One of our standard tours in Bonn is the zoo in Cologne, the kids love it. The zoo in Köln, together with its aquarium und terrarium seemed huge to me, when I was a kid, in fact I always thought there could not be a bigger one in the entire world. Today I find them much smaller, but still a quite respectable zoo with lots of animals and nicely displayed. Anyway, this is probably a whole other story, the reason why Ana and I would never miss a tour to Cologne is a visit to the dome and even more importantly to the original Früh Kölsch brewery. If you do not know about Kölsch follow the link and read up on it.
When we stoped at Dom/HBF we exited and there it was the Dom (cathedral) practically right on top of us. We just had to walk around it and follow the place right to the brewery. It is a relatively normal old house but when you enter you realize how huge the place is. It is complicated, has many different small and bigger rooms and has a beautiful basement. The Köbes came by and in the typical Rheinland manner wanted to know what we want… interesting only most Köbes at least at that somewhat quiet hour were not Germans. They had an accent which I could not identify, but they knew the drill and kept the beer coming without much ordering. The 0.2 ‘Stangen’ were nicely cool and the beer was most refreshing. Ana disappeared to the rest rooms only to come back with nice t-shirt for me (red with white rims) ‘Liebe Deine Heimat’ written in white on the chest. Blake liked it so much that I had to put it on him and after fitting it a bit in the back it worked like a long robe for him. He was the attraction of the neighborhood for a few minutes, people even snapped some pictures. We ordered some ‘Schweinebraten’, ‘Salat’, ‘Nudeln mit Hackfleischsosse’ and ‘Fleischkäse’, please check the extensive menu.
After another round of beer we went back — Ana very happily I might add — to catch the train and get back to Bonn.
