Farewell, Cologne!

Another two weeks of saying good-byes... This time it was Hannah's friends and family, on many different occasions.

It started with a picknick with friends in friendly weather, followed by a lot of Kölsch in the Lotta, one of the most sympathetic bars I've seen so far in Cologne.

(On top of the Kölsch, they also serve Astra there. Go try it.)

After that, I attended 

• a house-warming party, 
• a relocation-lugging-furniture-party, 
• a just-moved-in-everything-still-full-of-boxes-party, 
• several evening-beers with Hannah's friends at their respective appartments, 
• an amazing Sauna (no friends there, just Hannah), 
• and several lazy walks along the Rhine.

Apart from the fact that I have met an amazing bunch of really nice people, it is  noticeable that Colognians (is that a word? I mean Kölner, obviously) are rather peculiar. They are definitely the most local patriotic people I've ever met. 

The Kölner Dom (the big cathedral in the city centre) is printed on basically everything, they name their beer after the city, and every now and then people sponataneously start singing songs about Köln or the Carnival in Köln. And considering it's not that huge a city, or that carnival is only once a year, there are a LOT of songs about both!

Another example: I was looking for a postcard with the Constitution of Cologne, browsing a stall in from of a book shop, and was surprised, almost shocked, that I couldn't find one.

Upon entering and asking the shop assistant for it, she replied with glowing eyes: "No I'm sorry, we don't have those right now.. But we have something even better!" And continued to produce the most useless bauble I've seen so far in my life:

Die Tuschmaschine.

It is a small red plastic box with sixteen buttons, each labelled with a carnival-in-Cologne-related symbol (a beer glass, a clown face, a trumpet, fireworks, etc.).

Upon pressing one of the buttons, the corresponding sound is played. (When I find out how to do it, I will upload an example. Beware.)

And Hannah was fascinated! She was equally enchanted with it as the shop assistant, and immediately bought it. I thought I couldn't be more shocked, but it gets worse: Her mum loved it, too! And when we went back to the shop next day to get another one for her, they just had one single of those beastly things left, all others were sold out!

I was told I just hadn't had enough Kölsch in my life yet to understand... I'm not sure I ever will.

More pretty pictures (from Cologne) tomorrow. But if you can, come and see for yourself, it's worth it.

And in two days, we will have said all good-byes and boarded our flight to Cuba...

PS: Hannah forc.. convinced me to make a video of the Tuschmaschine. Here you go: