Slowly but surely, I'm catching up to the present day in this blog.... sort of. Let's take a quick look at August 7-14.
Almost every day after class we take the opportunity to explore our city, which always inevitably leads to me taking photos of whatever we're seeing. Our host mom also led Sarah, the fellow program participant who also lives with my host family, and I on bikes to a local bar, where we had a chance to talk about travel plans and language school auf Deutsch.
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| The Fernsehturm (TV Tower) in Cologne from Media Park. Cologne is a major center for the media industry |
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| Media Tower. Note the screen printing of the Cologne Cathedral |
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| Street art is easy to find |
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| View out my window in my host family accommodation |
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| My host family's house is walking distance away from some neat woods |
That Friday, our German class took a well-deserved break from the classroom setting to visit a nearby farmer's market and cafe. Germans love their farmer's markets - you could find them every day of the week if you know where to look. At the cafe, we tried a typical German drink (non-alcoholic, for once) called Apfelschorle, which is just apple juice combined with sparkling mineral water. The Schorle invention is not just limited to apple juice, Germans also like mixing mineral water with other drinks, including wine.
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| Prost! (Cheers!) |
That day it was extraordinarily beautiful outside, and I couldn't help but comment on the perfect conditions and clear blue skies to my classmates. I should have known better - the weather here in Cologne is nothing if not unpredictable. My classmates informed me I had just made the terrible mistake of tempting German weather, and sure enough, several hours later it was raining.
On Saturday, a group of us headed to the sweetest of Cologne's many museums, the Chocolate Museum. We are now certified experts on the history of chocolate, chocolate's ingredients, chocolate's cultural implications, the way in which it is made, the modern chocolate industry, and more. For instance, we all learned 75% of cocoa farmers and their families have never tried a piece of chocolate in their lives. How's that for a simultaneously interesting and depressing fact.
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| The Dom (cathedral) was on the way to the museum, so we had to stop and take some pictures of course |
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| It took 3 separate photos and some messing around with Photoshop, but I finally got the whole huge Dom in one picture! |
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| In the early 1900s, this area was a prostitute-ridden slum. After WWII, when 95% of the city was destroyed, this riverfront area was rebuilt in a medieval style |
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| Finally we made it to the Chocolate Museum. Yum |
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| Unnecessarily fancy but awesome chocolate fountain |
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| So ready for samples. I got a weird look after getting my third |
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| Looking north, down the Rhine on top of the museum |
Time flies - the first two weeks of our program were over in the blink of an eye. But we weren't ready to slow down. Apart from checking out Cologne's huge shopping district and selection of cafes, the next week's highlight was sampling some German wine at a wine fest on the Rhine. Contrary to popular belief, Germans make alcoholic drinks other than beer. Most of their wine is white, including their signature Riesling, which is quite good.
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| A Stolperstein on the way to the wine fest |
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| Zum Wohl! (A classy variant of 'Cheers!') |
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| And again! Red wine this time |
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| Mighty Rhine |
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| The wine festival crew |
After a 2 and a half hour dinner the next day with a friend and her host family, the 3rd week of my yearlong trip was over!
That's it for now - next post, I'll write about my trip to the Netherlands! Stay tuned.
