Lindt Chocolate Factory in Cologne, Germany

March 2, 2013

Today we studied chocolate! Talk about sweet education! Our friends took us to the Chocolate Museum in Cologne, Germany (although on the signs it’s spelled “Koln”…with the 2 dots above the “o”). We walked along the Rhein river to get to the museum and enjoyed the pretty weather and blue skies.

Lovely view of Rhein river

The museum is really comprehensive – beginning with where the cacao bean comes from and how it’s harvested. The most startling fact was that 75% of the people who work to bring chocolate to us have never even tasted it. They are too poor to afford it. So the next time you take a bite of chocolate, remember to count your blessings.

The kids were fascinated by a movie that showed how to make a dugout canoe to transport the harvest downriver. There was information on chocolate consumption (Switzerland consumed the most in 2010…the U.S. was in the middle or even bottom of the pack, surprisingly!) and how the price of chocolate is established. We sniffed spices that are often used with chocolate and looked at a display that showed the differences in ingredients in different types of chocolates.

A room at the back had the whole factory set up, with a mixer in the front and a machine wrapping chocolates and spilling them into boxes at the back. We watched the chocolate pour into molds, get settled into place and ride the conveyor belt until it was set up enough to be dumped out of the molds. We didn’t see anything that resembled Lucy’s experience much, but there were 6 women in an upstairs room who looked like they were having a fancy-chocolate-dipping party. The kids were a little disturbed that one of them kept eating big spoonfuls of chocolate out of the bowl and going back for more with the same spoon! Double dipper! Her friends didn’t seem to mind, though.

The chocolate grabber picking up minibars

The chocolate grabber setting minibars down

On the same floor, we oogled at the gigantic chocolates that are made in huge molds. They pour the chocolate in and then the mold remains in motion until the chocolate sets up and can be popped out of the mold. Several of them were truly enormous. It made me think of a story I read/saw about a king who wanted a palace of chocolate. Our favorite was the one of Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf. It was at least 2 feet tall!

Rosa really like this "piece" of art

From there we went up another set of stairs to the chocolate museum. It had games and activities related to chocolate for the kids, in addition to exhibits. One of the exhibits was a room that had beautiful dishes used to serve hot chocolate. Since then Songbird has been fussing about the fact that we have no silver to melt down in case of financial difficulty. We walked through the small tropical rain forest and enjoyed the humidity that reminded us of Florida! The rest of the museum had interesting chocolate paraphernalia – like early vending machines, the purple and white Milka cow (Milka is a brand of German chocolate that is really popular), and even a huge Lindt chocolate suspended from the ceiling! It made me think of Karalene!

If real, this would have been probably 3 feet in diameter...and maybe 40 pounds!

Of course we had to finish the tour by visiting the chocolate shop that had every kind of chocolate goody imaginable. Deep Thinker was disappointed that we wouldn’t buy him a chocolate bunny that must’ve been a foot tall. He had to console himself with a smaller chocolate bear instead. Poor kid…

Our little tour group