String Of Butterflies: Cologne/Koln and its Christmas Markets

Our second day in Germany was spent in Cologne/Koln. We had 3 main items on our agenda, see the cathedral, see Roman ruins/museum, and wander the Christmas market. Germany of course, was very cold during Brie's trip here, in fact, it was the coldest its been this winter so far during the 4-5 days she was visiting. For all things not the Christmas markets in Germany, I was along for the ride, as I've seen these attractions, but I wanted Brie to see them and experience them as well. It wasn't boring, but fun watching her reactions to whatever we were seeing, and sometimes seeing something I hadn't before.

We got to the train station rather early, early enough that we could wander down the closed Bonn Christmas market before anyone else was up and wandering around. Nifty!

Bonn Christmas market in the early morning

Moving onto the Cologne cathedral, as you already know from my previous post, is a gothic style cathedral. I am always amazed when walking through them. Brie commented about how 'airy' and spacious this one was on the inside. I was surprised by how noisy it was inside this time. I'm amazed by the lack of courtesy tourists have. I'm not religious, but I know and have respect for these amazing places. You wouldn't talk loud or horse around in a library, so why would you in a church? Sorry, my mini-rant. It was cloudy that morning, so the stained glass wasn't nearly as lit up as when I was last through the cathedral, and part of the apse was blocked off this time, but she got to see one of the bigger cathedrals in Germany, and one that survived multiple hits by bombs during WWII.

Cologne cathedral

Some of the mosaics in the cathedral

The next stop on our escapade was to the pretorium which had the physical Roman ruins. We saw where the earthquake generations ago caused massive cracks in the structure, and how there were different layers of building. Pretty incredible how much survives over time.

We then went onwards to the best part of the day for me, to the Christmas markets. Cologne has 4 big ones every year. We started at the Alter Markt (old market), which was themed with Elves. We mostly just wandered through this one, keeping an eye on things we wanted to buy later so we wouldn't have to carry them so far and for so long. We then wandered over to the second half of the old market. It's called the old market, because it is is located in the older part of town. On the second half of the old market, we each got ourselves our respective foods. I got a potato raclette which had cheese and onion and potatoes in it, with green onions on top, soooooo goooooood. Brie got a bratwurst, and put currywurst ketchup on top. She was humming with happiness. We munched while watching kids ice skate past. This market had a ice skating rink and a curling rink. I also bought some freshly made kettle chips with garlic salt on them.... yum yum. We then strolled to another stand to get glühwein (mulled wine), which is very warm. Oddly enough we both got carded when trying to buy them (and the drinking age for it is 18 here), talk about complementary. We both didn't really like it. I don't really get what the fuss is about other than it being sold being another symbol that Christmas is near.

Alter Markt Christmas market

Curling

Ice skating

Bratwurst and kettle chips

How could I not get something from here?

Mulled wine

Each market has its own mug

Can you tell I don't like it?

Next stop, the Rudolfplatz Christmas market, which was just by the Schokolade Museum. Of course we briefly had to stop into the museum store to check out the chocolate. This one had a pirate theme to it, and it didn't really have anything that looked like something we had to have. Every Christmas market has a few similar things, and a bunch of unique things, so you never quite know what to expect.

What better way to explore the city than to get lost? We were going to make a loop visiting the Christmas markets and visit the Roman ruins museum next to the cathedral and have the cathedral market as our last stop. That makes our 3rd Christmas market the Neumarkt, which despite its name as the new market, it is actually the oldest market in Cologne, it's just located on the new market. On the way there we went too far and had to loop back to find it, so confusing! This one we made off like bandits. Brie and I both got ornaments that were made out of thinly shaved pieces of wood. We also stopped and had a deep fried piece of dough, I bought some different cheese varieties for a dinner/snack item for one night. I got a reibekuchen which are potato and onion bits deep fried like a patty. You can get them with applesauce and this place had another sweet sauce, but we just got it plain. It was crackalicious. Everyone who knows me knows how much I like potatoes...... mmmmmmm..... I'm sure I'm forgetting to mention something we ate/got at this market, but oh well.

We then looped back around to the Roman Museum next to the cathedral, where we spent the next hours mostly looking at cool old glass, old jewelry, and statues. One of the pieces of glass is very intricately made and it's only 1 piece, which is hard to believe. Apparently someone in South America tried to replicate it over more than a year and was unable to do it in just 1 piece. We could see the sun coming down, and by the time we left the museum, it was dark (which is at about 4:30-5pm right now).

We were then on a mission to find Kölsch beer, which is a specialty beer made in Cologne (has to be made within 50km of the city to be called this). I am realizing right now while writing this blog how much Deutsch I'm incorporating into my daily life, because I just had to change the spelling of beer back to the English form twice, not the German form I initially wrote (oops!). Unfortunately, we didn't come across any beer by the cathedral, but we did come across schupfnudeln, which Brie read about in a blog somewhere. It is noodles made out of potatoes with creme fraiche and German sauerkraut. Very heavy, and if it didn't have the creme fraiche, I probably wouldn't have liked it at all. By this point it was raining pretty good, but we went back to the old market to get some Kölsc, as that's where I saw it being poured. Since we were both fairly full, I got us a glass of 300mL of beer. So now Brie can check German beer off her list (but I still made her try another later). That was the end of our evening, we bundled ourselves up and made it back to the train station. We decided to not go to the Siegburg Medieval Christmas market after all (we were toying with the idea the whole week, but never went). It was nice arriving back in my apartment though, where it was nice and toasty. Our next day was going to be the coldest of them all.