Visit to Köln

Last weekend, our excursion was to visit Köln, where the professor who is hosting Jay lives when he is not at the university.  It is about an hour away by train.  He and his partner took us on an excursion to the Drachenfels (Dragon's rock), which is an old castle ruin at the top of a hill and a modern castle (built by some rich guy in the 19th century) about midway up.  It was about 30 minutes from Köln (at least without traffic) near Bonn in the Siebengebirge area. Of course there is a story about a dragon living there, perhaps the one that Siegfried battled.   We didn't encounter it, though there is a small reptile zoo on the mountain that might have the dragon or one of its descendents.  It was a great way to see the fall colors here, which we have so little of in California.

We were lazy and took the cog railway up, but we did walk partway down.  Of course, being with Germans, we had to have a bit of kuchen at the top (and of course, there was a restaurant there, just waiting to serve us).

Here are some pictures from the trip (taken with my cell phone, so excuse the quality)

The fall colors on the hillside

The path down the mountain

The ruin at the top

The more modern castle at midmountain

We all then went out for dinner (first discovering that German traffic on a weekend can be similar to the Bay Area) with another couple, where the husband is doing a sabbatical in the same institute. He has the strongest Canadian accent I have ever encountered -- you can tell within 1 minute that he is Canadian.  

The next day we wandered around a bit, visiting the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum, which is an anthropological museum that was originally based on the collection of Herr Rautenstrauch-Joest. They take a different tack than most such museums, where they combine items on the same theme from different cultures to show how things are similar and different across the world -- at this time (it apparently changes all the time), it was "daily life", so we got greeting customs, clothing, weddings, funerals and beliefs about the afterlife. I thought the best exhibit (not part of this daily life theme) was about prejudice against black people (from a German culture perspective).  Some of it was showing really embarrassing old Hollywood movies, but they also showed a old German children's book called "Ten little negroes", that apparently is similar in content to our "10 little monkeys", though what the little negroes do is somewhat more negative.  And lots of "Aunt Jemima" type ads, but for German products, so very different uses of the idea of a black person symbolizing something important about the product.  The museum is also very upfront about the abuses perpetrated by visitors to the cultures they showcase, including missionaries and anthropologists.  Well worth a couple of hours.

Afterwords, of course, we met our friends for another Kuchen at their favorite cafe, and headed for the train station.

On return, I thought "now would be a good time to do laundry", but of course, this is Germany, and laundromats are closed on Sunday.  One really has to plan ahead.  Instead I roasted a chicken (because the oven works well here and because I had planned ahead for that) and we had a very nice, perhaps close to traditionally German, dinner.