This weekend I went to visit a good friend of mine in Bonn, who is currently studying at the Universität Bonn. I had an absolutely wonderful time and cannot wait to return in the summertime, and will hopefully make it over to see Köln (Cologne), as well as other friends who are studying much more northwards than I am!
We had a very hectic Saturday, which thoroughly exhausted us for the rest of the weekend. We munched on Nordsee for lunch, which impressively served up Fish & Chips in typical British style, complete with open-top cone! We walked over to see the main university building. The building is the formed Electors’ Schloss (castle) and is absolutely stunning when the winter sun shined, just highlighting the vibrant yellow colour.
We then wandered along the side of the Rhine (far larger than in Konstanz) to go down to the Bundesviertal, which is the former government district. We stumbled across a signposted walk, the Weg der Demokratie (the Path of Democracy), which we followed to have a stare at the various government buildings, dating from when Bonn was the capital city from 1949 to 1999. As a result, many of the buildings are very modern, while others were seemingly ‘borrowed’ from various academic institutions. Rather than bore you with photos of it all, here is a photo of the Deutscher Bundestag, which was only finished around the time the Bundestag relocated back to Berlin again.
In need of a sugar boost, we caught the U-Bahn (underground) to the Haribo Shop in Bad Godesberg, one of the southern districts. The Haribo shop blew my mind a little bit – so many different sweeties, many of which I had never seen. The slight crazed look of the people in the shop was also a surprise; desperately loading boxes on boxes of Haribo into their trolleys, or fighting with small children over the pick-n-mix. Unfortunately I was limited by how much I could physically carry, so settled for some Christmas themed Haribo to share with my family and a packet of Salz Brezeln to try, in the spirit of its German-ness.
Having indulged our senses, including trying some sour fizzy bear tongues, we were going to spend the evening in. However, my friend’s Columbian Mitbewohner (housemate) had other plans for us, especially after I was willing to try his Grandma’s toasted ants. They were surprisingly tasty, and led to an extended evening in a local pub trying Kölsch, the traditional beer of Köln.
Following our unplanned lie-in, I decided to go it alone to visit the Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland on the Museumsmeile, which is a museum of divided Germany. The exhibition starts with the Nazi time, and traces the history right through to the fall of the Berlin Wall, so thus the reunification of Germany. I especially enjoyed the layout of lining up the DDR (East Germany) and BRD (West Germany) in terms of time, so that you could see what was going in both halves at the same time. I happily spent many hours (pretty much the whole afternoon) learning about one of my favourite periods of history, and could probably have spent many more there if I had the time. In the evening we went to a lovely Vietnamese restaurant and had a wonderful evening chatting with my friend and one of her classmates. I think that my friend may well be returning there many times for the rest of the year!
On Monday, I wandered through the Altstadt to visit the Beethoven Haus, which was the birthplace of Ludwig van Beethoven. The floorboards were all amazing creaky, giving the house a lot of character. I noted with interest the change in spelling of Beethoven on the music scores, ranging through from the Ludwig being Louis, and van Beethoven being von Beethofen. The array of hearing trumpets was also amusing of various lengths, as well as getting to see lots of old instruments and family paintings.
Bonn really is very proud of their townsman and this is one of my particular favourite statues of him.
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