Food Time

We had a late lunch (for us), at Peters Brauhaus. We wanted to have local food and beer, so this was the place. The restaurant itself was really nice, so some pictures of that. When we first seated ourselves in the nice room by the stained glass, the waiter was a little bit salty, "Are you eating, or just drinking. If drinking, those tables..." The less good ones. But when we told him we were eating lunch, he was much nicer. After we knew to order Kölsch and not ask for beer and Brotzeit like the ladies with the Rick Steves book from the river cruise ship (to which German waiter said, "This isn't Bavaria, we don't have that..."), he was friendly. He even hung out (after yelling at some hipsters who just wanted beer and took up an eight top even though there were two of them) to talk to us about dialectal differences in Cologne versus the rest of Germany. See, my trying to speak German paid off. Of course I claimed to be speaking Bavarian, so it didn't matter if what I said made no sense to him. He even smiled when Herr Hai trotted out his, "Ich sprechen (sic) nur ein bisschen Deutsch".

I wanted to order Himmel und Äd, which translates to Heaven and Earth. It's black pudding made from pork blood, oatmeal and spices with baked apples and mashed potatoes. Yeah, I chickened out. If Herr Hai hadn't said he wasn't going eat THAT if I didn't like it, I decided to go with the Cologne version of pork knuckle. It was really different than what I had had in Bavaria, with a sweet, tangy, almost barbecue like sauce. Herr Hai got whatever local wurst (I know, shocker, no schnitzel) and slathered it with the Cologne spicy mustard. When Herr Kellner came over to check on us (something they don't do, we must have made a great impression), he said, "Put the mustard on, oh, you already did. Good job." Score one for the American urban rednecks.

The beer was okay. I know it's their thing there, Kolsch in little glasses. Herr Hai was not a fan. Not dark and weighty enough for him. I felt bad only having one glass. It almost felt insulting. Apparently they keep 'em coming until you surrender.

We walked around some more after lunch. Our ultimate goal in this was the Chocolate Museum on a little land spur sticking out into the Rhine. Not the museum per se, but rather the cafe and shop. Like we needed to eat anything else after that, but we managed. We both had waffles with different things on them. Herr Hai had some chocolate drink, and I had hot chocolate because I was feeling really cold. It came with two little pieces of chocolate-- like I needed more.

The shop was nice some interesting truffles and the like. Lindt stuff, since Lindt owns it. I was hoping for more exotic things like you make in this chocolate maker game I have. Apparently I'm a more creative chocolatier than the chocolate scientists at Lindt. Of course they have their eye on marketability. I thought coriander and dark chocolate with cinnamon covered ant truffles sounded like a winner in the game. And they were.

This more or less ended our day. We were going to go to the mustard museum, but I was just exhausted and it was starting to rain. Herr Hai was a good sport about going back to the hotel around four. We'd rest, go back out get a bite to eat. We plan to give döner another try, figuring it will be better here in a bigger city.

So that's where we are, about to rest. Tomorrow, we leave fairly late for us, 9:50 ICE to the airport, for our trip home.Читать далее