Weekend Travels in Cologne and Bonn

7/27-7/30

Thursday after work, I rode to the Maastricht train station and boarded a bus that was heading Aachen, one of the stops on my way to Bonn, Germany. This was the first weekend that I had successfully used Couchsurfing to find a place to stay. Couchsurfing is a social media platform that connects travelers with people living in the city to which they are traveling, which allows travelers to have a free place to stay, access to local knowledge that is not on Google, and a friend to explore the new area with. Amazing! 

While I would be staying Bonn with my host, I planned to spend most of my time in Cologne, a larger city about 20 minutes from Cologne by train. I got to Bonn around 9:00 pm and walked 15 minutes to my host’s place. Jaycee Ng, my host, met me outside his dorm room and we started chatting about a variety of things. Jaycee is studying developmental economics in Tokyo and finishing up his junior year of study abroad in Bonn. He speaks Chinese, Japanese, English, and German, and he has traveled extensively throughout Asia and Europe. I dropped my stuff off in his room and he took me on a tour of Bonn, which included the Rhine, a few cathedrals (one cathedral pictured below), the statue commemorating Beethoven (Bonn was his hometown and his statue is pictured below), his school, and a few courtyards).

We chatted about similarities and differences between cultures, travel, and school. The next morning, we went to a bakery and I had some chocolate bread (bread pictured below) that I spread some peanut butter I was carrying (gotta get the protein and good fats!). 

Then, we walked to a botanical garden filled with thousands of species of well tended plants, some indoor and most outdoor (a few of the plants and Jaycee eating an apple I picked are pictured below). We wandered around for a while and I found it to be one of the most beautiful sights that I have witnessed. I saw one of the gardeners harvesting seeds and I asked her if botanical gardens trade seeds with each other. She told us that the seed trade between gardens is integral to making them the places of biological diversity they are and that this garden sends out over 7,000 seeds every year. She also told us that she had been working at this garden for over 28 years and went to university to work in botanical gardens. After an hour in the garden, I headed off to Cologne. 

As I exited the Cologne train station, my breath was taken away by the epic proportion of the Cologne Cathedral (cathedral pictured below)--a building so tall and intricate that it took hundreds of years to complete. 

As I marveled at the structure, my amazement was clouded by the fact that this was an object built so some monarchs could outshine other monarchs in their reverence for fictional characters. I also figured that the structure was built on the bones, blood, and crushed dreams of countless people who were forced to build the structure. Excessive religious structures like this one and the many others throughout Europe represent a monumental waste of human capital and resources, as well as hypocrisy of the highest degree. I am happy to see that these structures are slowly being converted into spaces that promote human progress, like libraries, art centers, and learning institutions throughout Europe. These thoughts were consistent while I visited a few other cathedrals in the early afternoon (the interior of one cathedral is pictured below).

  

Around 3:00 pm, I started a four mile walk to a famous Kolsch brewery, a beer brewed exclusively in Cologne. Along the way, I took many detours down streets and through parks in search of interesting architecture, fruit, vegetation, and ruins. I found a variety of fruit (grapes pictured below) and passed through a botanical garden (part of the garden pictured below).

 I got to Gilden Brewery around 6:00 pm and ordered a .3L Kolsch (beer pictured below) for 2.2 Euros. The beer was refreshing and light, but lacked complexity. 

The beer scene in Europe is definitely less developed than the scene on the west coast, but that does not stop Europeans from drinking it in copious amounts. I began the walk back to the Cologne station where I was going to meet up with Jaycee. On the way, I stopped and ate a can of beans with my peanut butter, half a cucumber I purchased for lunch, and an apple I picked. 

I met up with Jaycee and we chatted for a bit and then headed to Heller brewery, an organic brewery about a mile away. I got a .33L Weiss beer (beer pictured below) for 2.50 euros, which is an unfiltered version of the Kolsch, making it more yeasty and flavorful. The ambiance was great. 

While we drank our beers, among the things we talked about, Jaycee wanted to know more about my internship and plant-based diet, both of which I was happy to tell him about. While I feel comfortable in my capacity to explain the environmental, ethical, health rationales for my diet, I am going to spend some time creating more appealing frames for these topics because I feel the current frames are not optimal for inspiring others to change their habits. After 1.5 hrs, we left in search of a good club, but we did not have any luck so we headed back to his place around 12:00 am. I walked for 15 miles during the day and I was happy to hit the hay. 

The next morning I left Jaycee’s dorm and caught the train to Cologne where I was going to meet up with Nathalie, a fellow intern, her sister, Audrey, and their friend, Estelle. All three of whom are from France. After a while of searching, we located each other and headed towards the city center. After chatting our way around the city center for a while, which was filled with a variety of big-name, consumerist shops, we started looking for a vegan restaurant. Both Nathalie and Estelle are vegan and Audrey is vegan by default when she is with them. We found out a place, but when we got there it was closed. This happened with the next place as well. We found a place on our third try called Hibiscus Cafe, a vegan cafe serving four different meals and a variety of deserts. I ate a veggie and hummus sandwich and a Belgian waffle topped with whipped cream and bananas (desert pictured below), both of which were tasty and inexpensive. We stayed in the restaurant for nearly two hours…a true European meal haha. 

Then, we walked back towards the city center, as the girls wanted to do some more shopping. I split off from them to go explore a modern area just north of the city center. On my way to the area, I stumbled across an art show with a bunch of abstract, modern, and, fascinating art created by students at the art college in Cologne. Most of the pieces were titled and summarized in Dutch and, because of their abstract nature, I did not have a clue what many of them were intended to convey. However, I found the process of filling in their meanings to be a fun challenge. I also found the whole scene to be a great one for people watching because most of the attendees were dressed in unique ways. On my way out of the exhibits, I came across a guy making vegan South Korean pancakes, so I went over to his small, compact stand and asked him how much they cost. He told me that because he does not have a license from the city, customers can pay as much as they want for the food. This type of a system seems like it should be adopted in the US because it gives people the opportunity to make money, go beyond the normal restaurant cuisine, and spend time doing what they love. I had pancakes, which were a scrumptious, simple combination of picked white radish, zucchini, dough (water, flower, and soybean paste), and chili paste, topped with a soy, rice vinegar, and pepper sauce. After exploring the modern area for a little while (some of the modern buildings are pictured below), I met back up with the girls. We chatted and walked around for a few more hours, and then I headed back to Bonn. 

Then next morning I helped Jaycee set up for a little gathering, which was attended by around 15 of his friends. There were people from all over the world there and I think it was the most diverse group that I have ever spent a chunk of time with. I stayed for a few hours, but then left to catch my train back to Maastricht. 

All in all a great weekend :)