On the way there, there was a lady ahead of us also rushing somewhere. Fan guessed that she is also trying to catch the train like we are. She said that sometimes when they get lost going to her chess tournaments, she would find people on the streets who look like chess players and ask them. It works. I should give this one a try too! lol.
We made our train with time to spare. It comes very half an hour so it wasn’t a big deal anyway. Once we got to Cologne, we walked along the Rhine until we came to the Chocolate Museum. The museum was very cool. It had explanations of the whole cocoa bean growing and chocolate making processes. There is also a greenhouse with cocoa plants. Fan said that she has a cocoa plant at her parent’s place. But when we went into the greenhouse, we saw that the cocoa plants looked a lot like the mystery plant in her room. This mystery plant was left to her by one of her former neighbors who planted a pot of soil with whatever seeds that she had until one of them grew. Fan had thought the leaves looked like ones on an avocado tree. However her friend said that she had never put any avocado seeds in the soil. So we were really amazed by this discovery. In fact, the trees didn’t really look like the plant at her parents’ place but very, very similar to the one in her room.
Did I ever mention that German people seem to like having plants around? Plants and flowers are very cheap here. My office has lots of plants. They’re very big too. Each office has its own collection of at least 5 plants, many of which sit on desks.
After reading all about the chocolate making process, we got to see it in action. There is a factory inside the museum that makes chocolate. There’s even a huge fondue where one of the museum people dips wafers into and gives them out for free (picture: the melted chocolate comes out of some of the golden cocoa beans on the bottom). We went three times to get chocolate covered wafers. Warm chocolate, yum…
There were also exhibits of modern chocolate brands and such. It was all very interesting. Definitely worth the four Euros. I got a few things from the gift store including a bar of nougat which we ate after our lunch of sandwich and grapefruit.
We got back to the train station with just enough time for me to get a ticket and board the train with 5 minutes to spare. Getting really good at this timing.
On the train, I looked for an empty table with an electric socket. It didn’t exists, of course, even though the train wasn’t very full at all. So I sat behind two of these four people tables hoping that one of the occupants of these tables would leave before Berlin. Meanwhile, I played with my camera and figured out that I can actually take pretty good quality videos and zoom in and out while using camera mode. On one of the intermediate stops, the two guys in front of me left. I was so surprised at my luck! But as soon as I sat down, a family of three came in and sat with me. And they weren’t leaving until Berlin, so no luck there. But it was okay. I got to type up a lot of entries for this blog as well as watch two episodes of Stargate.
When I got back to my dorm, two of the guys were eating dinner. They said they missed me. Awww. They had gone to the lake on the weekend and went boating. Wish I had gone with them. Doesn’t look like I’ll be able to swim in this lake… Anyhow, they also cleaned the house! They mopped the floor of the kitchen with soap. I was very impressed.
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