A Visit to Cologne Part 2: In which the author becomes addicted to pumpkin seed bread and takes way too many close-up photos at a Turkish market.

Whenever people come and visit us in Seattle, we end up taking them to the Pike Place Market. When we lived in Eugene, it was the Saturday Market. That be the pattern we visit people or receive visitors. When in doubt, take them to the market!

All that hit me as we walked through a Turkish market in Köln, tasting eggplant and cheese purees as we went along. Really, what better way to get a look at the local flavor than going to an open lot covered in folding tables and collapsible tents filled with locals selling to locals.

I suppose it's nice economically. I could throw all my money into larger tourist haunts, or (as is most likely) into the H & M's (cuz when I leave Germany, I leave as a fashionista on an idiot's budget!). But it's cheaper for me and better for them if I'm dropping my cold hard cash into the hands of locals.

It was during the day on Wednesday, so we were easily the youngest adults (there were a few children) and the only American-type tourists I could see anywhere. We nabbed a couple containers of the purees and some flatbread. Then some veggies. I got in peoples way as I took close up shots of colorful merchandise.

Then it was around the corner, and I could no longer contain myself. In Seattle we've got a coffee joint every ten feet. In jolly old Deutchland it's bakeries. Bakeries with bread. Tasty, yeasty, chewy, crusty delicious bread.

Chris commented that ingredients for making bread are a bit hard to come by. This is probably because given the choice I'd rather drop half a Euro down for the tasty bakery goodness available than anything I'd make myself (and I do consider myself a reasonably adept baker.)

But while most flour- and yeast-based foodstuffs over there are what you'd expect — variations of whole wheat and white, sourdough and the like in every shape and size imaginable — there was one that stood out. These people love — or at least produce in mass quantities — rolls, rings and loaves of bread covered top to bottom, inch by inch in bitterly delicious pumpkin seeds.

Holy crap for crap, have I ever tasted such seedy, grainy goodness as this before? Suffice to say I have not, and Megan and I were running into every bakery we passed snagging a couple more of those rolls for the rest of the trip. I even had one left over the day after we arrived and ate it while driving to Seattle with a smug smile, knowing that know one within several thousand miles was enjoying bread quite like mine.

After the market run, we stopped by a little, little, LITTLE coffee shop (there's like, one long table in the place for any and all customers to share) for some French-pressed coffee. No espresso to be had here. But you do get to select from something like eight or more different blends of coffee. I'm not sure what they called the kind Megan and I ordered, but it was what they gave us when we asked for a less bitter variety.

Chris and Kelly come here often enough that the woman running the shop held a conversation strictly in German that I can only assume involved inquiring after each other’s health, wishing well to each other’s spouses and explaining who these two stupid non-German-speaking Americans were doing here.

I was fully impressed by Chris' conversational skill in this case. I don't speak the language, so I probably can't judge, but the conversation was long enough to get past the typical "Hello, my name is Karl. I like beer, pretzels and American football"-type conversations you'd find in your year-one language book.

Kelly came a few minutes later. Add another conversation with the woman running the joint between those two, add me saying "danke" every ten seconds so as to seem appreciative as possible and you've basically got that first morning.

Kudos to that establishment for broadening my coffee-drinking palate to non-espresso type fair. I'm typically used to drinking things with tons of steamed milk and shots of flavoring. I took mine with cream (real cream) and some sugar.

Tomorrow I'll write about the Cathedral a bit, which was WAY rad.