Köln Cologne Köln

After our few days of recovering from laziness, we decided to join the German world once more. Yesterday, we stayed in bed most of the day and watched Grey's Anatomy and cleaned around the house a bit. I have discovered a German channel that plays most of the sitcoms, like Big Bang Theory and Scrubs, that we have but in German. I enjoy watching them and listening to the voice changes. Germans sound much sexier and not as annoying. Every day is a different show and so it is kind of nice to have that little bit of home mixed in with the language we should be learning. After my show, we ventured out to the Rhein as it was a very warm, sunny day. It was the first time since we came to Germany that we didn't need to wear our coats. We sat down on the grass by the Rhein and got some much needed Vitamin D. As we sat, we were stared down by a Turk gang. They would each in turn, turn around to look at us as they walked by. A couple minutes later, we were interrupted by some German LBs (Little Boys) who thought that screeching at the top of their lungs and smiling at us was the best way to get the internationals attention. Steph was lucky enough to have the LB with the reverse mullet. He liked to turn around every minute or so and get another good look at Steph. Very funny. We also decided to make my Oma's very famous Boterkoek. It is an almond cake that is kind of like a brownie but harder...very delicious. We went to the store and Steph spent almost half an hour trying to find Almond Extract. She even enlisted the help of a Stock Boy but to no avail. Germans must not have a need for almond extract or any extract for that matter. Disheartened by this turn of events, we put our plans of baking on hold...until we got into World Coffee. As we were sitting, Steph spied some of the syrups they had on sale and one of them was almond. They only had it in a large size but we figured we could use the syrups in my coffee as well. Not a problem. So we headed home to make it. Unfortunately, we didn't put enough syrup in and it tasted like butter and, quoting Stephanie here, "It was hard, mushy, not cooked and stale. It was disgusting". So the only logical thing to do was to leave the pan on the counter all night for the Boterkoek to stick to the pan, making it impossible to clean. Today, being one of Steph's last free days, was spent in Köln. The minute we stepped off the S-Bahn into the Hauptbahnhof, we knew we loved it. It was almost like Berlin, it felt kind of like home again. Home being Berlin of course. We had decided that we were going to go to the Schokoladenmuseum of Lindt. It was so neat! The Museum has this mini Rain forest. There is a door that opens to this tiny room and you can't get out until the next door opens (which only opens when the previous door is shut). The Rain Forest felt like Mexico all over again. Steph thought her face was melting off, it was so humid. The next level had all the factory machines and they show you exactly how it is all made. It was really cool. The top floor was all history. It was a very neat museum. They have a cafe and a gift shop (which is full of chocolate, of course) and it was a very big building. After a walk down the Rhein in Köln, which was very enjoyable, we headed more into the shop part. It felt like we were in Paris because there were so many souvenir stores. Steph bought herself a Beer Stein which was only 18.95 euros and that is the cheapest we have seen it. We found a puppet that sings in one of the shops and it sang Usher's Yeah. It was very funny. A couple of German girls were singing along...very cute. Afterward, we headed the hour back to Düsseldorf and had Currywurst for dinner. Probably will be an early evening for us full of our new favourite pass time: Word Challange.