Moving right along to Bonn...
Robert “Harry Potter” Wenner is from a suburb of Bonn called Sankt Augustin, and I had met some of his friends, Bernd and Sabine, in Texas in 2006. They had offered me a place to stay if ever I needed it, so I contacted Bernd and asked if they had room for three people for two nights. They graciously said yes,and I don't THINK they regretted it. :-)
The night we arrived it was the European Cup finals, and Germany was playing Spain. Originally we were going to try to get there in time to go to the pub and watch the match, but it just wasn't happening, so I texted and told them to go on without us. We found the place with only ONE wrong turn at the wrong exit off the Autobahn (YAY GPS), and pulled up in front of their gigantic (especially by European standards) house.
(BTW, upon crossing the German border, I got to introduce Bi and Dan to one of the weirdest experiences on the Autobahn—that is, what happens as soon as you see the first “unlimited” 
Anyway, I texted again to let them know we were there, then we just waited outside. After about 10 minutes a woman came out of the house and invited us in. It was Bernd's mother, who lives on the bottom floor. He'd called her and told her we were there.
She offered us a beer and we talked for 15-20 minutes. I was really pleasantly surprised that I could manage German after a week of speaking Dutch. :-) Birgit speaks German, and Dan understands well enough, so it all went well.
Eventually Bernd and Sabine arrived home, disappointed that the Spaniards had won, of course. They helped us get our bags upstairs, and we had another beer, then passed out.
Sabine had to work the next morning, but Bernd was off, so we got up around 9 and had breakfast out on their beautiful deck. The weather was gorgeous, and so was the food, so we stuffed ourselves. Since Sabine was going to be back at around noon, we decided to stay in the area and wait for her before we went out for sightseeing.
Dan was needing a refill on his new addiction—nicotine sweets—so Bernd pointed us in the direction of the supermarket and a shopping center with a pharmacy. We bought some food to replace the breakfast, some audiobooks for Mel, and then braved the pharmacy. In German pharmacies, you have to ask for anything that is remotely medicinal, so Dan asked me if I would see if they had his brand. When I did, the woman said, “Hmmm, we don't have any in stock, but we can order them.” When I said we'd be leaving the next morning, she said, “Oh, no problem. We will have them in by 4 pm!” Wellllll, okey dokey then! Dan prepaid, and we went back to the house.
When Sabine came back home, they asked us what we wanted to do. We had no particular preference, so we piled into the BMW (we really should have given the damn thing a name!) and drove out to Siebengebirge, where there is a mountaintop with a hotel on the top where there used to be a lot of international meetings back when Bonn was the capital. Very secure, and easy to fly into with just a helicopter. B and S had been to a wedding there that weekend.
On one of the short car journeys, while all of us were shoved together, Sabine started telling about how they had gone to a friends' house recently and played games. One of the games was called “Spank the Monkey”, and they spent a few minutes explaining how to play the game. When they got to lines like, “You have to get to the top of the pile and Spank the Monkey” I thought Dan was going to lose it from laughter. Then Sabine turned around and said, “Does spank the monkey have some other meaning we weren't aware of?” When we explained, we all laughed, and that became one of the jokes of the summer. :-)
After that we decided to go to Bonn (rather than Cologne), since none of us had been there before. We took a walk through the town, saw some Beethoven-related things, and just messed around in general. One of the highlights for me was going to an Eiscafé (Ice Cream Parlor) called La Dolce Vita. I had to liberate the menu (for educational purposes!) because they had so many cool creations, including ice cream that looked like lasagne, steak and fries, and cannelloni.
We walked off the ice cream down by the Rhine River, and then replenished the calories at a cool little Biergarten next to the shore, where we enjoyed a few nice cold Kölsch's. I took lots of pictures just to make Robert jealous.
Upon returning to the house, we pigged out on sandwiches, again out on the balcony. I had brought them some beer from Belgium, so we had that and some other beers, and sat outside playing 6 nimmt (NOT Spank the Monkey). I liked the game so much as an easy party game that I bought it off of Amazon after returning, though here it's called either Slide5 or Category5.
The next morning they both had to work, so we said our goodbyes, and then returned to the pharmacy for Dan's drugs, and picked up some supplies at the supermarket, making sure to get some flowers for our hosts, who had shown us a lovely time. Then it was on to see Adriel in Leipzig!
Photos can be found here.
No comments:
Post a Comment