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Published: December 30th 2007
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Greetings from Koln, Germany.
I spent four days in Germany, visiting my mother's side of the family. I've been to Koln, (Cologne) twice before, but the last time I went was 11 years ago so my memory of the place and the language was a bit rusty to say the least.
I arrived on Monday night and met Renate, a somehow removed cousin of my mom's. After missing each other in the airport for about half an hour, I spotted a woman wearing knee high heeled boots and with long blonde hair, I naturally assumed that this highly stylish lady must be from my family :P We said hello and drove to my great-aunt's house. Renate learned English in school and through Lufthansa's business English program and so her english was awesome and she was my lifesaver the entire trip. My great aunt who is in her mid-80's can understand a bit of English but our conversations were an elaborate game of charades nonetheless. Gestures, nearby objects and wild arm flapping were our friends that week.
Renate was amazing and took three days off work to show me around so we spent time shopping in the vast shopping
areas that Koln offers, hunting predominately for high heeled shoes, which we found in the first store we went in, it was awesome. Red stilettos are my new friends. After that, we simply went shopping everywhere, and then went back to have lunch with the family, including great aunts and uncles, about five people altogether. It was a fantastic lunch, because by this point my basic german had returned to me (and I had stopped saying "Tak" (Thank you) and "Urshecka/Unskool" (Phonectically excuse me) automatically and changed it to Danke and enshuldigan sie bitte. (Again with the phonetics, I have no idea how to spell out this stuff, its hard enough to say. So I was at the point of understanding about 40% of the conversaion and being able to respond a little bit, partially english, partially german, and thankfully, danish and swedish words have the same roots as german ones so every so often, I'd throw in a danish or swedish word and it would have the same basic meaning so I was in luck! By the end of the week, I was having to concentrate less to understand more and was able to string together fairly concrete sentences.
I was proud! 😊
Renate took me with her friend Monica to see the Weinachten markets, Christmas markets. They were beautiful! The most prominent one was outside the Cathedral Dom, which was so much bigger than I remember it being, and everything was gorgeous. The Christmas markets looked very authentic, with handmade items, and lovely food and glu wine which is the same as glogg, but with amaretto or rum. We visited the ice rink and enjoyed some gluwine there then went to a medieval market which was really neat because they served mead and fresh baked bread and dealt in a made up currency that wasn't called 'euros'...but secretly was euros. 😊
My great aunt and I went through hundreds of photos, which are easy to translate and fun to look at, there was so many of my mom when she was younger and her family and my grandma which was really neat to see. We also went to see an impromptu performance of a brass band, playing in the neighborhood, where about twenty neighborhood people showed up and it turned out that my late great-uncle used to play with that band, and loads of the photographs
showed the band members through the years so that was neat to see. We visited my great-uncle's grave where my great-aunt told me that when he was buried, they made sure to pour a shot of whiskey over his grave to keep him happy. Seemed nice. 😊
I spent the last day having breakfast and lunch with my great aunt and then shopping and spending some quality time sitting in and appreciating the amazingness of the Dom. Its so incredible, massive endless ceilings, beautiful windows, of which there is one new one which is controversial due to the lack of saints depicted in it (its just a mosaic of colours) but it lets in light and casts incredible reflections so it more than makes up for the saints.
I caught the train to the airport and flew off to Nottingham - and it felt like coming home when I arrived in the city...next blog will cover the fun and insanity that is Nottingham. 😊
Merry Christmas, Froche Weinachten, Glaedig Jul, God Jul! And a happy new year!
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