Sunday 3 April 2005

Chocolate is serious business

Yesterday we had a change of plans. We did not visit Aachen as originally planned but instead a friend offered to take us into Cologne where there is a CHOCOLATE MUSEUM. Thats right your eyes are not deceiving you, a Chocolate Museum. An entire 3 story museum devoted to educating the public on the history and manufacture of chocolate. The best bit is, of course, the tasting. Imagine, if you will, a fountain of chocolate into which wafers are dipped for your mouth's enjoyment as you look out along the Rhine (if you can take your eyes of the chocolate).
The museum is situated on a small isthmus on the Rhine river right next to a Sports Museum. The first exhibit was on art in chocolate and consisted of sculptures made entirely of chocolate including; a very realistic leg complete with fishnet stockings, a demonstration of at least 50 individual (and unique) people in ranks marching, carrying placards and waving fists. Very impressive.
The most popular part was probably the working mini manufacturing line they had set up which culminated in the previously-mentioned chocolate fountain. It went from starting with the cocoa beans (kakao in German) through roasting, crushing, blending, rolling and conching (homogenising of the liquid chocolate through mixing under heat and pressure -- discovered around 1870 by Lindt). Some of the chocolate goes to the fountain and some to be molded and packaged (which is the next part of the mini-factory). The small samples they produce here are the ones they offer you at the front gate. The entire room was heavy with the aroma of warm chocolate. Quite a heady but relaxing effect!
Other interesting things we learnt included that it takes 35 cocoa beans (almost a complete fruit) to make one bar of full-cream milk chocolate; 100 beans could buy a male slave (means Fenton is worth about 3 chocolate bars!); some Aztec emperors were named Cocoa (or whatever their word was) because of the value of the beans. And finally, as you would expect in a museum, there was some old chocolate, the oldest being a 100 year old chocolate Santa from the Lindt factory.
So two things. One, it tells you what kind of family we are since we saw this before the famous Cologne cathedral and two, if you are ever in Cologne we'd recommend you put it on your itinerary, before or after the cathedral :)

1 comment:

  1. The Edmonton Stake in Cananda during my mission were into producing their own chocolates for sale to tke public to raise funds for welfare ie $20,000 Canadian. So for a week in winter the rec hall was turned into a factory where members with Frypans dipped chocolates!
    So I can bring to memory the aroma of molten chocolate at will. mmmm

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