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.

comic books, beer, waffles… what more could anyone want

Last week I finally made the trip up to Belgium, or more specifically Brussels and Brugge, with a quick stop at Luxembourg for cheap petrol and smokes. We arrived in Brussels after a five-hour car trip and headed straight into the centre of town to check it out. I was told to expect a beautiful city with not much to do, but I have to say, I loved it. Sure there wasn’t a lot of touristy things to do aside from looking at old buildings, but I loved it anyway. First of all I have to inform you that I love giant sprawling cities. I love wandering around and getting lost in them, checking out the side streets and getting away from the tourist side of everything, truly trying to find out what makes a city unique or gives it its heart and soul and Brussels is perfect for this. Sure it’s dirty and a little confusing on your first walk around, sure I can’t speak French, Flemish or Dutch so communicating with locals proved to be a bit of a challenge, but I didn’t care. I truly did love it. Shame the same can’t be said for Brugge. We spent an afternoon there and that was more than enough. I mean, after living in Europe for so long and especially living in a town with an almost completely intact old town, I really didn’t find that much to be excited about in Brugge as I’ve seen it all before. I guess this is the problem in Europe though, once you’ve seen enough old towns and castles, you really have seen enough old town and castles. Great food in Brugge though, so it’s not all bad and it is a beautiful town. All I can really say about Brugge is that it’s worth a look, but don’t make it your only or main point about visiting Belgium. An afternoon trip is more than enough. I can fully understand Colin Farrell’s character in the movie In Brugge constantly mocking, ‘fucking Brugge!’

 

But enough about Brugge, let’s get back to Brussels. Brussels is famous for a few things – beer, waffles, pommes/french fries and comic books. Sure the European Union has all its headquarters there and has a lot of fancy buildings and offices, but who really cares about that? Honestly? The only good thing about visiting Brussels in terms of politics is that due to the EU Brussels has been inundated with foreign nationals and all their staff. On the tour we took (yes, one of those dodgy double-decker bus jobs – I just love those things. Cheap, fast and all in your own time), the lady chatting away about random Brussels facts said, and I could be wrong about this, that there was something like 500,000 foreigners in Brussels just working for the EU. Now I don’t know what you think about that, but for me it was like hearing something wonderful. Just the thought of all those people from all over Europe, and I guess the world, living together and having to interact fills me with glee. I am an international living in a foreign country and thinking about all those other foreigners living together makes me feel like I’m visiting a sort home away from home. However, getting to know the ‘locals’ proved to be something that was a little harder than what I’m used to living in Germany. It turns out that due to the massive population of Brussels the people can be a little cliquey, not rude or aggressive or anything like that, but just they have their little groups and with my lack of language skills I found it a little hard to break into them. I still managed to chat to a few people though and this is where my Belgium trip changed from great to also include interesting. I talked to a guy from Spain at a bar waiting to get served, he was there on business from some Spanish office which was all very normal. I spoke to a very drunken and stoned Brusselite, Brussian (still not sure what people are called in Brussels), whose mother was Spanish but heritage-wise from Cuba and a father who’s French. I have no idea what he was doing in Brussels, but he seemed to be enjoying himself, a lot. Also spoke to an American who had been in Brussels for seven years now. He was the most interesting person of the three. Five years ago at the age of 34, after being married to a woman back in states and having a child he realised he was gay, so divorced her and started living his life and becoming more fabulous and gay with every weekend. Now five years later he’s training up to be a weekend drag queen called Kitty something or other. Honestly, I forgot the last name. His debut performance is on September the 21st or 22nd in Brussels if anyone is interested in checking him out. It should prove to be interesting to say the least.

 

All this talk of meeting people in bars leads me to my next topic – beer. The beer in Belgium is something to behold with wonder. It tastes great, comes in all sorts of flavours and strangely shaped glasses and, very importantly, it’s cheap and so much stronger than any beer you’re likely to ever have. The first time we sat down after our initial walk around town and tried one, well… let’s just say it was hard work getting up and carrying on with the tourist stuff. The Belgians also seem to have the beer/snack thing down, as every time you sit down for a beer they give you a little bowl of nibbles to eat and if you don’t want that, you can’t go a block without coming across waffles (brilliant and in every flavour), pommes/french fries with mayo (perfect for the colder nights) or kebabs (a drunken staple). They totally get the whole drunken night out thing.

 

The other thing about Brussels that I find fascinating is that they have completely and utterly embraced their comic book history. Tin Tin, Asterix and Obelix, Lucky Luke and Marsupilami are everywhere and celebrated. But it isn’t just the bigger old-timey comics that are celebrated, almost every time you turn a corner you’re reminded of their comic book heritage by huge murals on the side of buildings showing life in Brussels, drawn as if they’re a panel in a comic book. I even stumbled across one with Tin Tin and the Sea Captain running down a flight of stairs and had to stop for a photo. The graffiti is also fairly comic bookish, although I would have to say it’s not a very big part of the city, unless you count the giant woman masturbating on the side of a main street building (yes, it’s true and just as odd as it sounds, but I’m sure that one wasn’t government-funded). It’s not just the art of the city and their Herge love though, there are comic book stores everywhere. The best that we found was tucked away near the gay district that had to have one of the most comprehensive collections I’ve ever seen. It also had a pretty nice English section so I’m now stocked up on The Walking Dead, bought the classic Batman graphic novel The Killing Joke and even splashed out for a copy of the complete Robots Vs Zombies Vs Amazons. Don’t ask about that last one. I just couldn’t resist anything with that title.

 

All this aside though, as a city I have to say I really enjoyed my time there. It reminded me why I love big cities. If I’m being truly honest, I have been a little underwhelmed by some of the cities I’ve seen in Europe. Coming from Australia you’re always told that everywhere else is so much bigger, with more people and way more exciting, but having seen a fair amount of cities in Europe I can easily say that’s not true. Frankfurt, unless you’re going out for a party weekend, is almost an abomination and fairly small feeling in comparison to my hometown of Melbourne, despite being one of Europe’s biggest money centres. I found London to be rather dull and soulless, but that could have been from my own high expectations and from not hanging out with born and breed Londoners. I am willing to give London another chance though. But Berlin… I loved Berlin, but for reasons I may explain in another post someday as it doesn’t really fit with the tone of this post, along with some of the more seedier aspects of Brussels. If I had to rate Brussels, I would give it a seven out of ten. It was great fun, but with not much to do in terms of culture (aside from the Magritte museum – GO THERE! It’s totally worth it just to see some of his paintings and those from the 1400s, 1500s and 1600s, including some remarkably famous pieces I was shocked to see there). And with only a little sightseeing to do I couldn’t rate it higher. If you want a comparison just to give you an idea of my tourist scale, I would give Frankfurt a five and Melbourne a nine.