Final Day in Cologne: 1 more Christmas Market

For my final day in Cologne, I am going to visit the final Christmas market that I missed out on yesterday. There is one market, the Harbor Market, that is down the river a bit from the others. I start out by walking through town down to the river, passing more beautiful old churches. I planned to stop at the Angel market and have a coffee and tree-cake for breakfast, but the market opens at 11, not 10, so I just keep walking.  

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Harbor Market and Chocolate Museum

I get to the Harbor Market at about 10:45 and wander around, waiting for things to open. The market is in front of the Chocolate Museum, and there is already quite a line to get into the museum when it opens at 11, and tons of people walking around the market. Finally 11:00 arrives, but the only place that serves coffee still isn’t opening. I decide, instead to go into the Chocolate Museum, which also has a cafe, and have breakfast there. This was a great decision. The Chocolate Museum is right on the river, and the cafe has a huge row of windows just looking out over the water.  It is beautiful, but gray, and then it starts raining. I’m very glad to be inside in the warm cozy cafe. There is a huge line to go into the museum itself, but I guess most people stop at the cafe after visiting the museum, so there’s no wait for a seat. I had a nice fancy coffee and a chocolate soufflé for breakfast. It was small, but heavy and decadent. While enjoying breakfast, I decided to use this time to figure out my plans for lunch, just in case there was anything I just couldn’t miss while in Cologne. I found an amazing looking place for lunch, and made a 3 p.m. reservation online. More on that later. 

• 

• 

• 

After breakfast, I had to push my way through the lobby to get out of the Chocolate Museum, thus solidifying my decision to not hang out here and try to actually go into the museum. I’m sure it’s lovely, but it’s also super crowded and I don’t want to spend an hour of my last day in Europe waiting in line. So out I go into the light, drizzling rain. Past booth after booth of gluhwein, tons of candles and ornaments, even a few fish-n-chips booths. This market is cute, with lots of Christmas-y pirates and ships around. 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

After wandering the market, I walked across the street to the old mustard mill and museum. They have signs for mustard tastings. This looks like a fun idea, but even with hundreds of tourists across the street at the Chocolate Museum, this place looks totally abandoned. There are 2 people working inside and 3 tourists together in a group. They seem relieved to have a distraction to leave once I go inside. There are signs for tours, so I asked (in German) about the museum, and the guy snapped back that there are only guided tours. It’s not a museum, and it’s only for groups. So… ok, even though the sign says there’s a tour every 2 hours… whatever. They aren’t friendly here, so I sample a couple of mustards and the mustard eau de vie before heading out. Also, their mustard only goes up to middle-spicy, which I found not spicy enough.  I like a super pungent mustard. And the eau de vie was just ok. It wasn’t particularly mustard-y. 

Shopping at the Christmas market

So back out into the cold, I get to the street corner just as the Christmas market train is arriving.  There is an adorable little “train” that loops through the major Christmas markets and you can ride it to get from place to place. I hop on and go back to the Angel Market. I finally do my actual Christmas shopping here, as I can buy some snacks to take home and share with friends. I stopped at a bakery and ordered a Stollen (without marzipan). These are powdered sugar covered fruitcakes popular at Christmas time. I walked back to the baumkuchen booth and picked up a vanilla and a dark chocolate covered cake, which I now have to make sure doesn’t get crushed in my luggage. After collecting my goodies, I walked back to my room and spent an hour packing everything up, making sure all my liquids were in my checked bag, and that all my things would fit in the proper number of bags to fly home. 

• 

• 

• 

Lunch Time

Now, it’s time for lunch. I take the tram back to the riverside area and start walking to the restaurant. I find myself in a beautiful neighborhood, with a lovely riverwalk with tons of cafes and restaurants with huge outdoor seating areas overlooking the water. Just behind that are the old narrow, curvy alleyways and architecture of an old German town. I finally found the old, more traditional part of Cologne and it is beautiful and cozy.  It’s probably also where most of the tourists go. There are multiple breweries and restaurants advertising brands of kölsch I haven’t yet tried. I suddenly wish I had a lot more hours to hang out here! But, I have to walk by all of these things to attend my reservation at the Haxenhaus. Even though I have had 3 (soon to be 4) meals of schweinehaxen in the last 2 weeks, I absolutely have to go to this restaurant that specializes in my favorite meal. They offer like 15 different variations on the dish, even including 2 options for lamb instead of pork. I decide to stick with pork, since the fatty parts of lamb can get quite gamey. There are variations in preparation from the normal roasted pork with crispy skin to smoked or braised. There are toppings and stuffings and gravies to be added. Beijing style with soy and 5-spice or, marinated in vegetable broth. They also make a half-meter long bratwurst, as well as some other schnitzels and what-not (I’m sure it’s lovely), but who is going to the Haxenhaus for that? I decide to go for the Kölner Art one, as it has the special local blood sausage, called floontz, and is topped with cheese and onions. Of course, I also had a kölsch beer…. or a few of them. My plate of pork knuckle was, of course, gigantic. But, having only had a light breakfast at 11, I showed up ready to take this guy down. Everything was so well-prepared, and the meal was delicious. The outer layers of skin and fat on the pork were perfectly paired with the sauerkraut, which cuts through the fattiness with its acidity. There is a layer of cheese over the outer skin, which has been baked on so as to be crispy but not scorched and brown. It was perfect. It wasn’t a melted cheese that made the crispy pork skin soggy…. it was perfectly crispy and delicious.  The sauerkraut was prepared with juniper berries in it, and I did at one point actually bite into one of the. That’s an unpleasant surprise. I’m sure that they impart a nice flavor when cooked with the kraut, but I decided I didn’t like eating them whole and picked out all the berries. Then, the inner layers of pork meat were tender and salty, and paired with the mashed potatoes perfectly. It’s almost like ordering 2 entirely separate meals! The blood sausage, after being cooked inside the pork knuckle, actually gets steamed and makes more of a sauce or a gravy than remaining as 2 slices of sausage. I found it quite salty, especially with the pork, so I sparingly dipped the pork in the sausage gravy. 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Just as my food arrived to my table, an older British couple came in and were seated at the table next to mine. The man pointed at my plate and said “That’s what I want. A pork knuckle”. Which is good because you are at the *House of Knuckles*! As the afternoon wore on, and I was taking pictures of the bare bones left behind from my afternoon feast, and that guy was barely halfway through ands lowing down, he leaned over and asked how I got through it all. 🙂 

• 

After lunch, I had about an hour to wander before I had to get back to my room and then get myself and all my bags to the train station. So I used my hour to go on a lovely single-person pub crawl. I stopped at a few of the breweries in these old, winding alleys, and enjoyed an adorable little kölsch. It’s actually pretty easy to do a pub crawl if you aren’t drinking pints. 😉 First, I stopped into the Brauhaus Sünner Im Walfisch bar/restaurant, where they have a tiny bar with only 3 bar stools, and I was able to snag one and have a Sünner kölsch. This claims to be the oldest Kölsch brewery in the world. Then, a couple of doors down, I stopped into the Pfaffen Brewery Restaurant and had a Pfaffen kölsch. This place had more of a restaurant feel, but there were some tables in the front near the windows that were just standing tables for drinking a beer or 2. It was nice that there was plenty of space at these places. Since the Christmas markets are serving so much beer and mulled wine, no one needs to stop into a specific restaurant, leaving them all open for me. And finally, I stopped at a final place near my room that serves Reissdorf kölsch. I felt kind of obligated to stop here, as I hadn’t had the Reissdorf yet, and they have a huge neon sign outside that says ‘He drinks Reissodrf kölsch’. I was like, well I’m certainly not drinking any beer there, those sexist jerks. Women drink beer too. Then, later as I was walking around, I saw that the neon sign changes to also say ‘She drinks Reissdorf kölsch’. So now I have to go have one because I thought they were being sexist and they weren’t. Yay beer!  (Video of the neon sign) 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

List of kölsch beers I tried: Früh, Gaffel, Reissdorf, Sünner, Gilden, Pfaffen, Mühlen. I never had any 2 of them at the same time, so I never did a flight where I compared them to one another…. but I can’t say I have a favorite or that any o them tasted any better or different from the others.  It’s a very specific style of beer. 

Well now, I have stretched out my time in Cologne as long as I could.  I could easily spend a few days just hanging out in these few alleyways drinking beer and eating traditional German food. I could also spend a week just eating all 15 kinds of haxen at the Haxenhaus. So maybe you don’t want my opinion so much. But. It’s a lovely vibrant part of town. Now I have to drag my bags to the tram stop, take the tram to the train station, and take the 4 hours of trains back to Luxembourg. This is a long, tiring journey, and I arrive in Luxembourg central station at around 11 p.m. Tonight, I have a room in the hotel across the street from the airport, and there is a bus right next to the train station that will take me there. But of course, the escalator is broken. And the only way in or out of a train station involves stairs. So here I go, at 11 p.m., with 10 minutes to get there, dragging my bags up a flight of stairs, taking the pedestrian bridge across the street, and then…. because it’s so late at night, the elevators are not working, so now I’m slowly dragging my bags down the stairs.  Metal stairs. In the rain. I’m gripping the railing with my armpit for dear live, not caring that my coat is getting wet, but glad to not be falling down the stairs with my bags. Fortunately, I make it to the bus on time, and am able to get to my hotel before midnight. Of course, not without having skinned my knee pretty good while dragging my bags up and down the stairs. It’s been quite a trip. 

• 

• 

I barely sleep in the hotel room. It’s small and hot and not very soundproof, and I’m definitely concerned about missing my 7 a.m. flight. So I get up at 5 a.m. and shower and take the shuttle to the airport. And after a 1 hour flight to Paris and a 12 hour flight (with screaming twin 1-year-olds) from Paris to San Francisco, I am finally back.  Pooka and Joe were very happy that I was home. 🙂