Jonathan C. Lewis
Author and Artist
Chocolate Cathedral
A fictional travelogue; four minutes to read.
Dear Travel Journal:
For some of my friends, chocolate is their guilty pleasure. More to my taste, single subject museums satisfy me.
Cologne’s Chocolate Museum is a lovesong to generations of chocolate lovers. On a riverbank along the Rhine River in a repurposed customs office, the privately-owned museum is a fusion recipe of chocolate cookery, commerce and community.
Standing in line to buy my entry ticket, the aromatherapy of warm chocolate ensnared me. It hads been a tough year. My students seemed particularly rowdy. My children were hormonally ballistic. Inadequate school funding meant my classroom was woefully overcrowded. And nationally, Trump’s tyrannical cult prowled in search of political power.
I craved chocolate’s curative powers.
No one, certainly not me, eats chocolate for its antioxidants. The addictive attractions are taste, smoothness, an energy boost, fragrance and the all-important psychological hug. The mental health intervention I want is dark, rich and sugary chocolate loaded with dopamine and spiced with psychoactive ingredients.
Ambling through the exhibit halls, I learned about cocoa harvesting and chocolate commodity markets. Glass-sided chocolate melting machines revealed how cocoa beans are hulled, processed, then dressed with a colorful candy wrapper.
At tour’s end, all that remained was the souvenir store stocked with keepsakes and confections. In its way, the entire building is a chocolate gift shop masquerading as a museum.
Munching a good-sized dark chocolate praline, I am strolling along the Rhine riverfront towards the Cologne Cathedral—a twenty minute walk. Like a Sunday sermon, my chocolatey healing is already in remission.
The 12th century Roman Catholic cathedral, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, is the largest Gothic church in Northern Europe. It safekeeps Romanesque reliquaries. Meaningful for believers, the blessed and the morbidly curious.
In the pews, pilgrims cross themselves in prayer. At altars, the faithful tend flickering votives. Under vaulted, neck-twisting naves, tourists point their cameras at stained glass windows. Twin spires poke their way into the heavens.
The Cathedral is Germany’s foremost tourist attraction. It’s ten times more popular than the chocolate museum. 6,000,000 church-goers outpace 600,000 chocoholics.
The cathedral’s edifice, eroded from pollution and worn down by time, needs repair. So does my battered, bent self.
Exiting the church through massive wooden portals, guarded by stone-faced saints, I survey the sprawling plaza fronting the cathedral. In front of me, a human slalom course contesting the Cathedral’s Christian values and my atheistic compassion.
On tattered blankets, weathered, shriveled, shrunken women squat—mute and immobile. From deep within the folds of each frayed garment, a grimy hand extends—soundlessly begging.
A couple of loose bills are crumpled up in my pocket. Without breaking stride or looking down, I drop the deutschemarks at the edge of the next blanket. Eye contact seems too personal, too human. Too heart-breaking. Like looking into a mirror.
My pace slows.
In my pocket I finger a souvenir candy bar. Dark chocolate. I hover at the next blanket. I kneel. Head bowed as if waiting for a blessing, possibly from a chocolate-covered angel, I give away my last remaining chocolate bar.
