Corey and the Chocolate Factory

Thursday, March 31st

The last full day in Cologne!! …and the first rainy one! After some fond farewells from the helpful staff at the CDC center, we had the entire afternoon and evening free to see any final sights. We decided the local Chocolate Museum would be a good choice. Indeed it was.

The admission was steeper than the history museums, but we decided to give the Schokolademuseum in Cologne a shot. It had just about everything a good chocolate museum would want or need. It was founded by a chocolate factory owner in Cologne and is currently continued by his wife. This museum walk-through began, naturally, with a sample of their made-in-house chocolate. Yum!! …and that would be the first piece of German chocolate I’ve had! This could be bad, because it tasted amazing! …Germans take their chocolate and candy very seriously. I only infer this because every convenience shop and store has at least one full aisle dedicated to the largest assortment of chocolate varieties I have ever seen. Perhaps I should start a log of chocolate types I’ve tried here! In any case, we entered the museum and were brought first through a level on what cocoa beans are and how they are collected. They even had a small contained section in the front of the museum with an environmentally controlled rainforest! Inside this room were tropical plants, including cocoa trees, rubber trees, and Christmas palms. The remainder of that floor had information on the trade, price, and development of the chocolate industry.

The second half of the museum was the really sweet part! …sorry for the pun. They had a miniature chocolate bar manufacturing line set up for visitors to see! Workers were operating the machinery and streams of smooth chocolate seemed to be running on every side of us! The only thing we were missing were the Umpa Lumpas! At the far end of the chocolate production line was a chocolate fountain with wafers so you could sample the freshly produced chocolate. Uh… yeah. Awesome. You can check out what I mean below…

Chocolate Fountain and River!

The upper floors had a lot of cool nostalgic items. Chocolate bars and display items from the early 1900s through the present were on display. There was even a small display on the beloved Nutella brand spread. Thank you Frau Schwegman for introducing us to such wonders!

We left the museum only to stumble upon another jewel across the street… a Cologne mustard museum!! …with free entrance!! Now, I’m not sure if you like mustard, but if you do, this place would have knocked your socks off. They produced mustard on sight and sold it in the storefront. The varieties were rather extensive, and very delicious. The clerk informed us that they made their mustards with a special variety of spice so that the heat never reaches your nose. It stays right on your tongue… and he was right. Free samples were had by all. And all were satisfied… until we hit up the special variety rack. Apparently Germans like to mix their mustards with jams as well. Would you care for a banana-mustard blend? How about an apple-spicy-mustard? I personally didn’t mind the flavors, but others disagreed. We did all seem to agree that the beer-flavored and heritage-flavored blends were the best. They certainly know a thing or two about mustard here.

We didn’t dally too long before grabbing a quick dinner and heading back to the youth hostel. Many had to do laundry and pack for tomorrow’s early departure. I’m catching up on some email and blogging. It’s been a pretty fast and busy past couple of days. Wednesday was also sort of a milestone for me. That marks the longest I have ever been off US soil. That struck me a little stronger, but upon that thought, I looked up and saw the big dipper. It’s always cool to see the stars and know those never do change. Again… awesome.