the nature of the beast » Archive » Köln: chocolate&surfing

I’m heading up to Köln for tuesday and wednesday—my very first solo abroad trip. I’m couch surfing with a girl named Annika, and another couch surfer from Lithuania! I planned the trip from a spontaneous need to visit the chocolate museum they have up there. Excitment!

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Köln/Cologne was sooo fun! I arrived after a really nice train ride, I read a lot of my book and slept a little and saw all the cute little german villages in the hills. When I walked out of the train station I was greeted by the gigantic Dom cathedral. It’s so impressive, and I walked all around it then off to the Ludwig museum, because I had no time to waste. It was a modern art museum with a really impressive collection! They had an entire room filled with Picasso’s and other big names that I had studied in Art History. They even had a Louise Nevelson sculpture (one of my favorites!) and I felt like I was back home at the nelson atkins standing in front of Sky Cathedral. I stayed as long as I could and ran around at the end to try and see everything, but I had to get to the Chocolate Museum before it closed! So I walked along the Rhine until I came to the glorious building. The outside was surrounded with kids on field trips, and the air was perfumed with chocolate. I bought my ticket and received a complimentary lindt chocolate square, which was delicious, and perfect since you can’t help but crave chocolate right when you walk in. I learned all about where the beans come from and the process of making the chocolate. After this there is a giant chocolate fountain and lady in a chef hat handing out wafers that she dips in the chocolate. I took one and headed up to see the packaging room—the part of the museum (minus the fountain) that I was the most excited about! There was packaging all the way back from the early 1900’s when the first german chocolate company, Stollwerk, started, as well as the candy machines they initially used to sell bite size samples. Things that just take a designers breath away.. or maybe just mine.

Naturally, I went back to get another sample pretending like it was my first, and then went to the last room which was a rainforest immitation. They had the room set at an ungodly temperature and the humidity to the max, too, so right when I walked in the lens of my camera fogged up and sweat started flooding out of my pores. There was a pond and real cocoa plants growing in the room that took up 2 stories. I ended the dream at the gift shop where I got lots of treats and strange flavored chocolates to share with Annika and for souvenirs.

My next stop was at the biggest bookstore in Cologne and I bought a mystery book, and thumbed through a book solely dedicated to Lucas Podolsky <3>

Annika woke me up with a breakfast of rolls and nutella and frishkäse (cream cheese) and juice, and we laughed at the guy on the radio and talked about where we wanted to go before her class at 1. A vintage shop around the corner was the first stop, and it was so cool and we opened all the drawers in the random furniture to find secret things like fur hats, white gloves and feather boas, pirate eyes and gold! The next place was the gellato place that she said was the best ice cream in the world, so obviously we had to go. And it was. I got FERERRO ROCHE gelatto.. soooo freaking good. It was already almost one now, so we had to say goodbye and I felt like I was leaving a friend I’d had for years

We got along so well, and I hope someday I can meet up with her again! I got to the train station with enough time to look inside the Dom and buy the coolest hollographic postcard of Köln. Such a good trip!