A day in Cologne
May 9, 2009
We had a leisurely walk through the city, nipping into a couple of shops to look around. We particularly liked the Lego store, which in addition to the regular kits had a candy bar-style section with different style pieces that you could scoop out and buy by the cup. As a nice touch they had a section with different hats, heads and bodies so that you could pick the Lego people you really wanted. We visited the sobering EL-DE House, once the scene of Gestapo torture cells and now a museum and memorial, and the polar opposite museum in the form of the Schokoladen Museum dedicated to chocolate.
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An exceptional chocolate museum
Normally I find chocolate museums rather disappointing. You see, I really quite like chocolate, so I somehow expect a chocolate museum to be equally delicious. Then you go in and you find the typical displays about chocolate history in South America, eating it with chilli and progress to milk chocolate. Well, this museum has all that, but also has a lot more.
There is a large robotic factory process, which is quite interesting to watch as molten chocolate is moulded, cooled and packaged. There are interactive games (where do these breeds of cows come from?), a small greenhouse rainforest with cocoa trees, a rather pathetic chocolate fountain and a display of old vending machines. Did you know that the Greek mathematician Heron of Alexandria wrote about vending machines in ~100 CE? They operated with the insertion of a five drachma piece and dispensed holey water.
My favourite was the advertising display. There is a small cinema that runs the old adds for Stollwerck chocolate. The earliest adds focussed on showing how chocolate had so many calories. If you were on a skiing expedition you could eat many sausages and still not get as many calories as a Stollwerck chocolate bar, which would keep you going. If you child is too skinny and beating her doesn't help? Stollwerck chocolate will make her fat!
Entry is €7.50/adult, €5/concession.
There is a large robotic factory process, which is quite interesting to watch as molten chocolate is moulded, cooled and packaged. There are interactive games (where do these breeds of cows come from?), a small greenhouse rainforest with cocoa trees, a rather pathetic chocolate fountain and a display of old vending machines. Did you know that the Greek mathematician Heron of Alexandria wrote about vending machines in ~100 CE? They operated with the insertion of a five drachma piece and dispensed holey water.
My favourite was the advertising display. There is a small cinema that runs the old adds for Stollwerck chocolate. The earliest adds focussed on showing how chocolate had so many calories. If you were on a skiing expedition you could eat many sausages and still not get as many calories as a Stollwerck chocolate bar, which would keep you going. If you child is too skinny and beating her doesn't help? Stollwerck chocolate will make her fat!
Entry is €7.50/adult, €5/concession.
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Gestapo prison memorial
The EL-DE house is a museum and memorial to the Gestapo prison and Nazi era in Cologne. The main exhibit is the house itself, which was the local Gestapo headquarters and prison. Down in the basement you can visit the prison cells where "undesirables" were tortured and killed. The tiny cells were considered over-crowded even by Gestapo standards, with 25-30 people in rooms of only a few square metres. Most poignantly, over 1800 inscriptions from the prisoners kept in the cells have been preserved, ranging from calendars to sketches to written pleas.
Upstairs the exhibit focuses on the local rise to power of the Nazi party in Cologne, starting from WWI and going through the different political and social factors that contributed to the rise, the effect of Nazi policy on the city and the collaboration of official institutions with the Party. It is the type of "no holds barred" confrontation with the past that Germany had to do and should be proud of doing so well.
Entry cost is €3.60/adult, €1.50/concession
Upstairs the exhibit focuses on the local rise to power of the Nazi party in Cologne, starting from WWI and going through the different political and social factors that contributed to the rise, the effect of Nazi policy on the city and the collaboration of official institutions with the Party. It is the type of "no holds barred" confrontation with the past that Germany had to do and should be proud of doing so well.
Entry cost is €3.60/adult, €1.50/concession
