One Night in Regensburg, Three Nights in Bonn

November 23, 2006 · Filed Under Uncategorized 

I think I don’t like traveling anymore. It’s yet another sign that I am aging faster mentally than I am chronologically. This last weekend I spent in Bonn, then we zipped down for a quick visit to Regensburg, then Tuesday night we returned to Potsdam. And I am just now recovered, well, almost.

So my own private Odyssey began Friday morning in Potsdam, where we dropped off Charlie at the Hundepension (Dog hotel), and were lectured by the owner that neutering a dog is no good idea because the other dogs will all be confused and will beat him up. I nodded politely, but mentally noted that dogs in the US (where neutering is common) are not always getting beaten up.

After a quick six hour Autobahn experience, which included being passed by the Hertha BSC team bus (Berlin’s soccer team) and being stuck in rush hour in Köln (Cologne), we arrived at Rainer’s brother’s house in Bonn. I found out that evening, that in the eyes of Rainer’s nephew, I am one of the coolest people on the planet because I have been inside the Pentagon and had a job interview with NCIS. He is obsessed with the US right now, so we promised him that the next time we go back, we’ll bring him along. He’s 14 now, so he had to play it cool, but you could see that he was jumping up and down on the inside.

The next day, we headed over to the train station to attend the 2nd Annual Whiney Blogger Meet Up. J and Belinda were already there, and as we chatted over coffee, the others arrived (Haddock and family, Jen and Sparky, Hamish, Heather and D, Andrea, and Christina). We made a tour of Bonn with J as our wonderful and informative tour leader. We ate lunch at this place next to the Rathaus where apparently Beethoven pee’d or puked. The lunch was fabulous, I had Sauerbraten and it was quite excellent, very tender and yummy. The Haddocks and Belinda left us at this point, and we headed over to the very interesting Haus der Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (house of the history of the Federal Republic of Germany). Rainer and I spent some of our time there stuck behind a group of older folks in wheelchairs. In the postwar reconstruction area of the museum, where the hardships that the people had to go through were shown, one of the women kept repeating, “Yes, that’s how it was,” over and over. The exhibits are unfortunately not in English, but if you can read German, I highly recommend a visit.

We headed over to Tacos (located on the Bonn Walk of Fame) for dinner, where Jennifer, a musician from Cologne, joined the group. After dinner, I was too pooped out to continue, so the group headed off for drinks and Rainer and I headed back to crash.

Sunday we made a very long, wet walk down to Rheinlust for brunch. Apparently, Rheinlust becomes a disco in the evenings and is the favorite hangout for the 18 and under crowd. We were informed that Niece had a fake id so she could go. Jen, Sparky, Christina and J were there for brunch (sadly, Vailian couldn’t make it so we still haven’t met!) which was good, although I’m not sure if techno music and breakfast go together in my head. Maybe this is just another sign of my advancing mental age. The Meet up ended for us after brunch and we headed back to Rainer’s brother’s place, where I played my first Sudoku ever. I don’t really see what’s so addicting about these things.

For dinner, the family took us to Tung’s, a Chinese restaurant at Rheinallee 2, in Niederkassel-Mondorf. I had my doubts heading in, but it ended up being pretty good (even though my Szechuan beef, that I asked them to make REALLY spicy, wasn’t spicy at all - although Rainer disagrees and claims that it was spicy). I’d describe it as something halfway between what you’d expect to find in the suburbs of Bonn and what you’d expect to find in the Chinatown of a large city (you can get shark fin soup, but I didn’t because shark fin soup just isn’t my thing). It’s right on the Rhein, with a nice interior, and is slightly expensive, so be warned.

On Monday, we headed over to Regensburg, stopping by our new apartment in Laaber just at dusk, where we realized that we made a HUGE mistake in taking this place. I think Rainer will be spending all of next week down there renovating. On Tuesday, I had my job interview, which I think went okay, and Rainer became a professor. He had to swear to respect the constitutions of Germany and the state of Bavaria, and swear that his work will never go against the interests of Germany or Bavaria. We had lunch at the campus pizzeria, that actually has a non-smoking section, then jumped in the car and sped back to Potsdam. About 20 minutes outside of Potsdam, we stopped for dinner at Sam Kulman’s American Diner, located right off the Berlin-Leipzig Autobahn in Brück. We think the guy must have bought a prefabricated diner in the US and had it shipped over because I thought it looked fairly authentic (if slightly too new), and Rainer kept repeating that, “This is not German construction.” The food wasn’t bad, better in fact than most American diners that I’ve been to over here, but as I only had the easy-to-make Turkey Club Sandwich and Rainer had a mediocre New York Cheesecake, which I’m pretty sure was diluted with Quark, we can’t make any sort of definitive statements.

Postscript: Upon picking up Charlie Wednesday morning, the very German Hundepension owner told us that he’s “ein ganz Lieber aber mächtig temperamentvoll” (or “a very sweet guy but extremely high-spirited”). Yeah, I’d have to agree with that statement.

If you’re new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Related posts

Comments

6 Responses to “One Night in Regensburg, Three Nights in Bonn”

  1. vailian on November 23rd, 2006 2:29 pm

    I am really sorry I didn’t make it (so near yet so far away) but when we do finally meet up I will tell the story… and bring some of my posters. 

  2. BiB on November 23rd, 2006 7:45 pm

    Oh dear. Hope you won’t be too exhausted to cope with us all descending on you tomorrow. Happy Thanksgiving!

  3. rita on November 23rd, 2006 9:30 pm

    congrats to rainer on his professur. and don’t worry: ever since my mid-teens i thought techno music was a sign of bad taste. i don’t think i was suffereing from any kind of senility at that point in my life. it just shows taste. ;)

  4. Christina on November 24th, 2006 12:48 am

    @vailian: Don’t worry, things happen. But wow, you made that poster? Very cool.

    @bib: I think I will be ready with only seconds to spare tomorrow evening!

    @rita: Well, that’s a relief! How some people can sit and listen to techno for hours - I don’t understand.

  5. vailian on November 24th, 2006 5:58 pm

    Yeah, the poster… it is way more famous than any of my real compositions, on the other hand it still sells OK. Won’t finance my Mediterranean island but it pays for my computers.

  6. Christina on November 27th, 2006 12:55 pm

    Have you got any compositions that we could find at a CD store? Rainer loves classical music and likes discovering new composers as well. Maybe I can get him one of yours for X-mas!

Leave a Reply