retiredmartin

March 2026. Cologne. Germany.

A short family holiday in Cologne, the first since New York in 2019, a year before Donald J Trump was unceremoniously booted out of office.

And a year before the pandemic briefly made pubs insignificant. In 2022 we met up with a former Pub Man of the Year and her husband in Cologne, where lingering COVID restrictions saw Mrs RM chastised on the S-bahn from airport to town for not weraring a mask.

Mrs RM will be back to entertain us with her tourist guide to the city; I had a vague notion of doing some more ticks in the CAMRA guide to Germany.

20 years old (and never updated), the entries are nearly all there. If the UK had the same level of “churn” then BRAPA would have completed before me.

There you go, a tentative colour-coded list for you. Your task is to guess how many glasses of Kölsch we had.

All rather pointless as we emerged into bright sunlight and the first of 76 photos of the Dom,

and I decided to just pop in the first open pub.

Gaffel has some nice puppets that we nearly missed due to entering from the Bahnhofplatz rather than Trankgasse.

But, as Ron Pattinson notes in (still) the ultimate Cologne pub guide, Gaffel is a bit “dining hall”,

but it gets the thumbs up from me because the Köbes were so friendly and accommodating and let us pay by card (never assume).

You’re certainly not getting tasting notes from me, try Boak and Bailey or Paul;

all I’ll say is the fourth was better than the first.

Our lads, who’d arrived from Manchester the night before and joined us here, seemed to have more developed opinions on the beer, which perhaps should worry me.

I’d come to the Gaffel flagship again just for 9,90 euros “business lunch”,

our universal choice a hearty plate of meatballs, boiled potatoes and beetroot.

We had a heated argument about the merits of Wuppertal that drew disapproving looks from the other customers, largely Japanese tour groups eating the giant pork knuckle, and headed off to climb the Dom.

Well, some of us did.