Discovering Audio Books at Cologne Hotel

I spend a big chunk of my time sitting in front of the computer. Or maybe it’s the other way round – maybe the computer spends a huge chunk of its time sitting in front of me. Anyway, in any case, my computer and I are joined at the hip. Not something I’m particularly proud of as it means I don’t have much of a social life but it’s better to have a computer as a friend than no friend at all.

 

On the odd day that I give myself the day off (yay!), I can’t watch TV as the screen reminds me of the computer. Reading a book becomes a chore as that involves, yes, you guessed it, my eyes. So all I’m normally left with is my ears which are the only parts of my body that don’t ache after a long hard day in front of my computer. With that in mind, I’ll usually listen to the radio or pop a jazz disc in the CD player.

There must seriously have been something in the water last month because I got this snazzy idea to not only take a day off, but (shock) (horror), make a weekend of it. I could hear my computer sulking in the corner, but I paid it no mind.

I’d been dying to take a short city break for ages. It was a choice between Paris and Cologne. I decided that if I was going to be adventurous, I might as well visit the latter as I’d been to Paris before. I had a choice of quite a few hotels in Cologne, or Hotel Cologne (Hotel Köln) as they call it, and eventually settled for Hotel Ascot because it looked more homely.

I have a library of books I bought a while ago with the best of intentions, but had a feeling I wouldn’t be reading them any time soon what with me drying my eyes out in front of the computer everyday. So, with that in mind, I’d bought a couple of audio books from the local library when they were having a sale. I thought Hotel Ascot would be as good a place to start listening to them as any so I squashed as many of those literary babies as I could into my backpack.

 

Hotel Ascot didn’t disappointment – it was as homely as it looked on their site. I listened to my first audiotape that evening – How to Divorce Your Computer. Only joking! No, I listened to a bit of Roald Dahl – Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, to be precise. Then I fell asleep to The Mighty Boosh and had the weirdest dream ever.

Next morning, while I was getting ready, I popped old Roald back in as I fancied listening to James and The Giant Peach. I didn’t listen to anything while I was out as I wanted to experience the sights and sounds of Cologne – it was my first time in the city after all.