Catching up... April 7-9: Bonn & Köln

I have to go back in time almost three weeks to chronicle my recent adventures, but hopefully I won't make a habit of this... Anyway, I spent the second weekend of April at a Max-Kade-Haus reunion with Meghan and Patrick, the other Kiel Fulbrighters who lived in my dorm there. I arrived in Bonn on a gorgeous Friday afternoon and dropped my stuff off at Meghan's super-awesome lab (highly jealous!) and then Patrick and I wandered around the city while she finished up the day's work.

Bonn is apparently Beethoven's hometown, which I hadn't realized until I arrived! Anyway, with this shot and my Leipzig photo with JS Bach, I now have a budding collection of photos with awesome composers. Now to track down Mozart, or Mendelssohn or Brahms...

We stopped in at St. Martin's Basilica (Münsterbasilika), a gorgeous 13th century church, and went to see part of the University. While we were around town, we tried to track down Beethoven's birth house as well. This proved to be slightly difficult, as at least one of the handy tourist-friendly streetsigns was pointing entirely in the wrong direction!
We did find it, eventually, and got some quick photos outside before heading back to meet Meghan. She took us on a bit of a guided tour, including the Kufürstliches Schloß, an 18th-century Bishop's palace which now serves as the main University building. We stopped in at Bärenland, a gummy bear shop, and then Chocoladen, which is exactly what it sounds like, a chocolate store! I could have stood inside all day just inhaling the smell... since the day had cooled off a bit, we had gourmet hot chocolate outside and then headed down towards the Rhine.

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, I love cities with rivers! I feel instantly at home somehow, probably since I find it much easier to navigate a new place with a large aqueous landmark. Across the Rhine from Bonn is Beuel, which is more of a suburb nowadays than a separate city. Anyway, Meghan took us to see the Kennedybrücke (subject of the single worst German pun I've ever heard: "Ich kenne die Brücke") and pointed out the sculptural adornment seen below:

Closer inspection reveals this little guy, wagging his bottom across the river towards Beuel:
Apparently the financial support for the building this bridge was a source of contention between the two cities, and in the end Bonn had to foot the bill for its construction... but they certainly got the last word in!

The three of us headed back to Meghan's and recreated our fabulous Max-Kade dinners together in the classic fashion... stir fry! We also planned Saturday's day trip to Köln.

Of course I had heard about the magnificence of the Kölner Dom, but guidebook blurbs are no preparation for the apogee of Gothic architecture. It is the city's dominant landmark, and the cathedral's north side is the very first thing one sees exiting the Hauptbahnhof. All the pictures I took from that perspective wound up horribly backlit, so here's a panorama from the southern side of the building:Of course there's nothing to do but pay the €2 (€1 for students) for the opportunity to climb some 509 steps to the top of the south tower. Whew! We caught a good time, though, and managed to get to the top without any major traffic jams in the narrow stone spiral staircase, quite a feat since over most of the distance the traffic is two-way. The Stau (traffic-jam) we passed on the way back down was awful, and made even more horrifying in sections when the waiting climbers gravitated to the outer wall where the handrail is, forcing us on parts of the descent to take the much steeper inner wall. I came very close to chewing people out auf Deutsch right then and there; sadly I'm not German enough to really pull it off, although I did manage some very pointed whimpering and the occasional polite yet hopefully guilt-inducing shriek of abject terror. All that notwithstanding, the view from the 157-meter spire is breathtaking:
We did manage to make it back to solid ground unscathed, and then set out through the Innenstadt in search of lunch. After a couple of side trips and map consultations we found something nice, and then set off again to check out a museum. Köln has a fairly well-known chocolate museum, but since I'm coming back with my folks and Meghan had already seen it, we ended up going for the art in Museum Ludwig next to the Dom, including a Dalí exhibit centering on La Gare de Perpignan ("The Perpignan Train Station") and a really amazing photo exhibit called "Für Immer und Ewig/For Ever and a Day?" which contained pictures from "the world's most photographed" including Marilyn Monroe, JFK, Elvis, Muhammed Ali, and Ghandi.

We headed back to Bonn to meet up with some of Meghan's roommates from last semester for dinner, and she and I ended up learning how to roll sushi! I haven't tried it yet by myself, but I've bought about half the supplies and certainly intend to give it a try sometime in the near future. We got plenty of practice!
After gorging ourselves we played a few games, including a 20-questions variation in which we wrote the names of famous people on post-it notes and adhered our new identities to one another's foreheads, and then tried to guess our own character. Then there was a quick and crazy game of Pounce, which I first learned from Grace at Kenyon... although it was played with special decks of cards that were color-coded and only numbered through 10, and was called "Libretto" for some strange reason.

I had to head back to Göttingen on Sunday, but the three of us decided to fit in a little bit more sightseeing in Bonn that afternoon. On the bus into town, though, I was once again mistaken for some kind of preteen... I attempted to buy my fare, and the driver disbelievingly asked if I needed an adult ticket... less than a month before my 23rd birthday! I swear, if that ever happens again I'm totally taking the discount!

We ended up going down the "Museum Mile" past the Palais Schaumburg, the previous home of West Germany's first chancellor, Konrad Adenauer. Here's his head, which is also along the way:
Okay, it's not his real head, but it is a pretty creepy-looking representation thereof. To make matters worse, the sculpture also has reliefs of symbolic objects on the back. Adenauer is another of Bonn's favorite sons, since he is responsible for bringing the seat of government to the town during the east-west split... He got elected and decided he didn't want to commute. Berlin is once again the capital city, but there are plenty of reminders left in Bonn, many of which are now ministries of various sorts. There is plenty of political history, though, which is why it's a fitting location for the Haus der Geschichte. This museum is basically a walk through modern German history since 1945... and is there ever plenty to see! It was really cool to associate objects, images, and sounds with my understanding of Germany's development since WWII, and the exhibits provided a great sense of the massive scope of political and societal change here in the last 60-odd years. Plus, they have an actual moon rock!

I caught an evening train back home in anticipation of a day back in lab! Sadly, monday wasn't much of anything... I tried to look busy for the visiting deans whom I never even saw, and didn't get any further in terms of getting back on the project for this semester. Granted, now that classes are starting up again and given that I'll be distinctly less available when my folks and Mike and his family arrive in about a month, I've rather resigned myself to *gasp* a semester without lab work... although I can't say for certain that I wouldn't drop all sorts of other stuff and head off to Erlangen if things started looking promising... sigh. I can always dream.

Additional posts forthcoming about my Easter and travels with Kola and my birthday weekend, hopefully before I head out on my next adventure on Friday!