cologne

or Köln if you’d prefer to be more traditional

 

Over the Easter break I got the chance to spend two nights in Germany’s fourth largest city Cologne. My partner and I went there, not for any particular reason, but more a ‘Why not?’ kind of deal. There’s nothing that cultural there, I mean besides that huge cathedral and a couple of museums and art galleries, but it was nice to go somewhere and not have all our time consumed by trying to fit in all those cultural things that you feel should be seen on a holiday somewhere old. Instead we did what we wanted and spent most of our time wandering around, doing some shopping, checking out a few bars and generally just getting a feel for the city itself. Cologne is a great city for this, for just wandering around and seeing what you can find. It’s an added bonus that, situated on the Rhine river, Cologne is nice to look at and the people there are welcoming. Everyone we met enjoyed a chat with two out of towners.

 

We arrived late on our first night and after checking in to our hotel we went straight out to have a drink at a local bar. There are so many bars in the old town and surrounding areas that it was less a calculated decision to find somewhere, than it was just blindly walking into one. The first bar we went into was an old man bar, the second was a completely over the top and tacky gay bar and then the third was Papa Joe’s Jazz Bar. It was quite a night of extremes and wholly enjoyable. There’s not much to say about the first two bars other than what I image you probably already have in your head, but the third… wow. What a place that was. It looks like an old dixie band exploded and left its mark everywhere. This bar oozes music and the pictures and souvenirs that adorn the walls prove its credibility and show that most important aspect of any jazz bar – its understanding of jazz’s history and their love for the genre. It also helps that they have live music everyday of the year and all the staff know and love what they’re doing.

 

Our second day in Cologne (our first full day) was spent walking and walking and walking. I’m no mathematician, but I’m fairly sure we covered 99.9% of Cologne’s city centre. This all started because we went out looking for two places, a Latin American grocery store and a comic book store. Both of which sell items that are impossible to get in the town I live in without the help of Amazon. First of all was the comic book store Pin Up. This place has a really good selection of comics in German and English, but unfortunately for me, most of their English issues are single issue comics and not collections. And the collections that they do have are later ones and not the first or second volumes. So in the end I walked out without buying anything. Don’t be discouraged about visiting Pin Up though, as they do have an extensive collection and if you are after something in German, chances are they’ll have it. The same could be said of Hola Mundo, the Latin American store. If you are after anything from Latin America, I’m sure you could find it here and if not, I’m pretty certain they can get it for you. We discovered yellow pepper paste from Peru, cheese bread mix, guava paste and black beans from Brazil and last of all, a quite unexpected find, beer from Cuba. The beer wasn’t bad, but when you’re in a country that’s known for its brauhaus brews, you’d have to be a very special beer to beat the locals.

 

Despite finding what has to be one of the largest Saturns in Germany, the day wasn’t all shopping (seriously that place must be one the largest collections of music, movies and games we’ve seen in this country). We managed to cover a huge area of the centre, the north and the west. We made it all the way to Mediapark, a beautiful area with its open grassy park, newly built high rises that have a striking resemblance to Berlin’s Potsdamer Platz and a small lake complete with a pedestrian bridge and an accompanying treed area. I have to admit I got a little excited by the lake, because apart from the usual inhabitants of birds and bugs, this lake housed a population of turtles. Something I have never seen living amongst the hustle and bustle of a major city before.

 

Once night hit we wandered down to the river Rhine to grab a bite to eat from one of the many restaurants there and settled on an Argentinian steakhouse. Something that I miss from moving to Germany from Australia is the chance to eat a real steak. The steaks in Europe tend to be on the small and pricey side and always leave me wanting more. I had no such problem here. The meal was fantastic and the steak was cooked to perfection. Once we had eaten everything our bodies would let us we waddled off into the night for a few beers in the Old Town before heading back to the hotel and preparing for our last day.

 

We checked out of our hotel after breakfast and put our bags in the car so we didn’t have to lug them around all day, and then headed south. This was the only area we hadn’t traversed the day before on our huge walk. I had looked online for another comic book store since our previous day’s results ended in a great find, but not much in terms of actual purchases. I was in luck. Fantastic Store on Bonnerstraße has been the recipient of some great internet reviews and even had English language books, so that logically became the point to which we headed. Apart from Fantastic Store we had no knowledge of what else was in the area, but we decided that a store like this wouldn’t be by itself and could quite possibly be nestled amongst some other interesting places to visit. Our faith paid off as Bonnerstraße was indeed like a mini city centre in itself and we got to see a somewhat different area of town. This area was clearly not as old as the rest and is quite obviously quickly going to become one of those areas of town that is an alternative to the main section, think Oranienstraße in Berlin or Brunswick Street in Melbourne. Don’t go there expecting the same hip and trend setting particulars now, it’s more a feeling I have of this particular area and what the future may hold for it with its multicultural markets, its chic minimal hipster cafes and smaller independent boutiques. But again, the main reason we came here was to visit Fantastic Store, everything else was just a bonus, like the Portuguese wine cellar where we bought a little too much wine to be carting around on foot.

 

Fantastic Store wasn’t as big as Pin Up, but what it lacked in size, it more than made up for in titles and staff. On the off chance that they may have the newest East of West volume I asked Stephan, the most helpful staff member ever, about it. Although he said they didn’t have it yet (they receive one big delivery direct from the States once a month), he pointed me in the direction of their English books and it’s here where I went a little crazy. I ended up buying the first two volumes of Peter Panzerfaust, the complete Spaceman from Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso, Morrison’s Doom Patrol and Marvel’s latest event comic Infinity in one big collection. My partner also bought comics; Image titles Netherworld, Think Tank and Manhattan Projects. Over all we spent way too much money on comics, but when you have really helpful and friendly staff, a good collection of big and small comics and happen to be an indie store, I personally have no problem spending that much time and money.

 

With night fast approaching on our last day in Cologne we headed back towards the centre for a bite to eat. We ended up settling on an Asian restaurant right across from the cathedral, as we were only interested in something fast before heading home this seemed like as good a place as any. My partner had a great time trying varying types of sushi, including deep-fried sushi, which in my head means it’s not exactly sushi anymore. I, however, found it a bit harder as I’m not the biggest fan of sushi and seafood in general. It was alright, but nowhere near the quality of the Argentinian that we had the night before.

 

But when all is said and done we left Cologne pretty happy with out choice to spend two nights here as a break from our usual routine and I would be happy to come back here to check out a few places we missed on this visit. The cafe/comic shop Djinn springs to mind and I would like to think that if I came back I would take in a gallery or two. All in all, Cologne is a great place, but I do get the impression that a weekend here is enough. If I was on a longer holiday I would probably prefer to go somewhere bigger or with a little more wonder than just a cathedral.