The Former Capital

Today was a day of fail. I woke up early, about 7:15, to a text message asking if I was dead. I moaned, rolled over and decided to start my day.

So I got ready. My plan was to fly off to Bonn, see the capital of (west) Germany during the Cold War, visit this one highly-recommended museum, pay homage to the Beethoven-God, and finally round out the day with some gummy bears from the gummy bear headquarters of the world.

All bright and shiny-faced I walked to the Aldi store not (too) far from my Hostel, stuck my two plastic bottles into the deposit-giver-back-machine, and was told that my bottles were not acceptable. Like hell they aren’t. My instinct was to kick the machine and say “you’re going to take these bottles if it’s the last thing I do,” but I decided instead to ask politely the person on the floor if there was something I could do about it. She said no, because the bottle types aren’t sold by Aldi or its managing or subsidiary companies. So I carried some crushed bottles in the bottom of my bag all day until I found a Netto later in the day. Despite this unpleasant experience, I still bought some new bread rolls to accompany my jelly and another bottle of water before I headed out.

The train cartel was my next adventure. I wanted to ride a Deutsche Bahn train to Bonn because it would be faster and cheaper, given my handy-dandy 50% off card. Since there is no commuter train between the two cities, but they share a metropolitan-transit authority, all of the machines in the station were trained to make sure that no deals were given to any customer (namely me.)I fought the machine, tried to specify only fast trains, but I lost. Normally, a trip of that distance would have cost me 4.5 Euros with my 50% off card, but the machine wasn’t letting me choose that option. So I gave up and paid the 7 Euros to get to Bonn with the Zone-4 commuter rail ticket out of sheer frustration.

So I arrived and eagerly toured the former capital area. That was all fun and dandy. I went to my first much-anticipated museum only to realize that it was Monday, and museums are closed on Monday. I consulted my travel guide to see how many of my other planned destinations were closed only to realize that would be all of them. So I winced in pain and probably muttered something along the lines of “d’oh” and retreated back into the old city. My fault, there is nobody else to blame (except cruel fate.) I decided that since I had paid a prince’s fare to get here, I should enjoy it.

Well, Bonn looks like every other old city: glass-windowed shops and grey stones. I was just absolutely elated by this new discovery that all I could do was run for the river and plop down in the garden behind the University and read a book for about 3 hours.

I came back to Cologne and found another park, only to read for about another 2 hours. I came all the way to the Ruhr Valley to sit in a park and read a book - wonderful use of my last Euros, right? Planning fail.

So I went back to Aldi, bought some sausages and will cook them for dinner, after which I will probably go back to a shady green spot and read some more until it gets dark. Finally I’ll go to bed early. Tomorrow I’ll visit the stuff in Cologne, buy a train ticket home, route it through Bonn, try my much-anticipated museums one more time, and then hop back on a train to get home. Minus 5 points for travelling on a Monday.