Close up on the door. Look at that detail!
Me with my "Berliner"
The parade: this pretty much sums Carnival up