Last Bonnsch Blog

It’s the beginning of my last week here in Bonn. I am sure going to miss the little city. It’s really a nice place to live. It’s not to big, not to small, in the vicinity of Cologne, but not as busy. It’s going to be exciting moving to Ebergötzen to start my schooling and internship, but at the same time it’ll be hard to say goodbye to all the good friends I just made. With that said, a had a pretty awesome second to last week here in Bonn, and I’m sure you want to hear about it. If not, then I think you entered the wrong URL into your web browser.

Köln

I spent quite a bit of time in Cologne this week actually, more than usual at least. We went there for school twice this week. On Tuesday we went there instead of the regular school day to go to an art museum called the Museum-Ludwig. It was pretty cool actually. The art was usually pretty interesting, mostly art from the late 19th century until today. The advanced class had to prepare a two minute speech about one of the paintings in the museum, and I did one called Au Rendez-vous des Amis by Max Ernst, a Dada artist who studied in Bonn. They had a lot of cool Dada and Surrealist paintings there, which I enjoy.

Train Fail!

That wasn’t the end of that day however. Oh no, not by far. I went again to the zoo that afternoon with a few friends, because it was such an awesome zoo and they hadn’t all seen it. I guess it wasn’t the best time to go though, because many of the animals were asleep, especially at the beginning. Maybe it was their afternoon siesta; I don’t know. Anyway, that evening we left Köln in the evening to get back to Bonn, so we decided to take the train that went from Köln over Bonn, Beuel, ect. to the end destination of Koblenz, which is pretty far south of Bonn. Little did we know that “Bonn-Beuel” did not mean we’d be passing through the Hauptbahnhof, but rather through the Beuel part of Bonn. So, we obliviously passed through Bonn and slowly realized that we did not recognize any of the stops we were going through. So we could have A.) stopped in some random place and most likely have to sleep at the train station for the night, or B.) waited until we got to the Koblenz Hauptbahnhof where we could take an IC back to Bonn, although that would cost money. We decided to take option B, because sleeping in a train station really didn’t sound appealing. Of course there was no train until one in the morning that could take us to Bonn and we had to chuck out twelve Euros for it, so that was pretty lame. We just chilled in McDonalds for an hour or so (I broke my vow to never eat at a McDonalds in Germany, because I didn’t have dinner and it was the only place open). The train ride back was thankfully uneventful, although we got there at 1:33 or so, and my last U-Bahn was at 1:20. We missed the first night bus that left at 1:30 and had to wait another hour for the next one. The night buses go in a very round-about route, so I didn’t get to my flat until ten past 3 AM, it was lovely. Oh, and it was raining. Getting up for school the next morning was lots of fun.

Chocolate Museum (mmm. . .)

Thursday I went to Cologne again to get a present for Hector’s (our student guide person) birthday. That was fun; we grilled by the biergarten and almost everyone in our group showed up. The next time was on Friday, when we were supposed to go somewhere and take a boat back to Bonn on the Rhein. That would have been fun, but I had to go to an appointment with the Stadtamt about my Passport and my visa that lets me intern here (which was really easy by the way they just had difficulty finding my papers in Hamburg, so I went there and got my visa and left. I am now legal). So when we discovered that the train was not running today, I was not entirely disappointed, because I couldn’t go anyway. Instead everyone went to the zoo (It would have been my third time, so I didn’t mind that I had to miss it.) After that I rejoined them in Köln for the chocolate museum in the afternoon. The chocolate museum was really cool, but I do love food science, so I’m partial. Basically there’s one section about growing cocoa and the cocoa trade, and then you move into a place where you can see all the machines used to make chocolate and it explains the process. Then you move into a place where they show the history of chocolate and information about many of the different types and brands. At the end you can visit the store of course, which has all sorts of crazy chocolate flavors (or should I say flavours). After that I chilled in Köln for a while longer, because it does look really cool at night, especially the Dom. There was some kind of fest there by the Rhein which had some good food and they were playing random music into the night. Some of it was pretty good, but initially there was a drag queen singing, which was just weird.

Euchre!

Yes, I finally got to play Euchre last week! Go figure nobody else in the group knew how to play. It made me feel like a real Hoosier. But I got my Euchre fix, and I’m happy. Plus I enjoy the look on other people’s faces when I get in the barn. Shortest section ever.

Düsseldorf

On Saturday I went to Dusseldorf (I can’t figure out if there is supposed to be an umlaut on the u or not. I think so, but only in German). It’s a pretty cool city. The best part is over by the Rhein, which seems to be ridiculously far away from the Hauptbahnhof in my opinion. It’s the Altstadt, so much of the cool architecture is there, as well as good restaurants and street cafes. I had some Thai food for lunch, green curry to be exact, and it was delicious (It was no Jasmine Thai, but I’ll take it). Not to mention it was decently spicy, which was nice.

There was also some festival going on in Dusseldorf that weekend, so I’ve come to the conclusion that German cities just always have something going on on weekends, especially during the summer. There was a two man band that we watched for a while that played some classic rock. It was funny because they were both guitar players and singers, so the background was provided via computer. Pretty much the drums and bass were invisible. One guy had a pretty good voice for classic rock in my opinion, and the other just sounded like he was singing AC/DC which was good only when he was actually singing AC/DC. It was lots of fun. Another thing was that along the Rhein there was a bunch of outdoor restaurants where you could sit and have a beer or some food if you wanted. It was a lovely day, perfect for that kind of thing. Hmm. . . let’s see, what else. . . There is a nice park in the middle of the city which is pretty much a big walking path surrounded by woods. I succeeded in getting stuck upside down on a swing at the playground there because I left my backpack on. It was really a defining moment for me. Oh, and one more thing, there was an unusually large amount of bachelor and bachelorette parties going around that day. You can identify them because of they are all dressed similarly and are usually trying to sell something or something like that. I got offered schnapps for a Euro, but I just wasn’t feeling it that night, so I had to turn it down.

Ende

Well that pretty much sums it up for this week. The only other thing is that I went to a museum for calculators, but you don’t want to hear about that (It actually was pretty interesting, but I am a nerd, so . . .). I leave for Göttingen next Saturday bright and early, so I don’t know if I will have a blog up by this time again next week. If not just hang in there; I believe in you.

Shout out to all of you that are starting college in these subsequent weeks. Good luck, have fun, don’t kill yourself with classes as I’m sure you will. I’m gonna go ahead an admit that it’s really strange reading about it all on Facebook without being in the same situation, but I don’t mind, I’m excited for you all.

Skez