Cologne: beer, rain, and old friends

So you might be wondering, didn't I just come back from a fabulous 7-day trip to Spain?  Well, obviously, the answer is yes.  So why, you might be wondering, have I just come back from a 4-day trip in Cologne? And if you knew that I had only worked 4 days in between these two vacations, you'd be even more incredulous.  Yup, this is what it's like to be employed by the good old French Government.  Last Thursday, 11/11 was Armistice Day, which is means and everything in France is closed (I later found out that this is only France; while the rest of Europe recognizes the end of the first World War, they still go to work on this day).  And since I don't work on Wednesday, and I only have one pesky hour of work on Friday morning, I got the OK from my Friday morning teacher to go ahead and skip town on Tuesday night, planning to make up that hour after coming back...

So.  This is how it happened that after a week-and-a-half break, then four days of work (during which 3 of my classes were cancelled), I was on a train Tuesday afternoon, bound for Paris and then Cologne the next morning.  Well, due to some absurd French train problems that I'd rather forget, I ended up arriving in Paris at 4am instead of 11pm, got from one train station to the other, and by 6:30am was on my train for Cologne.  I arrived there around 10:30, and started doing some of my own sightseeing, mostly just walking around the shopping area near the train station and having a traditional Rhineland lunch of mashed potatoes, applesauce, and blood sausage.  Yeah, I didn't know what it was at the time because the English translation was "black pudding" which I knew sounded like something I probably didn't want to know more about, and since it tasted good I didn't look too hard into it, but I did eventually find out what it was.  Too late--I had already eaten and enjoyed it! (I wouldn't click on the link if you have a weak stomach, I'm actually kind of sad I looked at it)

After some wandering around the city, I met up with Marie (my friend from U of M who's teaching English in Cologne), who had just finished working for the day, and we got coffee and cake at one of her favorite coffee shops.  We had dinner with two of her friends who are also Americans teaching English in Germany; they were really nice and we had a great evening.

November 11 is Karneval, a.k.a. one of the biggest party days in Cologne.  The celebrations are supposed to start at 11:11 am (on 11/11, get it?), and people gather in Heumarkt, one of the main squares in Cologne, to drink beer and party and stuff.  Mostly what I gathered from the day is that as long as you drink beer all day, you're celebrating properly.  The beer they drink there is Kölsch, which is made in that region.  It's pretty light and comes in small glasses so you can drink a lot of it without realizing.

I spent the day with Katrin, who I met in high school when she was a foreign exchange student.  I haven't seen her since she came back to visit the year after she was in school here, so it's been about 5 years--way too long!  Anyway, I went to her apartment in the morning, we had breakfast, and then started drinking beer.  We had beer at her apartment, at her friend's apartment, and then went out to drink more beer in a bar.  I met some of her German friends, and Marie and the other Americans met up with us too.  It was a fun day but there's not much more I can say about it except

So, next day: Friday.  Katrin and I had breakfast (or was it lunch?), then went to the Dom (cathedral).  I had been inside on Wednesday since it's right next to the train station, but didn't climb up into the tower, which is a must-do if you're visiting Cologne for the first time.  It did offer a pretty spectacular view of the city, and was a good workout on top of that...

After climbing the Dom, we were getting hungry so we went grocery shopping then went back to Katrin's apartment to cook dinner together.  We went to a bar to meet up with Katrin's boyfriend and one of their friends to watch a soccer match (Dortmund vs. Hamburg, in case you were wondering) and had some Kölsch (of course).  Then we came home and had girly time--watching Sex and the City in our pajamas and eating chocolate.

Saturday we had planned to have a museum day.  It was pouring rain but that didn't stop us going out on foot--we were on a mission.  We started by going to the Nazi documentation center.  We both agreed that it would probably be depressing but since we were doing museums it was important to learn about Germany's history, both the good and bad parts of it.  The compromise was to do the depressing museum first, and save the fun ones for last.  It was indeed interesting, especially since I consider myself an amateur historian, but I guess there's not much I want to say about it.  The building was the Nazi headquarters in Cologne, so the top floors (where the displays are now) were offices I guess but the basement was a prison, which they have left intact.  We looked at the prison cells but got out of there as fast as we could.  When we left, it was still raining outside, and both of us had cold, wet feet inside of our boots, so we went to a mall and bought new (dry) socks to change into while having a cup of hot chocolate and crêpes.  Refreshed, warm, and dry, we set out again to the Cologne history museum.  Unfortunately, the museum was closed because they were holding a violin auction that day.  They did have a special exhibition that we could see for free, but that turned out to be depressing too--it was about how earlier that year, the building that holds the city's historic archives had collapsed (they still aren't sure why, it may have been because they were building a subway underneath it, but that's not certain).  Many documents were lost and 2 people died.  The exhibit had some of the documents that they were able to save or restore, some restoration materials and tools, and photos of the disaster.  After that, it was definitely time for a happy museum, and what better choice than the chocolate museum?  If you've been reading, you'll remember that I recently went to Barcelona's chocolate museum, so why not another one?  It's actually in a really cool building also, it's right on the river and looks like a boat, and most of the outer walls are glass so it offers great views of both sides of the river.  I've seen several museums and exhibits about the history and production of chocolate, so that isn't too interesting anymore, but it's still fun to be around chocolate!  The museum is sponsored by Lindt, so all the chocolates they displayed were Lindt (as were the free samples!).  We also took the "little train" to and from the chocolate museum, you know which one I'm talking about, the one they have in every touristy city that takes the tourists around and looks totally ridiculous.

Saturday night, we had dinner in a traditional German restaurant, and I had no idea what I was ordering upon Katrin's recommendation but it turned out to be this:

Basically just a really big hunk of pig with bones still in and skin still on.  Difficult to pick apart and eat, but delicious!

After that we went back and finished making the "nut corners" a really excellent type of cookie-bar type dessert that Katrin had made once in America long ago when we baked Christmas cookies together, and which I've been thinking about ever since.  I finally know how to make them!  We said good night, and I left early the next morning to catch my train back to Paris.  Once again, huge, annoying train problems that I don't want to think about anymore but the upshot of it was that I was sitting on trains from 7:45am till 10:15pm.  By the time I got back to Tarbes, I was so elated just to be able to walk around and not be wearing the same disgusting clothes I'd been wearing for five days.

So, to wrap up:
In spite of four days of solid rain, and a collective 9 hours of train delay, I enjoyed 4 lovely days with old and new friends, ate a lot of lovely food and drank a lot of lovely beer, and am now happily back in southwest France, where it's sunny and there are palm trees and mountains!

Also, good France-related news:
 I had enough time on the train to plan a kick-ass lesson about Thanksgiving so my students should be thoroughly entertained for the next 2 weeks!  And I came back to find out that I've been given a French social security number, and I'm going to Toulouse tomorrow to get my residence permit, so I'm a totally real and legitimate person in France now!

I know I've been back from Barcelona for a week, but isn't this just the best picture EVER?

Barcelona, in which I become fluent in both Castilian and Catalan

3 days later, I'm finally rested up enough to write about my totally full week in Barcelona! Enjoy!

Sunday: Marta's friend Laura, another spanish assistant who lives in Toulouse, kindly let us stay at her apartment to make it easier to get to the train station in the morning.  We all drove to Toulouse together, had a fun night out, and got up early on

Monday: After a 6-ish hour bus ride, we arrive at the Sants bus station in Barcelona around 4pm.  I thought our hostel was near said bus station, so we walked instead of getting on the metro at the station.  and walked. and walked.  At 5:45, we finally made it to the hostel, checked in, and were immediately informed that we would be taken out to bars and clubs every night by the hostel staff.  Molly and I had dinner around the corner from the hostel and when we came back were greeted by free beer and sangria, to get ready to go out.  We met up with people from a bunch of other hostels at the bar, had a great time meeting other travelers, and then went out dancing.

Tuesday: While deciding what to do, we met Matt, Colleen, and Theresa in the hostel's common room, some other Americans who are studying abroad in Florence and they invited us to come along with them to Parc Güell, the famous park that Gaudi designed.  They warned us that Matt was in charge of getting us there, which would most likely be by the least direct route possible but I, usually the directions freak in any group, happily resigned to relaxing and letting someone else take over.  We did indeed take the least direct route without heading into the Mediterranean, but we had a great time climbing up into the hills and stopping to play on playgrounds and stuff.  The park itself was really cool.  We mostly just saw the free parts, refusing to pay or wait in line to see the Gaudi museum, but everything was beautiful and interesting anyway.  It was hilarious when all 5 of us would take our cameras out at the same time, to take the exact same photo, which happened pretty much ever 30 seconds because there were so many things to photograph, and a great view of the city.  When we finally got back to the hostel, everyone was exhausted so we relaxed and some took naps, while I went the the grocery store with Hernán, who works at the hostel, to get things to make sangria and a tapas dinner.  We made pitcher after pitcher of sangria for everyone at the hostel, and eventually went out again for another night of dancing.

Wednesday: Molly and I headed out on our own, first having coffee in front of the Sagrada Familia, Gaudi's famous church which is still under construction and will supposedly be finished in 2020.  We were once again unwilling to pay 12 euros and wait in a line around the block to see the inside, and admired all sides of it from the outside.  After this, we took the metro to the Passeig de Gracia, one of the main streets in BCN, to see the two houses Gaudi designed, took a bunch of pictures, and muttered to ourselves about how embarrassing it was that we didn't actually know anything about Gaudi.  Promised ourselves to Wikipedia him when we got back to the hostel, which we of course forgot to do.  We had decided to have lunch in the Gothic quarter, the old part of the city, so we had to push ourselves to keep walking until we finally got to the Barcelona cathedral and found a nearby Italian restaurant full of tourists and had lunch at 4, a time when actual spaniards eat lunch.  After fortifying ourselves, we walked around La Rambla, a kind of touristy shopping area, then to the old port, and finally to the Arc de Triomf and the park surrounding it. (isn't it cute? they have their own little arc de triomf just like paris!)  We took the metro back to the hostel after a fruitless search for gelato, and I spent 3 hours having Hernán try to teach me how to make tortillas de papas (spanish omelet with potatoes).  Became convinced that I could have made them much more efficiently, but they were delicious anyway.  I went out with the group in spite of my oncoming cold which I knew would be terrible the next day... but when in Barcelona...

Thursday: absolute worst day of my cold.  After sleeping in, Molly and I walked to a café with me sneezing the whole way.  While sitting there I managed to get my jeans stuck in my chair AND nearly knocked the table over when a bug flew at my face.  We discovered that we were both near our hostel and near the Arc de Triomf, making our metro ride the day before slightly silly and pointless.  Nevertheless, we walked to the arc and lay down in the sun under the palm trees to relax.  After that it was only a short walk to the Parc de Ciutadella, which was gorgeous (and coincidentally full of French people).  There is a pond, a huge fountain with gilded sculptures of greek gods, and a giant woolly mammoth sculpture.  After enjoying nature and stuff, we walked around the gothic quarter some more and then headed back to the hostel where we made dinner and I stayed in to recover while the others went out.

Friday: Checked my french bank account as soon as I woke up (which I had been doing every day) and found out that we had finally been paid.  Molly and I decided to celebrate our newfound status of being rich and fabulous by taking Hernán out for brunch.  We ate in a tiny spanish restaurant and ordered one of everything to try all different kinds of spanish food.  Took a nap, then Molly and I went to the biggest mall in Barcelona to blow a large chunk of our paycheck on clothes.  After dinner, I got dressed up and went out while Molly stayed in with the cold I had given her.  We went to a club on the beach (!!!) which was awesome and it was the Florence group's last night in Barcelona.

Saturday: After lunch, I went to the Parc del Labirint with Hernán, which he had told me about before and I decided we HAD to go because it had a hedge maze.  Molly doesn't think hedge mazes are as exciting as I do so she stayed at the hostel.  It was hilarious and fun and I beat Hernán out of the maze, then we walked around the park a bit and came back because he had to work.  Molly and I then went to the chocolate museum and due to our apparent confusion, somehow got in for free.  The museum is not very large and consists mostly of chocolate sculptures of really silly things, and some stuff about the history of chocolate, and most importantly, the café/shop.  We made up for the free admission in the shop, and drank the richest hot chocolate I have ever eaten.  Molly bough honey-cheese flavored chocolate (don't ask) and I got salted chocolate.  We then decided to walk to the beach, as we hadn't really been yet, and stopped in a pretty cool church on the way, making it to the beach just after the sun set.  We stayed long enough to get sand in our shoes and accidentally get caught in a wave, then set off to find dinner.  After Chinese dinner, we finally found gelato, and ate it sitting on a bench looking at the Sagrada Familia.  We came back to get ready to go out, the group consisted only of the two of us, Hernán, and a nice Finnish guy.  The club we went to was pretty but super lame and full of super lame Americans that made us embarrassed to be American.

Sunday (last day!): Hernán had told me Saturday that he was taking another hostel guest to a park on a hill that supposedly had the best view of Barcelona, so I went along with Molly, a French guy, and an awesome girl from Quebec who had just arrived.  We hiked up and up and up, complaining the whole way of course (but in my witty and hilarious way of complaining that isn't annoying at all).  When we got to the village at the top of the hill, there was a sign saying "construction site - do not enter" which I read out loud to Hernán in case he couldn't read Catalan, but of course he didn't believe me and kept going anyway.  We had to climb under a fence and pass the construction workers who stared at us like "look at those idiots, can't they read the signs?" but eventually came to a big concrete platform which did indeed offer a 360º view of Barcelona. It was pretty awesome and definitely worth the hike.  We stared at the city and ocean for a few minutes, then proceeded to take hundreds of stupid and hilarious photos, including "jumping photos" where you capture 3 people jumping in mid-air which is impressive enough when you're not on the edge of a cliff with a panoramic view of Barcelona behind you.  On the walk home, I told Flo (french guy) and Marie-Julie (quebecoise girl) that I was in fact serious about needing an ice cold beer upon our return to sea level, so we went into a xureria (Catalan for "churro shop") where we got churros and 70-cent beers!  These two were so cool.  I can't believe I almost missed meeting Marie-Julie--our week-long trips in BCN only overlapped by one day so although it was sad that we only got to spend a day together it was better than not having met at all.  Basically the whole trip was full of meeting really awesome people who I'll probably never see again, which is kind of bittersweet.  Each day, someone would leave and someone else would arrive, which results in making a lot of really cool friends and saying a lot of good-byes.

All in all, I had probably the best week I've had since leaving home, mostly thanks to the excellent people I was with.  I hope every trip is like this although I have a feeling this one will be pretty hard to top.

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PS--As soon as I got back to Tarbes, I realized that I'm going to Cologne in a week to visit Katrin for a long weekend.  Do they really ever expect us to work???  We STILL haven't even started classes again (tomorrow is the first day back after break) so I even got to spend a day in Toulouse with the girls on Tuesday, and Sam and I rented bikes for 1 euro and rode around seeing parks and things all afternoon.