9-June: Köln

In the morning there was a nice German style breakfast served at the hotel consisting of cereal, breads, jams, butters, juices, and awesome coffee!  We ate well and headed out for the day ready for some adventures.  The weather held up for us again.  The forecasts have been saying rain for the past week for where we have gone, but it has mostly avoided us.

First, we went to the Kölner Dom.  The inside was nice, but pretty typical for old Catholic cathedrals.  We made use of our student discounts (only 1€/person) and walked the seemingly endless amount of stairs to the top of the Dom.  The only way up and down was a narrow spiral staircase.  We passed a group of little kids that were heading down on our way up who looked frightened.  The view from the top of the Dom was spectacular, you could see the whole city and surrounding land.  We were very thankful for the nice clear sky we had.

Our next stop was an old Gestapo prison turned museum.  This was another chance to use our student discounts (only 1,50€/person)!  It had 10 prison cells and was used mostly for interrogation.  The interesting thing about this prison, is that the inscriptions left by prisoners were still viewable on the walls and were recorded and transcribed (they were mostly in German and Russian, but we did see one American).  The cells were small and meant to hold no more than a couple prisoners, but nearing the end of WWII, according to the inscriptions on the wall and the accounts of some German officers, some cells held as many as 33 prisoners.  This was an interesting look into the accounts of prisoners of the Nazis, as well as some of the history of Köln before and during WWII.

We were excited about the next place, I especially, but we were disappointed with it overall.  The Lindt Chocolate Museum... It had a bit of information about the cultivation of Cocoa beans for chocolate production and the history of chocolate from the Aztecs on.  It was neat to look at the mini factory they had set up to show how the production process works, from grinding the beans and extracting the cocoa butter then mixing in the other ingredients to make the chocolate and finally pouring it into molds and cooling it to make it harden.  At the end, they dumped the chocolate out of the molds and poured it back into a vat to melt and repeat the process.  At the far-side of the mini-factory was a large chocolate fountain where you could get a little sample of chocolate poured onto a wafer.  That was mostly it, not much for the price of admission...

We met some new friends at dinner, Mike, Tamela, and their son, Christian.  They were friends of my mom's in high school, and through facebook saw we were travelling through Köln on our trip, so contacted us to see if we wanted to meet.  It was very nice to be able to sit and talk to someone in English!  (Other than each other). We were very thankful for the good food and conversation at the Altstadt Restaurant near the Dom in one of the many markets in Köln.  A street performer dressed as Charlie Chaplin walked by during our dinner and showed Christian and us some magic tricks.

After Dinner, we walked around the market and the Dom to just take in the sights on our final night in Köln... then it started to rain.  What a perfect reason to stop at a little cafe and have some coffee and tiramisu!