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The NTG Travel Diaries!!! #4
DAY 4: BONN, GERMANY
"So, when are we getting ice cream?"
***************
This was a decidedly more low-key day than any of the trip so far.
I suppose any good vacation has to have a mix of activity and down-time, and this morning was the down-time. We wound up sleeping until around 1, and ate a very slow, lazy German breakfast once we got stirring. The German breakfast is essentially rolls and butter (which they call Brötchen), and we ate them with good orange juice, some Nutella, and a hard-boiled egg. I have determined that I don't really like hard-boiled eggs.
After breakfast, we didn't do much but walk around the neighborhood where Anna lives. We walked through the University square into a big open-air walking area called the Fussgängerzone, and found a great ice cream shop. Fischer and I had been craving ice cream since we got there, and it was all we could think about for much of the day.
The ice cream in Germany is great, a little different than American or Italian ice cream. It's more creamy, and melts more easily when you eat it, and every flavor is very defined. In short, it's ludicrously good. We sat and ate our ice cream near Bonn's City Hall.
After that, we wandered aimlessly a bit, and walked past the post office we had visited the day before. I didn't mention in the last post, but we has a ridiculously long post office experience involving Dutch stamps and postcards the German postal Service deemed too large to mail. So we had to snap it for posterity.
A funny story Anna relayed to us, concerning that statue on front of the post office... The statue has stood before that building since the early 1800's, when the building was a castle (and long before it was a post office). A number of decades back, the Queen of England came to visit Bonn, and she stayed in the master bedroom of that castle, which overlooks the plaza below. When she arrived, she threw open the curtains to find herself staring directly at Beethoven's back. Apparently, whoever chose that room for her didn't realize what an insult it is to show the Queen your back. Needless to say she was a tad offended.
By then it was nearly dinnertime, so we hit a grocery store to stock up. Fischer was amazed at the variety of sausages and salamis offered in German grocery stores. That dude loves salami.
That night after dinner, we met up with a bunch of Anna's friends at an outdoor bar. Despite the cold, it was nice to sit outside and drink our two-for-one drink specials (obviously a big draw of that place). One of Anna's friends was an avid joke-teller, so he shared a few of his best with us, and asked us if we had any. I'm not much for retaining jokes, but Fischer's got a few standards, so he crossed the American/German joke-relations barrier very smoothly. After a bunch of jokes and a healthy amount of kölsch and whiskey sours, we headed home to Anna's. The day was short and sedate, but it still managed to be exhausting.
Not too exhausting for some more beer and Fischer's card tricks in Anna's kitchen, though...
***************
NEXT POST: Our final day in Bonn, the long-awaited visit to a true German Biergarten, and CASTLES, CASTLES, CASTLES! Did I mention there were castles?
*****N*T*G*****
Never hesitate to comment!
"So, when are we getting ice cream?"
***************
This was a decidedly more low-key day than any of the trip so far.
I suppose any good vacation has to have a mix of activity and down-time, and this morning was the down-time. We wound up sleeping until around 1, and ate a very slow, lazy German breakfast once we got stirring. The German breakfast is essentially rolls and butter (which they call Brötchen), and we ate them with good orange juice, some Nutella, and a hard-boiled egg. I have determined that I don't really like hard-boiled eggs.
After breakfast, we didn't do much but walk around the neighborhood where Anna lives. We walked through the University square into a big open-air walking area called the Fussgängerzone, and found a great ice cream shop. Fischer and I had been craving ice cream since we got there, and it was all we could think about for much of the day.
The ice cream in Germany is great, a little different than American or Italian ice cream. It's more creamy, and melts more easily when you eat it, and every flavor is very defined. In short, it's ludicrously good. We sat and ate our ice cream near Bonn's City Hall.
After that, we wandered aimlessly a bit, and walked past the post office we had visited the day before. I didn't mention in the last post, but we has a ridiculously long post office experience involving Dutch stamps and postcards the German postal Service deemed too large to mail. So we had to snap it for posterity.
A funny story Anna relayed to us, concerning that statue on front of the post office... The statue has stood before that building since the early 1800's, when the building was a castle (and long before it was a post office). A number of decades back, the Queen of England came to visit Bonn, and she stayed in the master bedroom of that castle, which overlooks the plaza below. When she arrived, she threw open the curtains to find herself staring directly at Beethoven's back. Apparently, whoever chose that room for her didn't realize what an insult it is to show the Queen your back. Needless to say she was a tad offended.
By then it was nearly dinnertime, so we hit a grocery store to stock up. Fischer was amazed at the variety of sausages and salamis offered in German grocery stores. That dude loves salami.
That night after dinner, we met up with a bunch of Anna's friends at an outdoor bar. Despite the cold, it was nice to sit outside and drink our two-for-one drink specials (obviously a big draw of that place). One of Anna's friends was an avid joke-teller, so he shared a few of his best with us, and asked us if we had any. I'm not much for retaining jokes, but Fischer's got a few standards, so he crossed the American/German joke-relations barrier very smoothly. After a bunch of jokes and a healthy amount of kölsch and whiskey sours, we headed home to Anna's. The day was short and sedate, but it still managed to be exhausting.
Not too exhausting for some more beer and Fischer's card tricks in Anna's kitchen, though...
***************
NEXT POST: Our final day in Bonn, the long-awaited visit to a true German Biergarten, and CASTLES, CASTLES, CASTLES! Did I mention there were castles?
*****N*T*G*****
Never hesitate to comment!
posted by JMP at 2:00 PM
2 Comments:
Brava!
[Though I'm surprised you left out the noxious mystery meat anecdote]
Hahaha... truthfully, it had slipped my mind until you just mentioned it.
I'll include a word about it in the next post. Thanks for the reminder, yo!
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