Pg. 107: The World Locked in My Pocket

Oooh, chocolate! Lots and lots and lots of chocolate! Here it’s just been deposited in molds and is on the conveyor belt on its way to get hardened and then wrapped.

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Stats:

• Weather: Oh. So. Hot. It is July here all of a sudden, after feeling mostly like October for the past week. Everyone is panting.
• Mileage: Four or five km, I’d guess. Enough, especially in this heat.
• Food: Uh… some kind of hotdog/bratworst/sausage thing that was as long as my arm, and almost as big around. Plus, fried potatoes and this cabbage… I have never had cabbage like this. It was buttery and cheesy, and I’m pretty sure it had some kind of bacon pieces in it.
• Discovery: The entire city of Cologne is a fashion plate. Pictures to come, I promise.
• Media: I rock because I found a free version of True Blood, Season 2, Episode 4. I am a pirate. Argh. Or is that Yargh?
  
• Worst Thing: I still can’t make the washing machine work. It hates me something fierce. I hear it at night going, “Haha. Tomorrow I spun her clothes a hundred miles an hour and wouldn’t give her water. Tomorrow I will flood her clothes and not spin them at all.” Remember Christine? Right. Imagine it as not a car, but a German washing machine.
• Best Thing: Watching this chick walk right into the glass door at the coffee shop. Nose and whipped-creamed coffee first. I know, I know, it’s not funny. It’s really not. And, no, I’ve never ever done that myself. Never. It left a fantastic nose and whipped-cream shape on the glass though. Okay, okay, the real best thing was the guy playing the violin right below my window this evening… he was so good.
• Word of the Day: Shampoo. Means “shampoo.” Pflegespülung. Means “conditioner.”

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After the rather serious and sad visit to the Gestapo house, it seemed to me that it was time for a visit to the Chocolate Museum (or the Schokoladenmuseum, which I can’t say even without chocolate in my mouth). The museum, which is located right on the Rhine, looks like a cross between modern architecture, a greenhouse, and a castle. It also is about as hot as the rain forest that it hosts in one part of it. In fact, I couldn’t imagine how the chocolate wasn’t melting all over the place. Nor the people who were sitting at the machines making truffles, miniature bars and molded animals. I wandered around, re-learning about cocoa production (I’d forgotten how much I already knew, since cocoa and coffee go hand-in-hand), gawking at chocolate-making machines, peering at chocolate-oriented gods and idols, and then looking at the various old advertisements and storefronts.

Somewhere along the tour, a woman gave me a wafer dipped in a glorious chocolate fountain waterfall, and I felt all “Veruca Salt” with delight as I walked along, licking my chocolate stick.

I would have stayed longer — it smelled so incredibly good — but the heat was starting to get to me, as were all the people pushing me on the stairs and trying to lick my chocolate stick (it’s not my fault they ate theirs so fast!), and so I beat it back outside (walking right by the huge candy shop by the exit without buying a single thing, I’m proud to say!).

The rest of the evening was pretty much spent doing nothing except wishing I’d bought some of that chocolate at the store. Or at the very least, stolen a couple more chocolate sticks from some oblivious children…

Far and fast, with a mouth full of chocolate, s.

This creepy little gnome is just one of the many old-school chocolate delivery systems. You put in your money and he gives you a piece of chocolate from that hole between his legs. Fantastic.

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Me, smelling spices at the chocolate museum. The only one I  couldn’t name was coriander; I thought it was cumin.

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“I want the world. I want the whole world. I want to lock it all up in my pocket. It’s my bar of chocolate. Give it to me now.” ~Veruca Salt, from Willie Wonka & the Chocolate Factory