Around Bonn

I've talked a lot about Lydia's and my travels around Germany and Europe, but I haven't really mentioned the area around Bonn, which can be quite beautiful, so here's just a couple of shots from around the area.

One weekend, Lydia and I decided to go to Königswinter, which is a very small town, about a 30 minute tram ride outside of Bonn. It's right on the Rhine, and is incredibly beautiful, so beautiful in fact that we're planning on going again this weekend!

This is the view from the street in Königswinter just as one steps off the tram.

Probably the best thing that Königswinter is known for is its castle Drachenfels, where the legendary Siegfried (not of the Roy fame) slayed a dragon (I'll tell you a little more about that later), but this was the main reason why Lydia and I went to Königswinter. The picture above was taken of a cool painting inside the Drachenfels reptile zoo (reptiles - dragons - get it:), which also doubles as a Seigfried art show.

The reptile zoo was actually really cool. To get to it you have to go through a cave, and once you get out, you see A DRAGON!!!!!! Luckily for Lydia and I, it was made of stone; however.....




I was definitely prepared for any kind of dragon attack!




There were all sorts of snakes, alligators, crocodiles, lizards, turtles, etc in the reptile zoo. It was very hot inside for all the reptiles, but thoroughly entertaining.





You thought it was dead, but guess again...... ANACONDA pt 2 - The Search For Curley's Gold!!!

There's actually quite a few famous movie animals in this reptile zoo in Kogniswinter, and not just reptiles either....



Peetey from Dumb and Dumber lives here as well!




Godzilla!!!




After leaving the reptile zoo, which is located about half way up the mountain to the castle Drachenfels, we came an old school arcade that had a bunch of really sweet games from probably about the 50s or 60s. We didn't know what a lot of them did, so we pumped money into them to find out. In the picture above, this mystery game involved a troll giving me a fortune in German. Apparently (after translation) my 'lucky day' is Monday, which goes to show that trolls are liars, because it is impossible for Mondays to be anyone's lucky day. Damn conniving trolls!




This one was my favorite game. Not only did it not involve a troll lying to you, but it involved peeping at a bunch of scantily clad French women in their undergarments! This would have been cooler, however, if French women used razors back in those days;P

This is Schloss Drachenburg, which is Drachenfels little brother castle that was built in 1883. Apparently some rich baron built this as his little weekend getaway (which he would maybe use once a year), and then sold it away after a while at a fraction of the cost to make it. Over the years, the castle passed numerous owners. At one point I believe it was used as a Nazi youth school), and at another point, the unused castle was taken over by hippies during the 60s....seriously! Today, it is undergoing renovations, and I believe it is used solely for tourism.

Inside, you get to put on big slippers and look at all the pretty murals on the ceilings.





This castle also gives an amazing view of Bonn (see the first picture from this post), the rolling hills, Hotel Petersberg (the large white object in the hill above me, which we plan to check out this weekend as well....apparently it's very nice)...



.....the castle, the twisting Rhine, and Lydia.



You don't have to go to Disneyland Paris to see beautiful castles like this.



This is the only picture that I'll post of Drachenfels, because up close, it's not much to look at (just some stone with rebar sticking out of it). The cool part about the trip up to Drachenfels is the trip up to Drachenfels! It's a fair bit of a hike, and there's tonnes of stuff to see and do there. Also, the intrigue of Drachenfels (translating into Dragon's Rock) is also quite cool. Apparently Siegfried (a legendary German hero) hiked up this mountain (Siebengebirge) and had a great battle with a dragon who lived in a cave on this mountain. Siegfried ended up slaying this dragon, and after which, he bathed in the blood of the Dragon, which was said to make him immortal. Unfortunately for Siegfried, he had a leaf stuck to his back at the time of his blood bath, so he 'missed a spot' so to speak, leaving a small section on his shoulder still vulnerable to attack, which I believe ends up in being the downfall of Siegfried (although I'm not sure).



After we came down from Drachenfels, we stopped off and had a beer or 5 at one of the beer gardens along the mountain hike. The beer in Germany is AMAZING!

-End of Drachenfels adventure



Speaking of Dragons, however, here is a friendly little dragon fly that landed on Lydia's shoe during a picknick that we had on the university lawn in Bonn. He stayed there for about 30 minutes as we ate very cheep but delicious wine and cheese.



Another great thing about Bonn, is that it is the home of Haribo, one of Europe's largest candy manufacturers! The Haribo store (which is more like a warehouse) was by far the largest and cheapest candy store I have ever seen. Note how we used a shopping buggy to shop for our candy:)



Me and the Haribo bear.



Lydia with the Haribo bear (and in heaven I might add).



Heaven.... This is Lydia sporting the some of the loot that we came back with after the Haribo shopping spree.



This was close to 2kg of candy! And that was only part of the candy stash. I think we ended up spending around 10 Euros at the Haribo store, but we were so stocked up with candy you wouldn't even believe!



Here I am riding a hippo that was just wandering through Bonn for some reason.



Actually, this is the taxidermy museum in Bonn, which had just about every animal you could think of.....stuffed!



Wilburt never quite understood why the other monkeys would laugh at him.



The downside to Living in Germany in October is the fact that Germans don't really celebrate Halloween. It is starting to come on (mostly due to media), but it's only really celebrated by small groups of children (not like the gong show of drunken adults like it is back at home). This was the first year that I could remember where I didn't make myself a costume! Lydia and I decided to still make a jak-o-lantern though, just to stay in the spirit (and to confuse the neighbors by putting out a strange carved pumpkin in their yard).



With some mighty fine Canadian representation I might add!



After about 2 months of living at our newer German residence, we realized that there was a castle that's like a 5 minute walk from our house. Here it is.



Also, behind our house, there's a very beautiful wooded walking trail, with all sorts of monuments and cool things to look at.



Like this cool thing to look at.




The last thing I'd like to write about (at least for now) in the around Bonn post is the spas! Check this one out (the picture is a clickable link). It's called the AHR Thermen spa, and it's about an hour outside of Bonn. It has about a dozen different saunas and about the same number of hot spring pools. It was a very cool place to relax for a day. This weekend we're going to try a similar one out in Königswinter, so wish us luck with that. Spas and travels all over Europe....it's rough to be us right now;)

Milan, Italy

So a couple of weeks back, Lydia and I decided to go to Milan, Italy. Not exactly because we had a burning desire to see the sights of that city in particular (in fact, we didn't really no exactly what Milan had to offer), but more so that we found some really cheap train tickets (around $100 CAD return) to get there, and hey, it was Milan, Italy, so why not!?!?! Were we ever glad that we decided to do this because we ended up having an absolutely AMAZING time there!

Both Lydia and I are on a very tight budget here, so even with a cheap ticket over to Italy, it wouldn't have been possible for us having to afford to pay for an expensive hotel, so instead we just decided to stay there for FREE! For more information about how we accomplished this....see my yet to be published entry about Couch Surfing (or just visit that link).

Anyhew.....one of the best ways to get a cheap ticket around Europe is to ride a night train. It is also two-fold on the cheapness scale, since not only are you traveling to around Europe for a cheap price, but you are also paying for your first night's lodging! The downside to night train travel is the fact that you're crammed in a tiny booth with a bunch of other people for like 12 hours. Luckily, on our way over, Lydia and I had our very own room (just by chance). Not only that, but we came prepared with snacks, and most importantly 'drinks'. What better way to depict this situation than two very unflattering photos!



Here I am with my tiny mouse shaped, ketchup flavored potato chip, feeling very tired in the middle of the night as the train passes through the Swiss Alps.




Here's Lydia getting ready for sleep.




The drinks knocked us out long enough to get us to Italy in a relatively short time....much shorter than the actual 12 hours! We woke up just as the sun was coming up, and the train was entering Milan.





The first thing we noticed about Milano (that's Italian for Milan :), was that there was a lot of interesting artwork everywhere. Above is a giant metal/paper mache woman walking her rock dog outside of the train station. Also outside of the train station was this guy:




An ode' to the hangover.



It took the Blair witch 6 months to make this basketball!




When we first arrived in Milan, we had a few hours to kill before meeting up with our couch surfing host, so we decided to walk around a bit. After taking in some of the more strange works of art, we realized that we were in the vicinity of one of the greatest works of art in history, Leonardo da Vinci's 'The Last Supper', which is stored inside a cathedral in Milan (see picture above). Wanting to see it, and remembering that it often has a very large waiting time, we decided to make it our first Milanese destination, and what a great decision that was. When we first arrived at the ticket office, we were greeted with a woman in the ticket booth shouting "There will be no tickets to view the Last Supper for 3 weeks.... It is sold out!" Needless to say, this did not sound promising for us, but we decided to wait to talk to the ticketing lady anyways. Once we got to her, she told us that tickets to view the fresco were sold out until mid to late December (this being the 3rd of November); however, (and this is the good part), a couple had just that moment decided to cancel their reservation, so there would be an opening in the next half an hour, and she wanted to know if this would be OK for us! In hindsight, we now know just how lucky we were, considering it is near impossible to see 'The Last Supper' without booking months in advance normally, but we just strolled in there and saw it in a matter of minutes! People often say that Lydia and I have a horseshoe stuck up (you know where), and I'm beginning to think that they are right!

So, without further adieu............... BEHOLD!!!!





'The Last Supper'.......well, actually, this isn't the actual 'The Last Supper', since they prohibited us from taking a picture of it, but this is a 'The Last Supper' that is inside 'The Last Supper' Cathedral's gift shop. I assure you that the actual fresco is much more fascinating. I was actually surprised by the sheer magnitude of the fresco. It took up an entire wall! An interesting tidbit of information that I learned while I was there, is that if you look at the painting, you'll see an out of place white arc in front of the table, blocking Jesus' feet. This is actually the door to the next room of the Cathedral, and originally, when da Vinci painted this fresco, the door was not in the way, but some years later, some guy got the bright idea to extend this door (which was already quite large - one could easily already get his king size bed through), by cutting into 'The Last Supper'! On the all time idiots list, this guy has to rank up there. One tip to go with booking well ahead, for anyone who plans to view 'The Last Supper' themselves, is not to get the audio recoding that you can rent whilst viewing the fresco. You only get about 10 minutes of viewing time in the room, and the audio recording goes on for like 12 minutes, meaning your still trying to pay attention to the recording when they kick you out, and you won't even get a chance to freely view the painting.

You have to hand it to Leonardo though, this is truly a masterpiece, and the mystery (ala Dan Brown) that surrounds it only adds to its appeal.




Another amazing site in Milan is the Duomo. Which is one of the 2nd largest Gothic Cathedral in the world (next to the Cathedral of Seville in Spain). A really magnificent building, which is partly spoiled by these billboards (due to construction), but apparently, a short time ago, the entire building was covered in these billboards, so I guess I can't complain.




A beautiful pigeon covered statue in the Duomo square.




The amount of detail that went into this building is absolutely amazing! The building started construction in the 14th century, and continued on well into the 19th century, and considering the billboards, blocking off the renovation zones, it is still being constructed today!




I have many pictures of the inside of the cathedral, but none of them gave it justice to how immensely grand it was inside, so I've decided to post an image of one of the many intricate stained glass works instead. To be honest, the inside of the cathedral was quite spooky, since it was so incredibly dark inside, they had thousands of statues that looked like they were straight out of Bram Stoker's Dracula, there was what seemed to be 'The Phantom' piping away horror music on the largest organ I had ever seen, and there was a dead guy in the middle of the church encased in glass! Not my idea of a happy place of warship, if you ask me, but very interesting to see none the less.





More of the Duomo.




Probably the main thing that Milan is known for is fashion. In fact, it is the fashion capitol of Italy. Throughout the city you will see building after building of designers, hawking clothes as expensive as cars and houses. I thought about getting a sock there, but then I decided I wanted to go back for the Jan school term, so I decided against it.




The Duomo at night! Look to the top to see the golden statue of Madunina (actually made of bronze).



While in Milan, we decided to take in a football match.... and why not, not only are the Italians the current world champions, but Italian fans are known to be some of the craziest fans in the world! Apparently, it's a common spectacle to see smoke bombs and other objects thrown on to the field during matches (i.e. one time a Vespa was thrown on the field)! The match we got to see was AC Milan vs Torino.



The stadium was absolutely massive, and the roar of the crowd was intense! Have a look at this video, which shows the stadium (unfortunately, there is no sound).




Unfortunately, the game we saw kind of sucked (at least game wise), and it ended up, in traditional soccer fashion, as a 0-0 tie. Probably the most exciting thing that happened during the game was the sprints that the medical staff had to make onto the field every time a player performed a swan dive and faked an injury (seen above). I'm still very glad that we went to the game though. The crowed was great (although no smoke bombs or riots), and it was still an AC Milan game (minus Renaldo, who was injured at the time)!




During our last day in Italy, Lydia and I took a recommendation from the Director of empirica, and did a day trip to Como Lago, an amazingly beautiful mountain encased, village on a lake, about 1 hour outside of Milan by train.



When we arrived there, we really didn't know too much about the place, other than the fact that it was supposed to be a beautiful town, so we just decided to explore. The first thing that we came to was this gondola up to the first peak of one of the mountains overlooking the lake. It looked like a larf, so we decided to hop on.



The view from this first peak was very pretty, but we noticed that at the furthest peak of the mountain, there was a tower, and from that tower (we thought) the view would be better.




So we started walking up....




and up.....




Until a while later we reached the tower. So then....



We went up some more.



We then got to one of the most amazingly beautiful vantage points I had ever seen! This tower gave us a 360 degree view of the absolutely stunning village on the lake. Even though these pictures don't give the view justice, have a look:















Tyrone, Tyrone, where art thou Tyrone?



Here is a depiction of our long journey to the top of the mountain. Make sure you look at this picture, I worked long and hard at this!




Here is one of the pretty churches along the way on the hike down.




Bella!



After our amazing hike, we decided to rest up with a nice boat ride on the Lake.



Along the way, we got the chance to take in some amazing Italian villas and other sights. Including this little charmer below. Does anyone recognize this villa from a certain heist movie....



This is George Clooney's villa, which was used in Ocean's 12 (if you remember, the French thief lived here)! Apparently, George gives out stays at his villa to famous couples as their wedding presents...... stick that in your fact bag!



Another beautiful villa on the Lake.



After the boat ride on the Lake, Lydia and I continued to float back home to Bonn on a cloud of our own joy. Our Milan experience was a great one, and we owe a lot of this experience to this guy:



Spike de Saint Victor. He was our host from couch surfing, and he was one of the coolest, most hospitable people I have ever met. So much so, that I'm going to create another blog entry just talking about how cool he was, and our experience with him in Milan....and, oh yes, couchsurfing.com



P.S. When I said that Lydia floated home on a cloud of our own joy, it was only a figure of speech. We actually took another 12 hour Deutsch Bahn night train home, accept this time, we were in a crowded room with 3 other people. If this wasn't bad enough, we had the spawn of Satan as our Coach attendant, who liked to yell at us in German for no apparent reason. It started when we first got on the train, and in the room that Lydia and I were staying in, there was a backpack on one of the beds, left by one of the other attendants in the room (who had left to go visit with one of his friends in a different room). The Coach attendant then walked over to me and started completely blowing up in my face, shouting away in German, pointing at the bag and shaking his head. I told him in German that it wasn't my bag, and that I don't speak German, but he decided to yell at me for another 5 minutes or so (in German). I then met a few other travelers who told me that they too had run ins with this Coach attendant, and he shouted at them for no reason as well. If this isn't bad enough, when the train was pulling into Bonn, the train stopped about 200 meters outside of the main train station. Lydia and myself, along with about 5 other people were waiting by the train exit with our bags, when all of a sudden this train attendant came barging into the coach crazily shouting away in German again. He stood there, shouting at everyone for about 1 minute, then stormed out to a different train car. Everyone then looked at each other with a stainge look, wondering, what the hell was the matter with him. Then all of a sudden, the train started going again.....and going....and going....and went right on through the Bonn train station and didn't stop again for another half an hour! It appears that shouting obscenities in German means, "Excuse me kind passengers, please follow me to the train exit." This sucked because it made me late for work, which I had to go straight to after the 12 hour train ride. I didn't manage to get a picture of the train attendant, but I found a picture with uncanny likeness to him, so here is a depiction of our coming home train experience: