Else & Ilse | LGBTIQ+ adventurers

2020 has been difficult. We lost many people to the pandemic or to police brutality. Many of us lost friends and relatives, jobs, homes, livelihoods. And in a year like this one, it can be so difficult to see the good moments of life. Here are our favorite 2020 memories: In January, we spent a long weekend in Belgium . We saw dinosaurs in Brussels, took many walks in Bruges, and had fantastic food and drinks. In February, we went ice-skating—our first time as a couple, but both of us haven't done this often in general. We celebrated our first anniversary and ended the month with one of our favorite holidays: carnival! This was the last time we spent time in a crowd: we already knew that COVID-19 was a threat, but weren't aware of its severity yet. At the beginning of March, we attended an ArtNight and painted abstract vulvas with a colorful bunch of people. This also started our acrylic painting journey which would help us through the following months because in March and April...

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...

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...

Like last year, Else planned a short trip for Ilse as a birthday gift. While we went canoe camping near Berlin last year, this year’s trip brought us to Paris. Paris! Both of us had been to Paris before, but we never visited the city of love and romance together. While planning the trip, Else thought a lot about traveling in times of COVID-19 , but cases of new infections were dropping, Paris is just a three hour train ride from Cologne, France seems to be very responsible when it comes to prevention measures. Then, about a week before we were bound to leave, numbers in Europe started to rise again. What was supposed to be a surprise destination, had to be revealed and discussed. We finally decided to go, be super careful, and monitor the numbers. It was a rather stressful trip, but fun nonetheless! Probably because of the pandemic, hotel rates in the center of Paris were very low and we had a wonderful hotel with a view on the Hôtel des Invalides from our room. We could walk to the Ei...

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...