Jonathan C. Lewis
Author and Artist
Chocolate Cathedral
A fictional travelogue; four minutes to read.
Through glass-sided processing machines, tourists are studying how cocoa beans are hulled, roasted, cooked and shaped into chocolate candies, then packaged. At the same time, I'm watching my world from the outside, retreating into myself.
It’s been a tough year. My students, packed into an overcrowded classroom, were hormonally ballistic. My book club lost our best member after an MRI discovered a brain tumor, inoperable. Like a diabetic with irrational mood swings, my country is in the process of renouncing compassion.
In Cologne on a slice of riverbank jutting out into the Rhine River, housed in a repurposed customs office, the Chocolate Museum is for chocolate lovers and the chocolate curious. For me, it’s a bittersweet break from life’s battering realities, a place of forgetting.
I’m not a chocolate guy, but I could use a dose of dark chocolate’s well-known psychoactive powers. The addictive attraction is taste, energy boost and the all-important psychological bear hug.
I’m here on a teacher’s scholarship to learn about European history. In the way that Germany rediscovered its humanity after World War II, I’m hoping to reclaim mine.
Wafting throughout the museum, the aromatherapy of chocolate is like a Sunday sermon offering redemption. Never has the idea of comfort food seemed so comforting.
At its core, the exhibition is a candy kiosk masquerading as a museum. In the gift shop, I ask the college-age clerk, “you must love working here.” Shrugging, he doesn’t bother himself to make eye contact. To him, I don’t matter. On that, I’m starting to agree.
Munching a chocolate-covered praline bar, I leave with my pockets stuffed with chocolates.
In search of less fattening, more meditative refreshment, I stroll along the river towards the 12th century Cologne Cathedral, the largest Gothic church in Northern Europe. For believers, the blessed and the morbidly inquisitive, it safekeeps Romanesque reliquaries. The Cathedral—ten times more popular than the chocolate museum—attracts six million visitors a year. Perhaps a signal that spiritual sightseeing might be sweeter than candy.
In the pews, pilgrims cross themselves. At altars, the faithful tend flickering votives. Incense replaces the smell of chocolate. Under vaulted naves, neck-twisting tourists point their cameras at stained glass windows. Twin spires, eroded by time and pollution, seek salvation in the heavens. So does my bruised self.
The plaza fronting the cathedral is pockmarked with human misery, an acne of unhappiness. A slalom course of weathered, shriveled old women squatting on tattered blankets. Grimy arms thin as pipe cleaners stick out from within the folds of frayed, filthy garments—begging.
At the first blanket, without breaking stride or looking down, I drop three euros—a pittance compared to my museum admission fee. I avoid eye contact.
My heart pounds. I slip my hands into my pants pockets to hide their shaking. I finger my remaining chocolate bars.
Doubling back to the woman hunched and shivering on her blanket, I kneel with my head bowed as if waiting for a sign, possibly from a chocolate-covered angel. Ignoring her stale, pungent stench, I look into her watery eyes. She doesn’t look back.
I empty my pockets. Compassion formed into foiled-wrapped, heart-shaped chocolates tumbles on to her blanket. I add more euros—and walk away.
