Kolsh in Koln

Koln (or Cologne) was a rather easy and compact city to walk around in, we walked almost everywhere and of course since we were in Germany, we had loads of beer, sausages, schnitzels and pork knuckles! Woohoo….

Schnitzel and sausages! Our first meal arriving late in Koln!

Beer in Koln is served a little differently from the rest of Germany, instead of a big mug, they serve the beer in little glasses of 200ml. I really prefer it this way since I don’t drink my beer fast. The beer is kept cold and you get fresh beer frequently, win-win situation!!! And the best part… the moment you sit down, they serve you the beer, cos that’s the only beer and the only size, no time wasted in deciding what beer you want and in what size, its super efficient and I like it. The beer is called Kolsch and its only served in that region, or made there I think. In any case, we both enjoyed it a lot. The food was also pretty good and cheap, we ate lots of schnitzels, sausages and pork knuckles. M had told me about the currywurst before I went and though it sounds really strange (sausages smothered in ketchup topped with curry powder anyone?), it tasted oh so good. Super fattening food but we couldn’t stop eating it. It’s like the ultimate street food.

Pork Knuckles and chilly glasses of Kolsch!

And since we are on the topic of food, we visited a chocolate museum in Koln as part of our trip, the Chocolate Museum. The museum is also known as the Lindt Chocolate museum and for a while, we were wondering why a Swiss company had a chocolate museum in Germany and if in fact, Lindt is actually German and not Swiss. Well, luckily, we are not that ignorant, Lindt is actually Swiss, the thing is, Koln had a chocolate museum for a long time and Lindt then decided to sponsor the museum, thus the name. The museum itself was fairly educational, it covers quite a bit of history about how cocoa was discovered, how its harvested, how the world reacted to its discovery etc. They even had an area set up as a rainforest so visitors can experience what its like in a rainforest environment. I was missing the heat of Singapore since it was still freezing in April so we went in there, however it was so so humid it was difficult to breathe so we only stayed for a very short while.

One of the more fascinating sections was the one where you can see how the actual production of chocolate is like in a factory environment. It ain’t no Willy Wonka and there were no Oompa Loompas, instead we had a few grumpy German ladies working there as part of the demonstration. Nevertheless, it was still fun to see how the little chocolate bars were being made. I found it quite remarkable that they actually bothered to put in that in the museum. I also quite enjoyed the section showing the old advertisements selling chocolate.

Classic Lindt

Old brands of Schokolade (chocolate)

Now that we’re done with the food, let’s talk about the other places we visited, namely the Kolner Dom, Museum Ludwig and Wallraf-Richartz Museum.

The Kolner Dom is the largest Gothic cathedral in Germany and we managed to get a guided tour of the cathedral with a very bubbly German lady as our guide. I actually can’t remember much of what she told us but I do remember that the tour was good, so that counts for something I guess. We were also able to get up close to the Shrine of the Three Magi and we learnt that though we normally think that three kings paid a visit to Jesus when he was born, the bible actually doesn’t say that there were three kings, it only states that the kings brought gold, frankincense and myrrh. Since three gifts are mentioned, people just assumed there were three kings. We also wanted to climb up the tower but didn’t do so due to bad weather.

Kolner Dom

Inside Kolner Dom

As for the two museums we visited, I really enjoyed the Wallraf-Richartz Museum. They had a special exhibition on Corbet which was designed by Christian Lacroix. Corbet was one of the renowned classical artists of his time, but he is kinda forgotten now and some would say he fell out of fashion. I must say I really enjoyed his paintings and I would say his works are pretty good. The museum also gives a really good overview of the evolution of art through the ages, you do need to be patient and read through everything though. It’s kind of like a Art History 101 lesson.

We didn’t really have a lot of time in Museum Ludwig but I did like the exhibitions on Pop Art. The Portable War Memorial was interesting and I got frightened by the woman figurine. CS had pointed out the fake woman and told me it was a figurine but I didn’t believe him, but when I found out I thought it was quite freaky. The artist’s idea of art was to make strikingly realistic human models and place them inconspicuously and get a reaction from the viewer, which he certainly got from me.

We also did a little shopping in Koln, and since it is the birthplace of the original eau de cologne, you can guess what we bought! I must say I don’t like the scent of the original, I prefer the new scents they came up with. It was quite weird that they had a tap in the shop which had a continuous stream of the original eau de cologne though.

All in all, we both really enjoyed our stay in Koln. With good food at reasonable prices, fresh beer and some interesting sight, what more can you ask for. Most importantly, its not overrun by tourists yet. Definitely a place to visit.

One last picture of food to end the entry. Almonds flakes on steak and another german favourite, potato dumplings.

Not so much for me though...

Fancy a glass of champagne?

After OD-ing on museums in Paris, we thought it would be good to indulge in some champagne tastings instead and off we went to Reims.

As everyone knows, champagne is only produced in a particular area of France, all other bubbly wine has to be called something else, i.e sparkling wine, prosecco, basically anything other than champagne. We decided to visit Moet & Chandon and Tattinger, two champagne houses in Epernay and Reims.

Crazy underground network of wine cellars

(stays at a constant temperature of 10-12 celsius throughout the year)

We visited Moet & Chandon first, and as expected, the set-up was pretty impressive. We had to reserve the tour in advance but we lost our way and turned up a little late so we missed most of the corporate video and instead started in the cellars. Our guide was a French lady who took a while to warm up to the group but overall she was a rather good guide. It was a small group (6 only) but they were a fun bunch with lots of jokes and interesting facts shared. So back to school and some of things we learnt.

• Three different types of grapes are used to make champagne, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier. Chardonnay and Pinot Noir are white grapes whereas Pinot Meunier is red. Though Pinot Meunier is red, it produces white wine! And I’ve always thought only white grapes produce white wine and that champagne is only made from white grapes. Its the skin of red grapes which makes it red.
• Vintage champagne is made only with grapes from a certain year. This depends on the champagne maker’s decision and the grapes obviously have to be very good that year for him to make that decision. Most of the champage available is actually a mixture of grapes from different years.
• The bubbles in champagne is a result of natural fermentation occurring in the bottle and not as a result of injection of carbon dioxide in the wine. I can almost hear the sneer in the guide’s voice when she said this.

Endless rows of maturing wine

• The champagne bottles need to be turned to allow the sediment to settle (the sediment is the yeast they inject to interact with the wine to create the bubbles). They still turn some by hand but most are turned by machines now.
• To remove the sediment, they freeze it at the bottle neck and the pressure within the bottle will pop the iced sediment out, plug it with a cork and still retain enough pressure for us to pop it at home.
• Champagne just like wine needs to be aged before drinking. There is a French authority which regulates the minimum number of months the champagne must be aged before it can be sold, minimum of 18 months for normal champagne and 36 months for vintage champagne. The champagne bottles are left to age in the cellars of the respective champagne houses, so there are literally thousands of champagne bottles underground in that particular region in France!!! The cellars are all next to each other so the champagne houses actually can’t really expand any further. Oh the cellars are actually quite gross and for some of the bottles, the layer of dust on them is quite unbelievable.

Be fabulous like Scarlett Johansson

(she hosted a dinner in the wine cellar!)

After the tour, we had our tasting of the champagne! Hehe… just what we were waiting for. We had paid to drink 2 types of champagne, the normal one and the rose one. Both of us preferred the normal champagne and it was really easy to drink. Oh Moet and Chandon and Dom Perignon belong to the same company but brewed at different places, so if you can't afford Dom Perignon, you can still buy Moet, hehe...

Hello, Mr Perignon

The next day, we visited Tattinger. This tour didn’t require any reservation so there were quite a lot of people. It felt a bit like they were herding sheep actually. The guide was rather friendly but most of the info was the same as Moet so nothing new to learn. The set up wasn’t as impressive as Moet I must say, but apparently their cellars were bigger than Moet. Strangely enough, we have not heard of them before, but then again we are not exactly big champagne drinkers. We had the champagne tasting again after the tour (just one glass this time) and we both preferred the Moet one instead as that just tasted smoother.

Other than getting drunk on champagne, we also visited the Notre Dame in Reims. Yes, there is a Notre Dame in Reims, and apparently there is a Notre Dame in almost every city in France, think it’s a bit like Duomos in Italy, haha… Apparently the kings of France were once crowned there, so the interior is quite amazing with quite lovely stained glass windows. The exterior is also quite a sight, towering large cathedral with loads and loads of statues and statuettes.

Interior of the coronation cathedral

Exterior

All in all, Reims was quite enjoyable, and of course the champagne definitely helped, hehe…

More Museums, Cathedrals, and a River Cruise and Shakespeare!

On our last day in Paris, the weather was just as wonderful as the first day, and of course we had a few more places to conquer.

Musee Lourve - of course we went here, as if I will miss this for the world. CS was more excited about the queue at the Apple store for the iPad 2, lol... The sale of iPad2 only started at 5pm and will only be released then so there were no display sets for him to play with. With our wonderful museum pass, we zoomed past all the queues, woo hoo! The Lourve is seriously big, you can spend a whole day there, heck probably a week and still not see everything. As we were on limited time, we skipped through most of the exhibits and did the major ones, like Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, Coronation of Napoleon etc. We used the audio guide which was quite good, though on hindsight, we should have joined one of the guided tours. I must say that Mona Lisa is NOT that small at the end of the day, though the crowd to see her was obviously quite crazy. Still worth a look no matter what people say.

IM Pei's Glass Pyramid

It's really not as small as it looks!

Amazing! Amazing how many people there are....

Welcoming us to Egypt!

Tourists just snapping away..

Shakespeare and Co - oh how can I come all the way to Paris and not come here! Ever since I watched Before Sunset, I decided I have to go to the bookshop if I ever made my way to Paris and it was every bit as charming as I thought it would be. It's the kind of bookshop I would love to own/ work in if I ever have the chance. The whole place just has books, books and books stacked all over and you can probably spend the whole day on the second floor if you wanted to. People probably come here cos of Ernest Hemmingway, I'm shallower than that, I came here to feel Ethan Hawke/ Julie Delphy, haha.

The famous storefront!

Books galore!

Sainte Chapelle - this was a nightmare to get into, there was a long queue and it seemed like there was no proper queuing system. There were a few people who jumped queue and we waited quite a while to get in, this was actually the first place we had to queue to enter even though we bought the museum pass. The church itself is quite small though the stained glass is really quite spectacular, BUT there was not much sun by the time we got in so they didn't look as amazing as they could have been. In any case I thought it was weird that the Justice Department is just next door as members of the public can just wander so near it. I just thought it wasn't very secure for them even though there were security checks.

The famous stained glass windows

Cathedral Notre Dame de Paris - there was some kind of concert going on just outside the cathedral so there were lots of people around. As we got there too late, we didn't manage to climb up the cathedral to stare at the gargoyles. We just walked around the church and that was it. No sightings of Quasimodo nor of Esmeralda.

No bells ringing but there was lovely blue sky

Cruise by La Seine - we did this in the evening when the museums were closed. We didn't get to see mini Statue of Liberty though I took the one that Y mentioned went there, oh well... It was totally freezing though and we did get very good views of the Eiffel Tower. We were aiming to do a Ethan Hawke/ Julie Delphy and stand at the back and talk about life but it got way too cold. Will be interesting to do this again when we are back in Paris for Roland Garros, J mentioned that the French government brings in sand and put it along the Seine river, wonder if we will manage to see that, lol...

Tour Eiffel as the French says it

The famous Arc de Triomphe

So that was our whirlwind Paris trip. Next tasting the high life in Reims!