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08 May 2006
May 5 :I have almost no recollection of what I did on Friday.
May 6 :
I allowed myself to sleep until about 11h. Around noon, after having showered and cleaned up after myself, I left to get some breakfast/lunch, and I was surprised to find that Cologne was teeming with people. The city's population is just over one million (though it's still hard to imagine where they must hide them all during the week), but it must have doubled over the weekend. Tourists and native Kölners alike had flocked to the streets and squares.
Earlier I had decided that Saturday would be my museum day, so I started it off with a three-hour visit to Cologne's Ludwig Museum (a museum of modern and contemporary art). After having thoroughly exhausted my eyes, I made my way through one of the main shopping districts, heading (very slowly, thanks to the thick crowds) toward the second stop on my museum tour. I paused briefly to indulge my craving for a cone of fat German fries (topped with ketchup, mayonnaise, and bits of roasted onion).
The second museum, which would also turn out to be the last, was the Lindt Chocolate Museum. With the student discount admission was only 3.5 euros, and it was a worthy investment. I was given a little square of chocolate when I entered, and after an hour or so of learning about chocolate production (from bean to bar), I was given five wafers that had been dipped in a large chocolate fountain. The museum has a small-scale chocolate factory, run by full-size people, where they show the entire production process. It was actually very fascinating. I lingered for nearly two hours in the museum, until at one point I realized that I was one of the last ones there (it being nearly closing time).
Even though I wasn't at all hungry when I left the museum, I decided to eat before it got much later (it was past 19h, and I had plans to watch another movie at Metropolis just after 21h). I tested out another Vietnamese restaurant and afterward was sorry that I had. The food was a little disappointing. (It's also very possible that my judgment was unfairly influenced by my lack of a real appetite.)
May 7 :
I arrived at the church building at 9h30, just as the first meeting was beginning, so I ducked in quickly and took a seat a few rows from the back of the room. As soon as I had entered the room I noticed a flurry of excitement among the missionaries, and they all turned to each other to find out if anyone knew who I was. Before I had been seated even twenty seconds, the delegate missionary hurried over to sit down next to me. I'm not sure if he was disappointed or excited when I told him that I was just visiting from New York, but since the meeting had already begun by that point, he had no choice but to stay next to me for the whole meeting. Making the best of it, he decided to translate for me (a luxury that I hadn't expected to be afforded). Once the meeting was over, all the missionaries crowded around me to figure out who I was and to report on which towns in Utah they were from. They all seemed way too interested in me, but I can imagine that I would have reacted the same way had I been in their situation. And this wasn't Paris, where American tourists are obscenely omnipresent.
My post-church hours were relatively uneventful. I strolled around near the river for a few hours, watching street performers and random passersby. Later in the evening I found a makeshift flea market that had popped up near one of the old city portals, and I had to hold myself back from buying up all sorts of porcelain plates, vintage vinyl (that I wouldn't be able to play anyway), and a really classy pocket knife that looked like it could have belonged to Cary Grant in the late 40s. In the end, I came away with one acquisition: a photograph. I had been thumbing through stacks of old photos when I came to one of Caterina Valente during a performance in Germany (I presume) during the mid-50s. There was something about the photo that pulled me in, and after trying to divert my attention for a few minutes, I came back to it. I couldn't resist any longer. I bought it for 7 euros.
[ posted by Matthew Chrislip at 15:25 :
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2 Comments:
it is always good to read you.
when you come back to America, make a stop in Boston where I am until may 22.
The world is so small.
Pierre
i just realized that i have been to the koln chocolate museum and eaten those wafers. best chocolate museum i have been to thusfar.
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