Eating our Way Through Europe, brought to you by Project Runway: Cologne

If you are ever in Europe, don't go to Cologne.

I promise I'm not being dramatic. Even the guy at the Tourism Office couldn't come up with something for us to do. After making us pay 20 cents for a city map.

How did I end up in a city that I seem to hate so much, you ask? Well, according to RailEurope, the train booking company, Cologne is the connecting city between Brussels and Prague. So we found ourselves stumbling out of bed in darkness at 6 am on Saturday morning to catch a 7:30 train from Brussels to Cologne. We should have known right from the start that the trip was doomed. For some reason, we were overzealous in our booking and chose to take the 7:30 am train instead of the 11:30 am one. Needless to say, we regretted that choice when the alarm went off at 6 am (I bet our hostel roommates did too) and proceeded to gripe about it all the way to the station.

When we arrived in Cologne, we encountered the beautiful Kolner Dom cathedral right outside the train station and thought for a moment that the trip was going to redeem itself. The cathedral was exquisite, especially the stained glass and mosaics. We stayed for the noon prayer service, which was all in German. Just as the priest finished saying the final prayer, the sun started streaming through the stained glass windows, which was pretty cool. Made it seem like a very poignant moment. It was definitely a moving experience to be in the cathedral with people from so many different places praying together. I made sure to say a prayer for safe travels for the rest of the week.

After the cathedral, we wandered around for awhile and had "Berliner" jelly donuts, which apparently are the root of the many jokes about JFK's "I am a Berliner" speech in Berlin during the Cold War. Poor guy didn't mean to say that he was a jelly doughnut.

The doughnuts were probably the last high point of the day. Even just walking around Cologne I got a bad vibe. All the people seemed very angry, and like they were in a rush to get somewhere. And it didn't matter where you were walking, because these people were set on their path and would just crash right into you if you were in their way. (Side note: When I almost got knocked over by my fellow pedestrians, I was taking a picture of Dunkin' Donuts, which were everywhere in Cologne, for some reason. Although not on every block like in good old Boston) Our new code for when someone is being rude or mean is, "She's wearing her cologne."

At a loss for what to do, we went to the Tourism Office across the street from the cathedral, bought a map, and asked the guy at the desk what he recommended that we see in the city. His illuminating answer?

"Turn around."

When we nicely explained that we had already been to the cathedral, the best advice he could come up with was to walk towards the river through the old part of town. So that's what we did, cracking jokes the whole way about how awful the city was. Which probably wasn't nice and was the stereotypical American touristy thing to do, but it was laughter that got us through what could have been a rough day. Some gems from the trip:

"Well we might as well go...we made 20 cents for the map." (shortly before losing said map)

"Oh look, the city ruins. The last time Cologne was fun." (while walking past this excavation site near the river)

*note: we kept an extensive quote list from the entire trip...more to come in a future post!

We wasted awhile trying to find a store called Nutcracker House and goofed around with a statue of a man sitting on a bench after walking to see the Rhine River. (Kaitlin has the goofy statue photos, so look for those in a future post!) Needless to say, we were a little desperate for something to pass the time. I will concede that there were some old-fashioned buildings on the walk to the river, like the Old Town Hall, that were pretty.

Cologne is famous for being the place where Eau de Cologne originated, if you couldn't tell from the name, so we wanted to find the famous store where cologne was first sold. Since we lost the map, it was a bit more a struggle than we anticipated, but we got there eventually. Throughout the week we kind of learned that the second we gave up all hope, we were most likely to find the building or landmark that we were looking for!

I wasn't the biggest fan of the Eau de Cologne scent, I kinda smelled like lemony kitchen cleaner to me. But the store had this cute clock that had little revolving figurines and played music every hour on the hour, so it was cool to see that. And the store itself was beautiful, with a large fountain full of cologne right at the entryway and a tapestry on the wall commemorating its opening. Definitely not your typical perfume store!

By that point, we had pretty much found all that Cologne had to offer, so we found a Starbucks and used their free wifi for a few hours until it was time to leave for our first overnight train adventure. I should say that we found the Starbucks after wandering around the same five sets of streets for over half an hour before we finally stumbled upon it. Too bad we lost the 20-cent map.

Here's a teaser for next time: our first overnight train, a fake Eiffel Tower, and bread dumplings!