When we
are traveling we always say it’s the people we meet not the places that make the experience so special. So when it came to Cologne,
we were spoiled from day one. From the hostel staff and owner, to old friends
reunited and new friends made, this wonderful city has so much going for it and
we enjoyed every minute.
Cologne has a bit of the goldilocks factor going on, not to
small, not too big, but just right, with over 1million people living in the
city, its main attraction is the unmissable and beautiful cathedral (Dom) which
is next to the old town with its narrow lanes and traditional building.
This
also sits not too far away from the river Rhine, which is picture perfect with
its numerous bridges leading over to the other side of Cologne (think Newcastle to
Gateshead, as in Newcastle gets all the good stuff)
This city, which is not the most prettiest of places, but
makes up for it with what’s going on under the surface. With an electric night
life, culture & art, plentiful and numerous quality restaurants/street cafes
/bars/clubs and best of all a mint gay scene! I would recommend going but I bet
you don’t get better guides than we found in Paula and Alex.
Our Story in Cologne…
When entering the city Please remember when in Germany to give
way to bikes and pedestrians to the right, as we nearly took out a group of
commuters going to work! Sorry guys.. our first time driving in Germany and
luckily no fatalities. Entschuldigung!
The place we stayed was called the die wohngemeinschaft” which translates roughly
as the people share. This a very cool
place, with an even cooler bar attached.
The bar came first and this place oozes style, it has a
retro chic feel to it, with the furniture and wallpaper all 50’s style, it even
has a VW classic camper turned into a seating area.
(c+0).jpg)
This theme runs into the hostel too, which is on two floors,
each room is individually decorated with a unique theme, we stayed in the kiki room,
with a Hawaii feel, others included space, photograph, romance room and while
we were there they were in the process of making a circus room.
We can honestly say this is one of best hostels we have stayed
at, the attention to detail is everywhere, the cleanness or as Chris kept
saying “there’s clean, eat your dinner clean and then there die
wohngemeinschaft clean”, the breakfast is a treat too and all the staff are
lovely.
When we got settled in our rooms we meet the man behind the
bar and hostel, the owner is called Jens and he couldn’t have been nicer to us,
always making sure we were ok and he even offered us free beers from the fridge
for the duration of our stay, (we normally charge for materials costs, but I think
we drank all the costs away..)
The place he wanted us to paint was on the 6th
floor and was in the main hallway leading to the rooms, after speaking to Jens
and deciding on the idea, he wanted something to fit in with the surrounding décor
and not be aimed at your typical young hostel dwellers, but aimed at a more mature
and sophisticated traveller.
We decided to go for a repeating retro style pattern and
fill in the wall with Ida4 style portraits.
We normally work with a blacks and white colours but we felt this would
not match the surroundings so went for a range of browns and we felt this really
worked and we will be using this range more in the future.
This is the finished wall.
Our Time in Cologne
We can’t finish this blog entry without mentioning how much
fun we had in Cologne. This was mainly
down to an old friend called Paula from Newcastle, who has been settled over here
for the last 10 years. She has carved an amazing life over here and is fluent in German
as she works as a translator, with a great group of friends and a German boyfriend
called Alex who now has a quite remarkable Geordie accent when speaking English,
he has got dialect down to a tee if ya kna what I mean pet!
But honestly a real big thank you for all you did, it was way
and above anything we expected, from you inviting us to stay at your fabulous
apartment, like wow! To Alex cooking for us, taking us around all the cool
bars, meeting and partying with your friends, your advice on all things German
and everything else which I haven’t listed. Vielen herzlichen Dank! We hope to
see you again soon
No comments:
Post a Comment