Else & Ilse | LGBTIQ+ adventurers

The Skulpturenpark ('sculpture park') is one of our absolute favorites. When we just started dating, Else told Ilse about this park that Ilse didn't know. So, for our second date, Else planned a walk including this park (we wrote about it in  another post ). 19 months later, we were back for our monthversary, after we had planned to revisit more than once. But we always found other places to explore and somehow kept postponing our visit. In 1997, the Skulpturenpark opened its first exhibition with contemporary sculptures from all over the world. The exhibitions are usually open for about two years; then, a new exhibition is curated. While most artworks are then removed from the park, others aren't—there are still a few sculptures from the very first and following exhibitions. Recently, the tenth exhibition opened and and you can visit it until 2022. While some artworks are huge and cannot be missed, others are smaller such as Lonesome George by Ayşe Erkmen, a tiny snail...

Our city's Pride parade is one of our favorite festivals each year. We can celebrate our love, be proud of our sexuality, (re)connect with old friends, get to know new people. So when all pride parades had to be canceled due to COVID-19, we understood the decision, but it also made us incredibly sad. Yet, our parade wasn't canceled, but modified and postponed to October 11 and thereby coincided with the National Coming Out Day that was originally celebrated in the US, but nowadays around the world. We assume the organizers hoped for an end of the pandemic—as so many of us did. The second wave of the pandemic currently intensifies and we weren't sure if our Pride would really happen this year. But it did. We didn't have parade floats and masses of local, national, and international participants. Instead, we had a physically distanced bicycle parade in which everyone of us participated. Starting from four different locations, hundreds of queer people demonstrated LGBTQ+ v...

Last Sunday, for our monthversary, we returned to the Rheinpark—a wonderful park at the Rhine, which we had visited during one of our first dates. The park is located at the other side of the river and might be the biggest park in Cologne. To get there, we would always recommend walking over the Zoobrücke which offers wonderful views on the Dom, Cologne's iconic cathedral, and the Hohenzollernbrücke with its thousands of padlocks symbolizing love.  But even if you don't walk across this bridge, the beach in the northern corner of the park has fantastic views! And even though this beach is not in the Caribbean, it is wonderful to stay here for a while—we even saw geese and goslings! (If you want to be more active and/or have children, you'll also find a skate park and a very diverse playground here and at other places in the park.) Although walking around this park in itself is wonderful, it is also fascinating to watch its diverse visitors and find political street art. And...

Ever since we’ve met, we’ve spent a continually increasing amount of time with each other. At the beginning of this year, we finally decided to move in together! Then: COVID-19, lockdown. And ever since, we haven’t spent a single night apart from each other, but didn’t officially move in together.  Finding a place was surprisingly easy, despite the pandemic, despite living in a city with a difficult housing market. But we got super lucky: the house where Else lived the past two years has an empty apartment, which is currently overhauled. It’s going to be available in September. Three rooms, a big balcony, perfect location.  Else had terminated her lease to end in June, but COVID-19 has taught us that we can share Ilse’s smallish apartment. So we didn’t mind to wait a little longer for an almost perfect apartment. And now, we finally got our official rental agreement! We can’t wait to move in together (although we practically already did). We are mentally painting the walls, we...

We were and are so excited for Pride Month! Although most Pride festivities are canceled this year (Cologne Pride is, for now, postponed, so we still have some hope ...), we couldn't wait for this month of visibility, of pride (not just Pride), of rainbow flags, of support, of loving each other. Then, George Floyd was brutally killed. And although we cannot imagine how it must feel to be Black or a person of color, we can't stand this injustice. We will do everything we can to stand with you. To fight with you. Pride started as a riot. And although we do not support violence, it doesn't seem likely that this injustice will end without another riot. We stand with you. We won't have queer equality if we don't have racial equality. Black lives matter. The lives of people of color matter. Remember those who died from police violence. Say their names and never forget.

We love Cologne and we love living in Cologne. And we recently realized that it might be worthwhile for some of you to get to know our favorite spots. So this is part one of our favorite destinations in Cologne: Zündorf. A few weeks ago, when COVID-19 prevented us from doing anything that isn't outside, we decided to take one of our 'surprise trips' (we don't check what we'll find before going) to the end of one of our trolley lines —in this case line 7 to Zündorf. Crossing through several different parts of the city, the trip itself can be an adventure. When we took this trip on a sunny day in April, one person on our trolley rapped (yes!) about their current experience on being on the trolley. Another one had to finish their cigarette and then did a few chin-ups (and again: yes!). When we arrived, the place didn't seem too impressive. But as we know from a previous surprise trip: we had to be patient. About ten minutes from the trolley stop, we wer...

We recently told you that we got lucky enough to  meet on Tinder . We were texting each other for about two weeks when we finally had our first date at Else's favorite Thai restaurant in Cologne. We didn't make a reservation because the restaurant is often quite empty during the week. But not this time. So we decided to try a Burmese restaurant that both of us didn't know. (We were relieved when we realized that both of us need to use GoogleMaps to find places nearby.) The restaurant still has nostalgic values for us. Eight days later, we went on our second date.  (We can't believe that there was a time we voluntarily spent eight days without each other!) Ilse had never been to Cologne's Sculpture Park, an open air art gallery with new exhibitions every other year, so Else planned a date exploring the park and the area around it. It was just a week before carnival so she brought Berliners (filled pastry particularly popular during carnival) filled with egg liqu...