Hello again! And a belated happy Easter, may I add. Very belated in fact, as I still don’t have the internet, so no-one will read this for a while. I have recently returned from an Easter Excursion to visit my good friend Jane, who is currently residing in Bonn, former capital of West Germany. Due to the expense of the German train system and the inflexibility of their offers, I caught a train from Berlin Hauptbahnhof at 5:30 in the morning on Good Friday to get there. When I arrived at about half 10, Jane hadn’t made it far enough out of bed to come and meet me, so I caught the bus on my own to her halls. We’d not actually seen each other since Sweden 4 months before, so most of Friday was spent catching up and taking a wander around the centre of Bonn. It’s rather a small place, but very nice, what with being on the Rhein and everything. It’s also one of many places which claims an affiliation to Beethoven, and has a statue of him in the square. Friday evening we kept a reasonably low profile, and just went out for a couple of drinks with some of Jane’s new friends.
On Saturday morning we were hoping to visit the Haribo factory, but after a leisurely breakfast we found ourselves lacking the time before our main afternoon event – a boat cruise along the Rhein. This was a rather pleasant trip, I have to say. It was, however, something of a surprise to our little group when we discovered that our return ticket was in fact on two separate boats, and we were being chucked off in the small town of Königswinter for a couple of hours before we could get back to Bonn. After a quick summing up of what was there, as is our (or more specifically, my) wont of a Saturday afternoon, we went dragon-hunting. To be fair, this wasn’t entirely on a whim, or a hare-brained scheme on my part, some of the rest of the group seemed to be aware of the presence of such a lizard in the town beforehand. Anyway, we set off after a slight wrong turning up this nice big hill in search of said beastie. The signs reckoned it was a 45 minute walk, so we had plenty of time in theory. However, after a while which was less than 45 minutes, a number of the group were flagging, and a larger number wondering where the dragon might be, so we stopped by at the castle to gain more information. We found that the “dragon” was kept in the lizard zoo we had passed about 15 minutes beforehand, and after a bit of consideration decided to simply take in the castle then head back. After all, you can see dragons any day of the week, right?
The view from the castle was lovely, though it might have been better were the weather a tad more clement. Either way, after this we trekked back down the hill and took our boat back. The delay in Königswinter delayed our planned night out in Köln (Cologne, to those of you who don’t speak German) somewhat, but we did eventually make it there, taking in a Cuban bar before enjoying the luxuries of the Cent Club until the sun came up (or as good as).
Easter Sunday and Monday were relatively quiet – what with it being Easter, most things were closed, so our activities were limited to seeing the latest Mr Bean film. He doesn’t lose much in translation, though perhaps the question should be whether there is much to be lost in the first place…Either way, Bonn and Köln are both lovely places, and I had a rather pleasant Easter there :)
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