Koeln!

Yesterday I took the train at 6:55 a.m. to Cologne to meet my penpal Jenny, who's from a small town called Werne in Germany. Even the train ride itself was fun; we went through Brussels and Liege and Aachen as well as French, Belgian, and German countrysides before I had to get off and meet Jenny. She was waiting for me on the platform - she looks exactly like the pictures she sent, it was so cool to see her in real life (as it always is, of course).

The first thing we did was go to the cathedral, the Koelner Dom, which was really just amazing - I don't think I've ever seen a bigger cathedral, except for the one in Strasbourg. It was so beautiful, and inside there were a ton of awesome stained glass windows. We wanted to explore more, but they started a prayer service, so we left (with the intention of returning...which unfortunately didn't happen...) to walk around the city.

We went into a bunch of cool shops and stuff, and I got a few presents and some things for my room (like a candle and candleholder thing) to give it some life, because it's much less expensive there than in such a big city like Paris. We got lunch at a pizza place (we shared a pizza and had salads, which were amazing because they had corn, and apparently that's the way to eat in Europe, salads with corn. So good!) and I had an Apfelschoerle, which was really even more delicious than I can make myself. It must have been because I was in Germany. :-)

Then we went and walked around by the Rhine for a while, and we walked part of the way across a huge bridge to see the town a little better. It's SO typically German-looking, I'll try to post a picture because there's no way I can quite describe it! We went to the Chocolate museum, which was one of the coolest museums ever! The whole thing smelled like chocolate, it was incredible. They showed how chocolate's made, from when they harvest the cocoa beans and get them out of the fruit and then press it into cocoa paste and cocoa butter, and then how that's made into yummy chocolate. They also had a cool section on the history of chocolate, with amazing Aztec artifacts that were really, really old. There was also a floor where they showed you how they make chocolate into truffles or squares, they have machines with windows in them so you can see the whole process! (the chocolate store on the ground floor isn't well-placed at all...no, I think the real intention of the museum is to make people want to eat chocolate, and it succeeds!)

Unfortunately after the museum there was no more time to do anything else, and we had to run part of the way to the train station and didn't get there until five minutes after 5, and my train left at 5:14. So we had a quick goodbye, but I'm sure we'll see each other again soon - I'm definitely going to go to Werne, and hopefully we'll be able to meet up again before then, because that may not be until next semester when I have those vacations.

Today was cleaning and catching up with people...and laundry; unfortunately there's only one dryer in the laundry room and it was busy, so everything's hanging all over my room and bathroom, and maybe it'll dry in this century. Tomorrow I have a meeting with MICEFA (hopefully there will be some good news there) and my French class, and Faima's supposed to call again tomorrow evening! So until tomorrow...bonne nuit!