Girls in Cologne: food

Hallo!

Did you see the awesome cooking picture in couple posts ago? It was about cooking rice porridge but it did not go like in the movies.. :D
So, Sunday was about baking for the Tuesday's event called International Speakdating and Food Fair! The event was arranged for Erasmus and other exchange students to learn new languages and taste food from all over the world :) We decided to cook for the event Karelian pies and egg-butter XD (munavoi). It was quite a challenge for us since neither of us had made them before.. But after all, we managed to do them and they tasted really good!

This is the starting situation.. :D

Oops..

We started with cooking the rice porridge. As you can see, we succeeded well. Haha :D

Then we needed to make the dough. It contains rye and wheat flour, oil, salt and water. We did it exactly according to the instructions but it was horrible!! It was like glue or something.. So we added looots of flour to make it somehow thicker and easier to handle. Eventually we succeeded and started to create the actual pies!

Maiju's task was to create tiny balls from the dough

Then Jenna rolled them with a DRINKING GLASS.... :D:D

Before adding the porridge!

Then the next step was to start filling them with the rice porridge and shape them to look like Karelian pies. At first they were not so beautiful...

The first one by Jenna! :'D :D:D:D

After a while of practicing we became better!

Not so clean anymore..

They are ready!! And looked like they should look like!

And tasted good as well :))

On Tuesday was the actual event! We took our 30 pies and egg-butter there. The event was at our school: there were so many people and lots of different food!

At first the winners of Crazy 88 were announced: we became second. We were so disappointed because the third team got 405 points, we got 830 and the winners got 836. So close but so far... Hmm...

Then the Speakdating- part started! We were divided into tables according to what is our mother tongue. And the native speakers needed to teach the others their own language. There was possible to learn Finnish, Italian, Malaysian, French, Turkish, English... Couple of girls sat to our table and we taught them how to greet and represent yourself in Finnish :) Haha and we also taught them the word itkupotkuraivari :D Normal for us but the girls were pretty confused...

Then the best part: food!!

Salty..

And the sweet ones :)

Everything we ate was so good! And apparently people liked our Karelian pies because they ended really fast and many people told us that they were good! :)
We spent at the school's cafeteria couple hours eating and chatting with our friends :) Then we decided to go to Das Ding! It is a club in Zülpicher Platz. The entrance fee was 5,50 € but during 21-23 you could drink as much you like. Though the only choice was vodka-red bull. You just took your empty glass to the bar and bartender gave you a new one.. Just wondering how on earth they make profit..? Nobody was really drinking after 23. Somewhere after midnight we came home to sleep because we had classes in the morning. What a fun evening :)

Next post will be about our trip to Drachenfels!
This week's beauty picture is a little bit older! :D

Our birthday party last year!

Bis Bald!
Maiju&Jenna

Hallo!

Now we have stayed here for one week, and it is time to share the experiences.

Monday 25.8.14

Our first day in Cologne started with a welcoming reception of CBS. At first we thought that it would be for the international students, but it turned out to be a formal reception for all the new students of CBS and their families. People were wearing dresses, suits and all in all it seemed like a really important thing to the new students. The program consisted of many speeches that were held in German, but translated in English (badly) to powerpoint slides. :D It was quite stupid just sit there without understanding a lot.

During the reception, a girl named Moni came to sit next to us. We started to talk about who we are, where we come etc. She was really nice and offered to drive us to CBS. It was good that we did not have to walk because probably we would have been lost (which happened in the afternoon..).

When we arrived to the school, we noticed multiple tents serving typical German food and drinks. There were bratwurst, potato pancakes with apple sauce and of course Kölsch. Even though we both hate beer, we decided to share one glass. We both took one zip, and honestly, it was horrible... We just left the full glass somewhere, oops.. But we loved the bratwurst and the pancakes!

Alcohol-free LEMONADE... tasted like beer. Not good.

In Germany even lollipops are made of sausage :D

Besides eating, nothing that special happened that day. The dean of the school welcomed us and basically that was it.
After that we walked home.. Or, we walked around the city because we got lost :D Finally we found our home with a little help of Google Maps.. That evening both of us were really tired because of the travel the day before, so we did nothing but unpack and grocery shopping.

By the way, it is so much cheaper here than in Finland!! Especially alcohol. For example 6-pack of beer costs under 2 €, wines are 2-5 €, vodkas 5 €... But also food is cheaper. After the grocery shopping we checked our receipt and noticed that every product (excluding minced meat) was under one euro.

Tuesday 26.8.14

On Tuesday we needed to take our computers with us to log in to the CBS wifi, intranet and so on.
We also had a presentation about German people and how to cope with them, but we expected more from it. It was just 2 slides telling like "German people are punctual" (which they are not! Compared to Finnish) "German people are direct" but nothing more specific. Then we also got more information about the dates of the semester, exams etc.

The day ended with a German language test. First we had the written part, which was ok. After that we had the oral part= discussion with the German teacher. He was nice, talking about Finnish cities and sightseeings. It was still kinda hard to speak in German, because you do not need to do it in Finland at all.

First school lunch: Hänchenschnitzel mit Curryreis! Meaning chicken and rice with curry. And of course Coca-Cola :D This cost 4,50 €

Wednesday 27.8.14

On Wednesday we had a whole-day event located in the Rheinenergie- stadion. It is FC Köln's home stadion! We met at the CBS lobby at 9 in the morning, and then we took a tram to the stadion. All of the students were wearing the similar green CBS t-shirts.When we arrived to the stadion, we were divided into teams which were about to compete against each other.

The competition happened in the field next to the stadion

Jenna's team banner! Tiescher is Kölsch dialect and means a tiger

Jenna's team. GO TIESCHERS!

We were in different teams: Jenna was in Tieschers and Maiju in Green Tigers. Maiju's team actually had a slogan: We are green, we are tigers, there's no chance for you to fight us!!!
It turned out that both our teams suck: there were 9 different games and both of our teams won only two of them. It was still fun! One not that nice thing during the day was that, every time we had a break (lunch or coffee) the whole team just disappeared and it was really hard to find them (the similar shirts huh..)

After the games we had a barbecue party. There was sausages, bacon, chicken, different salads and of course Kölsch! We were told that now that we are in Köln, we need to drink Kölsch even though it is bad... So I (Maiju) made a trick and mixed Kölsch and Fanta... It was actually good :D And I think the others thought that I was drinking beer haha. (No it wasn't! -Jenna)
We agreed that we will meet in the evening in a club called Flamingo, so we went home to rest a bit and get ready for the evening.
We were supposed to go to the club around 11-12 but we made it there after midnight. And the queue.. It was LONG. We stood in the line 1,5 hours and it was not even close to get in. The clock was 2 when we decided to give up and go home. What a fun night yeah..

Thursday 28.8.14

Thursday was the day to have a walking tour around the city! We met each other at CBS and then took the tram to the Dom/Hbf station. We had a guide who told us about the Dom and surroundings.

Jenna, Martyna and Maiju

It is HUGE!

Then we walked to the Altstadt of Köln and Hohenzollenbrücke (bridge Hohenzollen). There were lots of love locks! We are so gonna take our men here when they visit us!