Brühl with Caren, Lotta, and Brendan!

Br¨uhl is the small city we were actually staying in, in Lotta's home.  It is nestled between Bonn and K¨oln.  The city centre is great for shopping and markets, and is just very pretty to look at all the architecture.  It is a warm and colorful place.  We went into a church and wow!  It used to be Franciscan, but is now catholic.  It is attached to the Augustusburg Palace, the bishop’s mansion, so inside naturally would be of the same decorated structure as the mansion.  The were marble columns, gold everywhere, and lots of sculptures.  It was a very pretty church! 

Then we walked around the corner to walk the baroque gardens of the palace, which looks like French lace.  The palace was able to take minimal damage from the attacks and still look beautiful today.  It was the favorite residence of Cologne’s elector and archbishop Clemens August of Bavaria (1700-1761).  Carlo Carlone painted a magnificent fresco ceiling, which is brilliantly deceptive.  

He made this flat, square ceiling transform into a dome when you are standing at the bottom of a magnificent stair case designed by Balthasar Neumann.  This whole palace is an embodiment of German Rococo art! We had a history filled tour of the mansion which Caren translated for Brendan and I, which was lovely.  Then we continued outside across the baroque gardens into the English woods area to the Falkenlust Hunting lodge, which was reserved for the mistress.  This was a good thirty-minute walk.  This house was small but beautiful, and maintained the same rococo style as was used in the main palace.  There was a tiny chapel, about the size of a gazebo, completely covered in shells on the inside. between the palace and the hunting lodge, Caren followed her nose and found some herbal plants growing that is like garlic, which we later used to make dinner!
We viewed a little gallery, just between the church and the mansion in a sunroom area.  The paintings were very pretty and inspiring, and speaking to the artist was lovely, as he spoke English.  Thea Hackhausen was a prominent artist there, and you can view work at www.zarifa-art.de 

We stopped at a fruit market on the way home to get some chocolate for the chocolate fountain we planned on having.  for some reason though, we couldn’t get the chocolate to melt correctly when we got home, so we just had scopable chocolate in a bowl with fruits breads and of course pretzels.  Now Pretzels are a German thing, right? So can anyone tell me why they never thought to dip Pretzels into Nutella? I couldn’t believe it but no one had tried chocolate pretzels before…. which are amazing and if you haven’t tried it you need to right now!   We finished the night with drinking and heading out to a more secret student nightclub in Koeln.  We had a long journey there, including walking and two trains! I have never seen a nightclub like this before.  "Live Music Hall" was a former warehouse, and it was mental.  There was so many people that it was crowded, and had to push through loads of people.  There was lots of dancing, drinks being brought onto the dance floor, and smoking allowed there too. This is a huge contrast to the strict health and safety laws in place in Scotland, especially at our students union.  The DJ was up in the loft, and there were huge Chandeliers and a massive Disco ball somewhere in between us and him.  the place is open till five, but we left at 4 to still get home at a decent time (being 5 AM. hah!)