A little weary from my travels and using my stunted ability to navigate Google maps to my hostel, I managed to lug all my stuff at least a block and a half in the wrong direction - classic Lil, and no Ashlee, I had no f***ing idea which direction the ocean was! I had arrived on the Wednesday and fortunately the hostel was overbooked so they put me into a single room instead of a four person dorm at no extra charge. After the few days I'd had it was the perfect opportunity to catch up on some 'me' time, some blog writing and a little clothes washing in the bathroom sink, which was not actually as frustrating as I thought it would be, oh and a HUGE thank you to my brilliant dad who bought me a tube of clothes washing gel the last time he was in Germany. I don't know why you can't buy the stuff everywhere, it is brilliant!

After crashing early the night before I got up quite early on the Thursday and set off for a bit of Cologne sight seeing, I'd Googled some highlights of the city and decided that, if it were open, the chocolate museum (a no brainer) and the modern art gallery would be the perfect day out. Unfortunately due to the fact that it was the beginning of the five day festivities of Carnival all the museums and typical tourist attractions were closed. Not to worry though, I had a great morning wandering the city, taking photos and generally soaking up the vibe of the street parties that had begun as early as 10am. I was nervous on Wednesday night as I put the final touches to my costume for Thursday that I would feel a bit silly leaving the hostel in full costume to find my friends, but as it turned out when I actually left the hostel in the morning for my sight seeing adventure I already felt quite silly that I was in casual tourist dress. To ham it up a little I snapped away quite energetically with my camera to pretend that I'd dressed as 'a tourist' for the day... it was a fickle attempt, and next to the lions, tigers and monks (Oh my), it was hardly up to scratch.

Knowing that the night would be long and festive I decided, once I got back to the hostel, to spend the afternoon napping and finishing off my Friday night costume. When I eventually left to meet my friends I was much more at ease in amongst the street crowd dressed from head to toe in a garland of plastic foliage and flowers - my scraped together attempt at 'mother nature'-I'd got the idea from the masses of cheap fake flowers etc that I'd found at a discount store in Munich a few days before. When I eventually found my friends at a club across the road from the Dom (Cologne Cathedral) I was introduced to the Colognian drink of the festival, Kölsch beer, which they only serve in one size that I think it was in about a 200-300ml tall thin glass. Super sexy and super classy, that's my kinda drinking. We danced and drank and sang along to the traditional songs of Carnival, one about Cologne, one about Carnival and one I think about a local football team, which by the way, after a few beers I was also singing along to (no idea what the words were but I managed some pretty German-like gibberish). The songs were played, I'm not kidding, after only about four or five different songs had been played in between. On the first night it was fun, by the third night I was ready to go postal on the DJ's. The other, very amusing, observation of the playlist for Carnival was the limited selection of english songs that were played and loved by the German crowd, songs that I hadn't heard in years and even in their 'hey day' were as daggy as they are now. We actually left the club at a pretty civilised hour to go and get some food, sliced sausage and chips covered in tomato ketchup and mayonnaise, a German 'must have' at 2am I'm told, and in honesty it went down an absolute treat!

After food the few single folk in the group continued on to some other bars that seemed to be full of action, unfortunately though as the festivities had started so early in the day it was up to me to teach my German friends the meaning of the English/Australian phrase "slim pickings" - and that was being generous. Deciding then to cut our losses we ended the night at a pretty civilised and sober hour, but not before ripping some fairly awesome moves on the dance floor. The following day was spent lunching late and meandering slowly through the streets of Cologne to discover that my Munich based friends were, in fact, massive snobs when it came to home town pride. Not saying it was a bad thing, it was actually quite nice to see the city through the non-rose coloured glasses of a German tourist. As unimpressed as they were though I really enjoyed our walk that we ended in time for us all to go home for a power nap before out second night out. The boys were quite impressed with the 'black fairy' ensemble I had put together mostly by raiding an op-shop and Ralph's stash of hardware stuff in Munich before I left. We started the night at a tapas bar recommended by our local host and she wasn't wrong, the food was sensational. However the spritz, glass of white wine and three shots of ouzo to start the night, in hindsight, were possibly where it all went wrong. I do remember there was a shot of something kind of like jäger on the way to the club and then an actual shot of jäger when we arrived at the club and then I'm sure I had at least two (although it may have been three) free poured whiskey and cokes. This time when we left to get food I didn't need any help with my kebab order, somehow the chick behind the counter managed to understand my order of 'one lamb kebab, no onion' that I'm pretty sure I blasted at her in a mix of German, English and drunken Russian - oh yes, I was at my best. I'm not sure how much self respect I lost on the sidewalk, as I devoured that kebab like a starving hyaena over a sheep carcass, but I had enough sense at the end of it to know that the evening was at an end for me and in true JoJo style I semi-ghosted out of there like a pro - I say only semi-ghosted because I did tell Susannah that I was leaving. We won't go into the details of the rest of that night, nor the the very slow movements of the following morning because to be honest they are neither pleasant nor interesting and I think my mother has already cursed at the screen more times than I should make her do in one post... sorry mum, just living the dream!

Saturday was supposed to actually be an all day dance party at a big club near the Dom however due to some very technical moves by me the night before I somehow managed to lock the SIM card on my phone and could neither make nor receive calls or texts so when I finally did catch up with my friends they weren't able to get me into the club. To be honest I wasn't that gutted, still pretty hungover from the night before, I took the opportunity to go home for a nap and to re-pack my stuff and sort out my trip to the airport for my Sunday departure to Ireland. Once I'd sorted all that I made my way back to the club and braved the two hour wait to get in to where my friends were still raving on. I endured some pretty squishy conditions, a random feel up or two by some drunken Germans (not too many complaints there) and I met a lovely girl in the queue who was making it all bearable until she decided to ditch me only about an hour into the ordeal. After being screamed at in German by the power hungry bouncer, who really wasn't that hard to understand considering he was spouting the same s*** that the guys at home do when they feel like they need some control, I finally made it to the front of the line and final check point for entry. Thankfully one of my tasks for the day was to go and get a new SIM card for which I needed my passport as ID and blissfully still had on me because the hulk-like door guard, after slowly eyeing me from toe to head to toe, spat his one English word at me "passport" - do I really look like that much of a tourist, and do I honestly not look of age! Haha woo hoo! "Why yes Mr. scary German bouncer man, please, check my ID", as suspected I received an impressed eyebrow raise once he had calculated my actual age - boo yeah! Thinking that the ordeal of my day was finally over I made my way into the club to find my friends and as it turned out the "club" was in fact a series of small restaurants, canteens, and other random rooms of who's usual purpose I could not determine and the search for my friends became more and more hopeless with ever turn. All the information I had was that the group of about thirty or so people that my friends were going to meet were all dressed in bathrobes and to my disappointment I could only see a very small few still remaining in the building - none of whom were familiar to me. After tracking down the head robe man who actually knew who one of my friends was (and thankfully spoke a little English) I determined that the group I had come to see must have called it a day and were no longer in the building. I drank a beer and had a bit of a dance but being completely sober and in no mood to wrangle drunks (and buy this stage of the day there were plenty of them) I decided to wander home and set my record for ratio of time standing in queue to time in actual venue. On my way home I finally received a call from Ralf who, I determined a few hours before, had run out of battery on his phone much earlier in the day. Turns out that while I was standing in the queue to get into the club on one side of the building they were actually leaving for the day on the other - just my luck. Not to worry though, turns out that even though the others all bailed Ralf was still up for a drink and a dance and as I wasn't far from his hostel, (and how often are you in Cologne for Carnival?) I sucked it up and went out for my third attempt at Carnival day three. I lasted only one club and one drink but I did dance for a good while. When it got to the point that I was contemplating ripping my ears off so I didn't have to listen to another German folk song, I decided that it was probably time to go home, and a 10pm (ish) finish would certainly allow me a decent amount of sleep before my travel day, so all was good. Before I finish my tales of Cologne I should probably re-account a significant friendship I made with a lovely girl from Boston who was doing an internship in the north of Germany and had come to Cologne to break up the monotony of her sleepy town digs. I really liked chatting with her at my hostel and hope that if I do head to NYC in September as planned that I may detour for a few days and take her up on the offer of a tour of her town. I would really love that.