The pages of our guest book were really starting fill up. This weekend we were playing host to one of Michelle's housemates from university, Gavin. Gavin's job sees him traveling to Milan quite regularly, and this time around he was making a slight detour north to visit us in Cologne. That I had been playing the tour guide a little of late really sank in when I decided that I didn't actually need to buy the 50cent tour brochure of the cathedral because I had memorized all of the important bits anyway. However, we never do quite the same tour, and this time around we finally took the cable car over the Rhine that I had seen posters advertising for the last 11 months, but had never really looked into. The Seilbahn crosses the river parallel to the Zoo bridge, so named because of the famous K�lner zoo on the other side of the river. The cable car provides a great overview of the city, and as we found out, a very personal view of some of the sauna goers at the public pool on the other side. Apparently its quite common to see naked bathers lounging about in the sun at this point, but it just seems a little strange when there is so clearly a constant stream of people with cameras flying over head.
We also stopped downtown at the S�nner Braueri, the pub in the market with the 5 litre towers. (beer is served here in thin Plexiglas tubes, and can contain either 3 or 5 litres. They tubes fit into a base with a spigot so that you can pour your own at the table.) We didn't actually order a tower, but it was pretty cool to watch the bartenders try to fill the things.
One last thing of note was our experience trying to get 'real German food'. We went to a restaurant which we knew had some pick wait staff, as we had already been thrown out during carnival for not ordering the right kind of beer. I had written it off as the Cologne carnival spirit (one of our group had ordered Bavarian beer of all things) but it turns out that they�re always a little quirky here. our waiter had clearly been drinking before we arrived, and sure wasn't stopping just because we were there. When he brought drinks to the group beside us, he offered to drink with them, and downed a beer. Then he really pressed one woman who had ordered apple juice to change her mind and take a beer. He pleaded, and said he'd have one with her, and the drank both of them when she stood her ground. I thought it was a little strange how he was joking with all the customers, but Tille assured me that that kind of banter is typical of a real Cologne restaurant. When the waiter wasn't able to add up the bill though, and we had to do it for him, it was pretty clear that more than being friendly, he had just had way to much of what he was serving.
