Cologne Xmas Markets Dec 06

Hi everyone,Have a few mins spare of lunch to flick y'all a quick email of the tales of this weekend!I should really have gone for a swim or a walk along the Thames cos it's beautiful out there today and we don't have too many days like this at the moment!Well I've just come back from the infamous Christmas Markets in Cologne, Germany. I went over with some friends from work (2 aussies and a canadian but it was definately an antipodean bonding session!)They were interesting. They were very expensive (even though the pound is stronger than the euro) but the street food was fantastic!Basically Cologne has about 7 Christmas Markets where over 3 million people descend during december for their Xmas shopping. There is so much variety of things to buy, you could get hand made Christmas decorations, the usual market crafty fair products and there was an amazingly large amount of Eastern themed goods like Talismans and Buddhas.The food was amazing - you could get mulled vine from 10am which was served in all varieties of souvenir mugs from Gumboots to fake crystal. If you didn't want mulled vine you could get spiced fruit punch which was like drinking cough syrup. And that was about all you could get to drink - we thought that we could go back next year and have a fruit drink stall as there was definately a market for them - or even sell some beer!OK enough of the drink - onto the food. You could get all sorts of brathurst sausages which came served in a tiny roll with tomato sauce or ketchup or you could get curryworst which was delicious! it was a brathurst sliced with the most amazing curry sauce served with .... a tiny bread roll!There were the most delicious potato rostis served with apple sauce, there were huge bbq's cooking steaks marinated in the most fantastic marinade ... the list goes on! pretzels, baked potatoes like gnocci, sourkroutBut the best part was all the sweet food available! There was the most delicious waffles with creme and cherries, crepes with anything imaginable in them - my fav was apples and cinnamon! there was stollen (marzipan cake) chocolates, sweets, lollies, these really interesting gingerbread shapes (hearts) with all sorts of german expressions of love (apparently a german tradition cos lots of young german couples had them tied round their necks as they were walking round the markets!)
So we spend most of Saturday enjoying the Markets, drinking the local brew in the beer halls and practicing our German (my german is really bad by the way ...) but we had been awake since when we got up on Friday morning for work so it was a long long day or two (you never sleep on the bus and ferry- I'm flying next time!) so we pretty much went back to our hostel at the appointed time and slept for a few hours to prepare ourselves for the madness of the beerhallsbut ... to our surprise ... we couldn't get into any beer halls ... so we spend probably about 2 hours trying to find somewhere to have dinner ... anywhere ... and we finally found a very traditional german restaurant which was in the perfect people watching spot and had a very delicious traditional dinner - why is food from that part of Europe so hearty and fatty yet so good?and why do people ruin apple strudle by putting raisins in it? and well we could hardly keep our eyes open so we went back to our beds to ready ourselves for another day of eating!Sunday morning we were very good and went to the Dom. The Dom is the Cathedral in Cologne - really apart from the Xmas Markets the only thing worth seeing in Cologne! The Dom has the remains of the 3 wise men from Africa who went to see Jesus when he was born - but since it was Sunday morning this part of the church was closed ... but there is another attraction of the DOM - that is the view from the top of the spires - after a climb of 600 or so steeps the view was worth it! not just of the city, Rhine river, but also to see the intricate work put into the details of the spireAnother interesting fact of the Dom was that it was decorated in the same style as Notre Dame with the people adorning the arches of the doors etcAnother must visist in Cologne is the Chocolate Museum - well the queue was too long for us to have time to visit it and we didn't really want to see old chocolate posters so we enjoyed the shop and had the worlds best hot chocolate in the cafe!
The chocolate in Europe is sooooooooo good - it's not fair !!Cologne is only about 4.5hours from Calais so it was a quick drive back to Calais for the ferry or so we thought! Of course the south eastern parts of England were enjoying a storm so there were ferry delays, a lot of sick people on the ferry (it was like nothing compared to crossing the cook strait in a southerly though!) and then the worlds longest delay in Dover harbour for us to berth ... kind of spoilt the whole weekendwell that's enough for today - sorry there's nothing too scandalous thereI can't believe it's December and the madness is starting for me!Got to post things to NZ this week ... omg Xmas!!hope you're all welllove to hear what you've been up to,love,Kylie