Filed under: Uncategorized
So here I sit, typing away at the blog and Kristie is slowly showing signs of life at noon. It’s raining again this morning so she’s not missing much.
We eventually got out of the room after an extended nap — staying up until daybreak partying with a bunch of Canadians isn’t conducive to getting up early in the morning.
It was windy and rainy so we took a short cut through the Dom cathedral enroute to “Altmarkt” which is “Old Market”. “Dom” is the most striking symbol of Cologne with it’s high spires and gothic construction. It was one of the few structures to survive world war two. Some stay that it survived because of it’s massive size and importance, others say it lasted the bombing campaign because it was a visual checkpoint at which allied bombers would use.
Today we traveled down to a store which sells nutcrackers and other assorted Christmas items to find a gift for our families. This particular store is pretty good because they’ll ship large items to the United States for a reasonable cost and it certainly beats trying to schlep awkward sized boxes of fragile items thousands of miles.
Tonight, we dined at the Haxenhaus which has an wide variety of the same dish. Schweinhaxe (pork shank), sauerkraut and mashed potatoes. The restaraunt is set up like a beer hall. Sets of long wooden tables with common seating. You more or less pick a couple of open spots at the table and belly up for food and drink.
We also attended a wine festival in the Altmarkt after dinner. There were representatives offering samples of a wide variety of regional wines. Germany is mostly known for white wine: Spatlese, “Ice Wine”, riesling, etc and the prices, as with the rest of Europe, are extraordinary. A very good wine may cost less than €5 in Europe whereas a bottle of “Gallo” may cost $9 in the United States.
Some of our friends are driving up from Switzerland and we decide to meet them back at the Haxenhaus which has transformed itself from a restaurant to a beer hall.
It’s interesting because a lot of the songs they’re playing are obviously drinking songs which you sing along to if you know the words, but they have a strong reaction to older American music — they apparently love it.
Long story long, yet another night of broken English, broken German and lots of beer drinking with the locals and our friends from Switzerland.
And a late night snack of Turkish pizza. Yum!
No Comments so far
Leave a comment
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>