Since I'm currently rocking two weeks of winter vacation (loving this aspect of the French education system), I spent the first five days of break in Germany visiting my friend Kelly. She was working as an au pair in Hennef, which is sort of in between Köln and Bonn.
This was her house (just the upstairs.)
The first night I was there it snowed a lot overnight, and the next morning there was snow on the windshield of her car. I don't think I've ever been so excited to see snow on a windshield, but with the TREES and all I really felt like I was back home :)
Gallivanting in a nearby town, Siegburg. Couldn't figure out what this was all about.
The second day I was in Germany we wandered around Bonn. It was cute, although it seems strange to refer to capital of former East Germany as cute. Oh well.
False advertising.
Apparently Beethoven spent time here. I don't know if I knew that, but I re-found out. I swooned at his feet a little bit.
There were these old fortress-looking ruins in the middle of one of the large, open plazas that German cities seem to favor. Wish I understood the story behind it.
Kelly made epic macaroni and cheese -- as in, we made French onion soup and pasta, and then added copious amounts of gouda to everything. Delicious.
Then Kelly let me spend one afternoon wandering Hennef, the town she was technically living in. It was more or less the Endicott/Manlius of Germany, but I really had fun. Lots of fun little shops! This is the Rathaus, or townhall. Seems insulting to the rats.
Schmuck jewelry. I really have nothing to add to this.
Nothing strikes the fear of God into my heart like a statue of a soldier popping a squat. Seriously? What is going on here?! Especially since the earlier rain left a small puddle under his butt on the base, well, it really looked as though he'd had a potty malfunction moment.
Wait a minute, what country am I in? This was in front of the little Hennef train station.
I seem to recall that in the US, we advertise CANADIAN ginger ale. I guess American ginger ale is the European marketing strategy ...
I got sick. Again. Unbelievable, I've never been sick this many times in any year of my life, never mind any five-month period!
The last day was beautiful, so Kelly and I went walking through the countryside near her house. On the top of the hill on the left you can see ruins of an old castle. Wish we'd had time to explore it!
Very picturesque. I really needed to be out in the countryside, more than I realized. Turns out I really like trees. And space. I'm so not a city girl at heart ...
LIES. Because of a train accident in Halles, Belgium, the trains were a mess for almost two weeks. After mandatory train changes in Brussels I was an hour late arriving, and on the way back we (Kelly came with me) hopped a bajillion different forms of public transport, before convincing a half dozen train conductors to let us onto not our train to get us to Brussels earlier, and from there we caught an earlier train back to Paris.
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