So after buying a rail ticket to and from Köln (Cologne) for this past weekend, I discovered there was essentially no place to stay for the Saturday night, necessitating a journey to Bonn, to find a bed. Finding my way there temped me a couple of times to just find a park bench somewhere, as it would be both easier and cheaper to do that and involve less travel time and one less time staying on the train at the end of the line. Fortunately, what kept me from doing that was the fact that I'm not an idiot.
This cloud did manage to have a silver lining in that while Bonn was super sketched out in the evening, with lots of drunk teenagers and "45-but-still-acting-like-teenagers" running around, the next morning, it turned out to be a really nice small city with lots of culture, nice buildings, and a lot of quaint European character. Gigantic flea market and all. Which is more like what I expected of the former capital, if not that it would be a little bigger.
Wandering the city, I came across an old cemetery from the 1800's where among others who I largely did not know, you can find the graves of Beethoven's mother, Wilhelm Busch, and Schumann. I never would have planned to go there so having some free time to wander really payed off.
One thing that was really cool was Beethoven's house, where he was born and spent his first years, and is now a museum. You can really see what humble roots one of the great ones have come from. The ceilings were rather low, the floorboards creaked incessantly, and the place was insufferably hot, even just in the early summer now.
When I grow up to be a world-renowned scientist, Hollywood action star, star hockey player, chess grand master, billionaire businessman, and leader of a small country, I hope that people may do the same at my house. And hopefully some historical society will pay my folks lots and lots of money to use it to display all my trophies and awards. Oh I love being arrogant. So much fun.
This cloud did manage to have a silver lining in that while Bonn was super sketched out in the evening, with lots of drunk teenagers and "45-but-still-acting-like-teenagers" running around, the next morning, it turned out to be a really nice small city with lots of culture, nice buildings, and a lot of quaint European character. Gigantic flea market and all. Which is more like what I expected of the former capital, if not that it would be a little bigger.
Wandering the city, I came across an old cemetery from the 1800's where among others who I largely did not know, you can find the graves of Beethoven's mother, Wilhelm Busch, and Schumann. I never would have planned to go there so having some free time to wander really payed off.
One thing that was really cool was Beethoven's house, where he was born and spent his first years, and is now a museum. You can really see what humble roots one of the great ones have come from. The ceilings were rather low, the floorboards creaked incessantly, and the place was insufferably hot, even just in the early summer now.
When I grow up to be a world-renowned scientist, Hollywood action star, star hockey player, chess grand master, billionaire businessman, and leader of a small country, I hope that people may do the same at my house. And hopefully some historical society will pay my folks lots and lots of money to use it to display all my trophies and awards. Oh I love being arrogant. So much fun.
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