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Drinking a Koelsch
The local beer which is served in ridiculous small glases The benefit of travelling is meeting lots of people which somehow after a couple of days think they like you and then offer accommodation in case you ever come to their hometown. This was also the case with Jens which I met and travelled with (remember the 36 hour bus ride) in Mozambique. Little did he know that one day we will turn up on his doorstep in Cologne. That in short is the story how we ended up visiting Cologne (Jens was in fact excited to see us and he actually mean it when he invited me)
Cologne is mostly famous for its massive Dome (I’m sure it’s the biggest in some category) which amazingly survived the second world war undamaged which is surprising as everything around it was levelled. The other two claims to fame are closely related and are the carnival and beer.
Carnival in Cologne (not that I have ever been) is a crazy time when everyone goes nuts runs around dressed up and does thing normally wouldn't be considered proper but that's carnival. There are also huge floats, music, massive amounts of candy and piss taking. Just think about a Rio carnival just without
the good weather, without the gorgeous women dressed in nothing, replace Rio with Cologne and the Brazilians with Germans. See it’s not that hard to figure out what it looks like.
Beer the other attraction is served here in tiny tiny 200ml glasses which would raise more than an eyebrow in other parts of Germany. It is also a special type of beer which I would describe as flat and lacking flavour but that would insult everyone in Cologne and so I won’t mention it again. Didn’t stop us drinking it in huge quantities though. The proper place to drink it is in one of the traditional beer halls which have been around forever and have a great atmosphere. Quite different thought to the beer halls in Munich or other place in Bavaria. A lot less (speak 0) people in lederhosen and smaller glasses..
The food here is also of the local variety and I had "Himmel un Äd" (a sentence that doesn't even make sense in German) which is a traditional Cologne food and consists of mashed potatoes, apple sauce and wait for it fried blood sausage. Sounds strange, looks weird but tastes good (if you trust my
taste buds).
Apart from getting drunk and eating strange food I also had the sad task of starting to update my CV. It’s always sad for me to come up to the end of a trip.
We also celebrated Jens birthday in style (speak lots of beer) where I met my heroes. A couple with three kids and expecting another one which plan to travel down the west coast of Africa for one year in a converted fire truck. Now that is hardcore travelling.
Helsinki
Helsinki is on the travel route because we fly with FinAir to Bangkok and we had a 10 hour stop over. Just enough time to hop on a bus and drive into the city, do some sightseeing and claim to have been to Finland.
Helsinki is a beautiful city especially with the fresh layer of snow which must have fallen hours before we arrived. It is a fabulous city and the inner city is full of old building. There are beautiful churches of many faiths, old storehouses, large cobble stone streets and parks. As it got dark at 3.30 we tried to find something else to do and there is not much
My childhood hero
This mouse is the star of a TV kids program that our budget would allow. Ok we visited Scandinavia’s largest department store and wandered the streets but that's about it. We tried to find an internet cafe so that I could watch the Olympic handball world championship but we couldn't find one. We really tried and asked people but there are just none. It seems everyone here has a Laptop and uses the free wifi that seems to be available everywhere. Bummer that we don't lug a Laptop around.
Apart from that everything you want to do is prohibitively expensive. A Maccas burger meal cost around AUD15 and a beer close to AUD10. So we ended up in a sports bar which only showed a local ice hockey match, read our books and enjoyed the world most expensive beer.
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