A Few and Far Between: Köln/Cologne

Saturday morning, 27.11.2010, at 7am our rise and shine -group of Hilla, Roman, Scott and James started the engine and head off to ...

Cologne's Xmas Markets!

With a good night sleep of 4ish hours and the music of the previous night still banging in our heads (in Duwo you are literally a part of the party no matter if you are two or three floors below and already ready in bed waiting for sleep to come), we put S club 7 on and tried to find an open gas station as my Dutch credit card doesn't work (have to pay inside with cash)...stupid magnetic stripes that get destroyed easily.

...after roads been closed due to maintenance, finding an open gas station, returning to Duwo to get more of my good music (Geri Halliwell, The Spice Girls, Pintandwefall, Jukka Poika, B*Witched, The Corrs...and what more), Hilla's passport and James trying to drive...we really made it of at 8am.

We got to Cologne safely with only a few close2death -situations (kidding...maybe), top speed of 170km/h and by understanding that neither Dutch nor German can drive - FACT.

We parked the car at a free (!!!) spot out of town and hopped on a tram towards Christmas Market number 1 at Rudolfsplein or something!

From this smaller Christmas Market we headed off to a bigger one at Neumarkt.

Scott and his breakfast/lunch.

From Neumarkt to Christmas Market nro 3 at...somewhere!

On the way I faced a major collapse. Gina Tricot in Cologne, Germany? What?

I thought we only had it in Finland and Sweden!

So, a little shopping stop it was...and a warming up stop. The weather was frrrr-rrreezing (ooh and there was snow, too).

A quick stop at the Lego -shop, too.

...and at the Hard Rock Cafe.

Market number 3!

Where we went for a tea/beer and met:

Svenkku-Sven! <3

Sven is a friend of mine who was on exchange in my school last year!

We head off to:

and as Sven had already been there we decided to meet up again later.

Band pictures of "The Three Chocolateers"

The Chocolate Museum was slightly boring. Plus we only got one (or for the greedy ones who went in line twice;) taster. How lame. What kind of chocolate museum is that if you don't even get to taste a looot of chocococo! There was also an old styled Christmas Market next to the Chocolate Museum.

Me, Hilla and Roman head off to eat since chocolate didn't fill our tummies enough.

All of us had reallyreally good meals at a great German pubish restaurant.

The waiter was warning me about my meal...a 500g chunk of meat.

But I did finish a bit over half with a little help from the others.;-)

No need to order a meal like that in the future. Been there, done that - that's it.

Off we went to meet Scott, James and Svenkku at the grande Christmas Market at the Cathedral.

A Finnish honey stand!

At 9pm we were all ready to head back home.

James and Scott were enjoying themselves after a few glühweins, haha.

With a little excitement on our journey back, almost visiting Den Haag and Rotterdam, we finally made it home, to bed.

With yet another party going on.

Our trip in one word: Sausage.

(Hilla, Roman, Scott and James: Did you actually realize that it suits pretty well as we're talking about sausage-land, Germany?)
This CD version of this song definitely being the song of our trip (introduction to luxury Finnish music...):

Today's favorite, Woman E:

xxx

L2L