Sightseeing-wise, Cologne was a bust. I found the much-celebrated cathedral inferior to a long list of others*. The famous perfume is perfectly pleasant but I can buy scents I like better for a more reasonable price. Much of the city centre is remarkably ugly. Like many German cities, it was flattened by bombs in WWII, but post-war construction here veered towards modernism and away from re-creation. (In this, Cologne should be twinned with London.) For me, its star sight is a roman mosaic from an ancient dining room on display in a brutalist concrete museum now closed to the public but, fortunately, you can still see the floor through a window at the back and to the right of the cathedral.
The city was redeemed, however, by its beer. There's only one thing on tap here: Kölsch. It's pale, dry, crisp, and served pleasantly cold. It's all highly regulated, with ingredients limited, processes defined and the ability to call it Kölsch restricted to 50 km from Cologne. But that doesn't mean it's all the same. Many of Cologne's copious drinking establishments brew their own versions and aficionados claim different varieties have different fruity notes you don't often find in a German lagers. Anyone can wander into a Cologne pub and get a drink, but going out for an evening with a local guide brought us to the right places and helped us understand the distinctive drinking culture.
Kölsch is served in what, at first, may seem a laughably small glass. The tall, thin, 200 ml (6.8 oz) cylinder is called a Stange, and may strike you as an oversized shot glass. A thirsty drinker could down it in a few gulps. But here's the magic: it just keeps coming.
You don't order a beer in Cologne. You enter the brew house , find your place, and a waiter (the Köbes) will come up with a circular tray with a tall handle in the middle (the Kranz), full of glasses, and give you one. Because this is really the only thing you drink in Cologne. When your glass is empty, your lovely Köbes is at your elbow with another. And he will be there, again and again, until you place your beer mat on top of your glass to stop the flow. While the initial 200 ml won't go to your head, you can imagine how constant top ups across the evening could do damage to your equilibrium and your wallet. Fortunately, all the evening’s drinking was covered by the excursion price, no matter when or if we decided to deploy our bar mats. This made the price better value for money for some than others.
While our guide on the day’s earlier walking tour (included in the basic cruise price) had focused understandably on history and architecture, the evening’s guide delved deeper into the people and culture. The locals, it turns out, are quite an anarchic bunch. Fiercely independent, fond of parties, lovers of food and drink and … according to our Cologne-born guide … have the best sense of humour in Germany. I couldn't help remembering the fun-loving the Osakans and their prickly relationship with Tokyo.
Predominantly Catholic, Cologne was absorbed into the staunchly Protestant Prussian kingdom after the Napoleonic era and it was never a comfortable fit. Though there are statues of Prussian kings dotted around the place, they’re treated with mocking contempt. A pre-Lenten Carnival is the party of the year, characterised by Venetian levels of costume, drinking and mayhem. Naturally, the locals kick off the party under a statue of Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III, a devout Protestant who hated the whole Carnival idea and tried to shut it down.
We started our evening at the Brauerei zur Malzmühle across the street from the Heumarkt, the enormous town square on which that king’s equestrian statue prances. The Schwartz family have been brewing and hosting visitors here for 160 years, and they’re now one of the few establishments still brewing on site in the city centre. The decor is traditional but restrained 19th century German beer hall, with lots of stained glass, wood, festoons of dried hops and memorabilia from carnivals past.
In the best tradition of pub crawls, we lined our stomach here with a hearty dinner to better absorb the alcohol of the evening. Local delicacies here mean pork. Our group shared platters of pork knuckle, sauerbraten, smoked sausage, black pudding, and even a pork tartare. It was both delicious and a bold statement of faith in the freshness and purity of the local meat. (I suspect serving raw pork would be illegal in England, despite the quality of our pork industry.) On the side came fried potatoes and a lightly pickled sauerkraut that bore no resemblance to the cheek-puckering stuff sold in groceries. Even professed sauerkraut haters tried it and found it tasty. Of other vegetables, there was no sign and, in the local mind, no need. It wasn’t the first time it occurred to me that a vegetarian might starve to death in Germany, and devout Jews and Muslims would be eating from a very reduced menu. My husband, meanwhile, was nearing a coma of transcendent happiness with so many interpretations of his favourite protein in one place.
After a stroll across the Heumarkt to let the food settle, we landed at the Pffafen Brauerei on the square’s northeast corner. You can’t miss the dignified, salmon-pink Baroque building with its ornate wrought iron pub sign, but it’s the crazy interiors that make this place memorable. There’s stained glass here, too, but more abundant and more modern, particularly in the multi-story entrance hall with its enormous chandelier that feels a bit like a cathedral of beer. Push in to the long, narrow building and you’ll be dazzled by a profusion of woodcarving. Local artists have been adding to the place since the current brewer took it over in the 1970s. There are carnival goers, cherubs, monks (pfaffen in the local dialect), hops and foliage. Much is traditionally decorative, but some gets quirky, with heads springing from barrels, figures holding up tables and mischievous faces looking around corners. Here’s Cologne’s anarchic sense of humour at work.
While the brewers here, Päffgen, supply a variety of brew houses across the city, this is the only one where it comes straight from the wooden barrels. Which, experts tell me, makes a difference. I found their version slightly hoppier and heavier than the Malzmühle Kölsch, but I'd be hard pressed to tell the difference in a blind taste test.
A lane called the Saltzgass leads east from the corner, down a hill towards the Rhine. Its name, “salt alley” gives a nod to a precious commodity mined in Germany and shipped up and down the Rhine since Roman times. The street is all restaurants and brew houses now, our last stop dominating the middle stretch.
Bierhaus en d’r Salzgass is in a historic former brewery dating back 400 years. Brewing stopped here in 1907 and the place changed hands as a restaurant multiple times through the 20th century, but it saw new owners and a major renovation in early 2003. The beer was the same Päffgen we’d just left at Pffafen, just not out of a barrel. No, I couldn’t tell the difference. But that didn’t matter, because it’s the interiors that made this place. Polished, dark wood abounds: columns, panelling, an impressive central bar soaring two stories. In fact, the whole central room is double height, with a second story of revellers able to look over their wrought iron balustrades onto the drinkers below. Another festive establishment with the ambiance of a cathedral. I have a feeling that’s no coincidence in this city.
We Brits could have happily explored one or two more places, but our American fellow travellers were lagging and quick to raise their beer mats. We adjourned to the ship's bar and continued our celebrations there. No Germanic woodcarving, and Kölsch only in bottles that ... gasp ... exceeded 200 ml. We coped.
At 5pm that day, I'd considered Cologne a wasted stop on the cruise. By 11pm I was wondering if we could come back for the Christmas Market or Carnival. That's the difference some good local insight can make. Prost!
*To be fair, because it was the week before Easter the cathedral's ambulatory ... that horseshoe of chapels ringing the high altar ... wasn't open. Most of the cathedral's treasures are back there. If the building has any chance of competing with places like Chartres, Milan or Canterbury, you need to see it outside of Holy Week.
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