Koln

It's only the multiethnic clientele of the breakfast room at the hostel in Koln that would tip you off that the Nazi era had ended.  Signs posted everywhere instruct guests that they are allowed only two beverages (your choice in tiny cups: coffee, tea, juice, or milk) and two rolls.  And the drill seargant breakfast supervisor isn't kidding around.  She barked at one man who attempted to refill his glass of orange juice with such venom that one might be tempted to thing she savors those moments for days.

We slunk out of the breakfast room and away from the watchful eye of the guardian of the juice and headed back across the Rhine.  We stopped in the train station and bought stamps so I could send postcards.  For lack of any better ideas, we went to the Roman Museum, which was featuring an exhibit on the Pyramids.
 
 

Koln from the East side of the Rhine.

Koln was once a major Roman colony, so there have been a fairly impressive array of archaeological finds dug up there.  After paying our 9 mark entry fee, we started off in the Egyptian exhibit.  The museum's budget for special exhibitions is obviously limited.  Being unable to read German, I contented myself with looking at the pretty pictures, models, and artifacts, and noticing that all the explanatory posters on the wall were cut out of printer paper by hand and pasted to posterboard.

"It's not really a terrible exhibit," Cosine, who could read the posters, said.  "It's just that it's nothing we haven't seen before."

"Production quality's a little low," I said.

"I wasn't going to say anything," he said.  He too had noted the upturned corners and uneven edges.

The rest of the museum was quite a bit better.  Downstairs there's a massive mosaic celebrating Bacchus, along with substantial exhibits on Roman daily life, displaying children's toys, cooking instruments, and mens and womens grooming implements, among other common items.  This sounds boring, but it's well-presented, and it's interesting to get a feel for how people got by.  Another room was devoted to funerary rituals, including one tombstone inscribed by a female slave to her male slave lover: the plaque beside it (most of the plaques in the museum were in both English and German, though the English versions appeared to be abbreviated substantially) explained that Roman slaves were not permitted to marry.

The much larger upstairs was substantially less interesting.  Besides an arresting replica of a portion of the Roman city walls, another fascinating mosaic, and some interesting jewelry, the exhibits are incredibly repetitive.  There are lots of tombstones and lots of pots.  Then some more tombstones.  After about half an hour reading inscriptions, I told Cosine I wasn't looking at any more tombstones.  Then I decided I wasn't looking at any more pottery.  Cosine agreed, which left us with pretty much nothing else to look at.  We left.

With no travel guide, nothing particularly interesting in sight (besides more churches, but we were a little churched out--sorry, God), and Cosine badly in need of shoes, we figured we'd go shopping.

It didn't take too long for us to find an attractive, comfortable, and due to the strength of the dollar, cheap pair of shoes.  I tried on a few as well, but couldn't really settle on anything, so decided I could do without.

We stopped for lunch at a doner shop.  These were more distinctly German than what I'd had elsewhere--imagine a gyro with sauerkraut and red cabbage. Excellent.

After a triumph on my part (scoring a pair of Diesel jeans for $25), our chief frustration of the day occurred when we continued on to a department store to attempt to buy pants.  European trousers sizes make no sense at all--a single number is used to convey both length and waist size.  Cosine and I picked through the racks--was our size 54?  97? 108?  No idea.  I
theorized that maybe the first number indicated length and the second waist, or vice versa, but that guess wasn't holding up very well.  Finally I figured that if we looked for something American--say a pair of Levi's, it might have both sizes on it.  No luck that way--Levi's only have the American sizes.  Then by chance I happened across a hideous stack of Pierre Cardin jeans that did have dual sizes.  Presenting the stack to Cosine, he found a couple pairs, and after a few trips back to the dressing room (the method took some refining), he was ready to go.  After this we stopped at another department store, the C&A, which was more my style.  I was amused to find that in Germany, undershirts are called American T-shirts.  I ended up buying a pair of gloves and two pairs of pants, though had I known that a promotion out of business casual-land would be coming my way shortly after my return home, I would have bought more.

We headed back to the hostel, stopping at the train station on the way to pick up tickets for tomorrow.  I didn't need to buy tickets for Brugge because of my railpass, but we would eventually end up back in Brussels and the only option for Brussels to Paris was the Thalys, which I did need to buy tickets for.  The pass would normally get me a discount rate, but only a
limited number of pass fares are available on each train, and I was too late.  Full price was about $50.  Could be worse, but I still winced paying it.

We started seeking dinner after leaving our things at the hostel.  I wanted to find a grocery store, too, to get some chocolates or something similarly small for my coworkers.  After passing a small temporary skating rink sponsored by Disney, we spotted an Aldi.

"Are they the same here as they are in the States?" I asked.

Cosine didn't know.

Apparently, they are.  I've never been to an Aldi in the States before, but it's a discount grocery chain with extremely limited brand selection and where you bag your own groceries (which isn't especially unusual in Europe).  Anyway, at this store in Koln you don't so much shop from shelves as out of boxes.  But I struck gold in the candy section.  Everything was ludicrously cheap, so I got a couple of big bags of assorted Haribo candies (including bizarre miniature bags of Happy-Cola: lemon and cola flavored gummi bottles), and an assortment of chocolates.  The checkout girl was efficient and sullen.  She stepped away from the register right as we approached, and maneuvered a large cardboard box in front of the entrance to the store.

"Closed," she said to the unfortunate man who arrived two seconds too late.  Dissuaded by the box and her glare, he went away and she returned to the register.  We checked out and continued on without incident.

Over dinner at a bar where I had pasta with a curried turkey sauce (the curry flavor was barely perceptible), Cosine and I had Kolsch, the beer of Koln, which comes in tiny glasses and has a very faint cherry flavor. Cosine explained that when it comes to intercultural dating, Germans think Americans move very quickly and Americans think the same of Germans.  The
reason is that when left to their own devices, American couples and German couples will, on average, sleep together sometime around the 10th date.  However, when Americans are dating, a kiss on the first or second date is pretty standard if things are going well, whereas Germans kiss much later (the kiss basically being the signal that it's time to jump in bed).  So
Germans think Americans are moving fast for kissing so early, and Americans think Germans move fast when hands start to roam immediately after the first kiss.

The bar we were in was getting more crowded, and we weren't really in the mood for a loud night.  We went back out and found a small, local bar.  One table had a pizza delivered.  Cosine attempted to order a weissbier; we were informed it was Kolsch or nothing, so Kolsch it was, and then to bed.

Next--December 29: Soft drinks