If you are on the lookout for birthday party ideas then here’s a good one. Located deep in the heart of the Altstadt, Ciu Ciu is a candy shop where you can also make your very own personalized sweeties.

In the UK you would call the stuff ‘rock’ – a stick of hard sugar that comes in a plethora of different colours. You tend to buy it in seaside towns, the name of which is magically embedded throughout the entire length of the stick. Many a Brit will remember biting into the stuff and nearly losing a tooth.

Here in Cologne the shop hosts kids birthday parties where you get to melt down the sugar and turn it into dough, roll it out, insert the letters, stretch it into a long thin stick, then cut it into pieces to be taken home and eaten. Or rather, eaten on the way home.

The shop looks like something out of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and smells amazing. Kids will absolutely love it; you might not like the price – around €180 for 8 people. But if you consider it covers pretty much everything you need for a kids birthday party (hours of entertainment, crafts and a goody bag full of sugar at the end) and you don’t have to have eight sugar-fueled kids running around your home – it might well be worth it.

CIUCIU COLOGNE
Auf dem Rothenberg 9a, 50667 Köln
http://ciuciucologne.de/

(Fun fact: This is the exact location of the former “English Books and Tea” shop – still sadly missed to this day).