Well, I'm back.
So. Yeah. I'm back from Cologne, and what's more, I got back entirely in one piece. Contrary to popular expectation, I did not have to be hospitalised for chocolate-induced cirrhosis of the liver; nor did I throw up a single time. Because, believe it or not, I hardly ate any chocolate during my trip to Cologne, let alone stuff myself with it. Sure, I visited the chocolate museum I'd been looking forward to so much, and enjoyed it every bit as much as I'd hoped. Also, I did find myself craving chocolate a few times during the visit, mostly because the whole museum smells of the stuff -- it comes equipped with its own little chocolate factory, and the smell pervades the whole building. But for some reason, I didn't really feel like eating chocolate after leaving the museum. Perhaps it was because I'd just seen with my own eyes what shocking amounts of sugar and butter go into one chocolate bar (especially white chocolate, which isn't technically chocolate because there's no actual cocoa in it); perhaps it was simply too hot for chocolate. Whatever the reason, I hardly ate any chocolate during my trip, and I didn't buy a single Mozartkugel. I feel rather stupid about that now, as I could really do with some Mozartkugeln, but hey, such is life.
Another thing I didn't get to do, but not for lack of trying, was taking the photo for which I went to Cologne in the first place. You see, my main reason for wanting to go to Cologne (other than the fact that the journey was cheap, Cologne features some excellent museums and I got a chance to spend some time with a friend I don't get to see that often) was a cemetery they have there -- a nineteenth-century cemetery full of tremendously photogenic angel statues, Jesuses on the cross, etc. Before I booked my trip, I'd checked a few websites devoted to the cemetery, and had come across a gorgeous photo of an angel with a skull under one of her feet. I loved it so much that I resolved to go to the cemetery to get my own take on it. What I hadn't counted on, however, was how stupendously big the cemetery is. It's not just a field with a few graves in it, like your average graveyard, but rather a city park with twenty thousand graves in it. Yep, that's twenty thousand graves for you, with lots of trees and hedges in between to obscure one's view. I think I must have seen 19,999 of them (I spent a day and a half in the park, and hardly ever sat down to rest), but I never found the grave which the trip had been all about. Nobody I asked about it seemed to know what I was on about, either, so I'm inclined to believe that the woman who put the photo on the site I saw made a mistake and accidentally posted a photo from another cemetery. At least I hope so. I'd hate to think that I spent a day and a half in a place looking for something and still managed to overlook it.
Anyhow, despite the angel-with-skull disappointment, I enjoyed Cologne a great deal (so much so that I'll definitely go back there at some point), and I look forward to seeing the photos I did take, which I'm going to get developed and scanned in a few days. Hopefully, I'll be able to upload them some time next week. In the meantime, I'll post a few more Egypt photos, for those of you who are going to Egypt yourselves in a few months.
Enjoy.