The Chronicles of Stu: Germany 2023 (Part 1): Cologne / Koln

My wife, Chrissy, travels for work. She usually travels with a colleague or on her own and I stay home with the kids. However, for a conference to Cologne Germany in November we decided that we would leverage her work covered airfare and hotel to do a family trip.

We had a lot of hesitations. Our girls don't like to eat anything, they fight us on leaving the house and then often when at a destination fight us not to leave. Plus, sleep is always a challenge. Some palpable parent dread...but what the hell, you only live once.

We committed ourselves to going hoping that it would be a great learning experience for the kids and to help me fight off my own mid-life crisis of being too comfortable.

The kids got only maybe an hour or two of sleep on the airplane but they did remarkably well for the flight to Frankfurt and then the train to Cologne. Certainly off to a good start.

Highlights from our time in Cologne below:

Cologne Cathedral

I have read about and seen pictures of the Cathedral for years but was still immensely impressed by the structure.

It is Germany's most visited landmark, attracting an average of 20,000 people a day.
One time tallest building in the world
Today at 157 m (515 ft), the cathedral is the tallest twin-spired church in the world, the second tallest church in Europe and the third tallest church of any kind in the world.

Josie and Sophia had absolute looks of wonder as they got their first glimpse of the building, and I imagine I did too.

Chocolate Museum

On a past work trip Chrissy had visited the Lindt Chocolate Museum and so while she was busy at work she begrudgingly allowed us to visit without her. The place was super cool with a museum on the history of chocolate production, special Lindt exhibits and the ability to tour the working floor of a chocolate producing factory.

The girls especially loved watching the machines work and pressing the buttons to be delivered samples.

Coming out of the museum we immediately jumped onto the Chocolate Express a fun little tourist train / vehicle that takes you on an information packed ride directly between the Cathedral and Chocolate Museum. It's the only way to travel :)

Cologne Carnival / St. Martins Day

In Cologne the Carnival season is declared open at 11 minutes past 11 on the 11th of the 11th month. It is a big party that day and weekend and then the Carnival spirit is then temporarily suspended during the Advent and Christmas period. You may notice the day being November 11th and the time being when a moment of silence is held in our native Canada for Remembrance Day. As a Canadian with German heritage I carry some embedded shame every Remembrance Day so it was surreal to see crazy revelry on what is usually a solemn day. As good tourists we headed out to the main square near the Cathedral to see all the people in costume (that's a thing) and having a good time. Fortuitously we ended up finding a fenced portion of space right in the thick of it to help keep the kids safe and just took it all in. Brass bands leading sing alongs, adults from 16-60 in groups costumes, tons of beer with many willing to share.

I was left conflicted: In many nations of the world people were reflecting on the loss of life through war while an aggressor nation of said wars celebrated having a super fun party.

Of the thousands of people in the square we saw there were only a handful of kids the age of our girls. We recognized it may not be the best place for them so we decided to go visit the zoo.

Cologne Zoo

The Cologne Zoo is the third oldest zoo in Germany it features over 10,000 animals of more than 850 species. It is big and awesome!

Highlights were the cool amount of birds I had never seen before, a massive elephant area with multiple pachyderms, giant apes, hippos, rhino, an anteater (I never saw one before) and some comical baboons who were putting on a show.

The faority for the girls was the giant playground. They deemed it the greatest playground they have ever been in and dubbed it "Uber Park".

At one point Josie got too scared to go across a metal link tunnel. Superhero Sophia came and rescued her and bravely led her across. They then were addicted to going across.

Eventually we just let the kids play and the park and Chrissy and myself just grabbed a coffee and watched the many elephants directly beside the park. Pretty cool.

Other Highlights:

Watching the world go by from the Hotels corner spot (especially the people heading to the main square for Carnival)

Walking along the Rhine daily and spotting parrots in the trees

The bones and beautiful interior of St. Ursula Church

Wandering the city between playgrounds, and finding some near cool old medieval walls (the girls like to point that I peed on that wall when I couldn't find a washroom)