Bonn (Part 1)

Bonn is a very beautiful city located near the Franco-German border in the industrial Rheinland. The only reason this city was of any importance was that it had served as the capital of W. Germany for the duration of the Cold War. One would notice this from all of the monotonous, cookie-cutter office buildings situated along a long swath of the main road through town that just screamed BUREAUCRACY!

One of my best friends from middle school, Chris, picked me up at the airport (as promised). It was good to see him again after almost 4 years. He moved back to Germany in 2004 to live with his dad. I hadn't seen him since then, so I was looking forward to catching up and celebrating his birthday, which had passed a week before I arrived.

My first impression of Bonn was marked by lush greenery and highly efficient and expensive cars. They were everywhere! Mercs were bountiful here, and plenty of trendy Volks too.

My second impression of the place is that there was absolutely no sense of fashion. You would see a group of kids, teens, adults, and elderly wearing all sorts of everything that it looked like a mishmash of colors and styles of years past. There seemed to be no continuity whatsoever. Every sort of style can be seen in Bonn, and I suspect the rest of Germany. I will have a better analysis of this sometime this summer when I tour the country proper. Forewarning: mullets are popular in Europe, and I have no idea why.

We got to Chris' flat, a very cozy, efficient flat. The first thought on my mind: shower. I had not showered for an entire day at this point, and was feeling very icky. While I was doing that, I had Chris figure out how my new Flipvideo recorder works. I will be using that to post videos and pictures later when I have something of importance to show. The second thing I did was make myself the fattest Nutella sandwich I have ever eaten. To those of you who are unfamiliar with the glory that is Nutella, think peanut butter spread for your sandwich, except that it is German chocolate. By far the greatest guilty pleasure I have when it comes to chocolate is Nutella.

After an hour or so Chris' dad came home from work. He is the German military's top psychologist, and there is no possible way to lie to him. He is that good. We decided on a classic German restaurant to have dinner in. It was wonderful catching up, exchanging pleasantries, and the food was excellent!. Huge schnietzel, and French Fries (although in Europe they serve them with mayonnaise instead of ketchup. I would have none of this, and requested ketchup even though it cost extra. Lousy Krauts ...)

Luckily we were finished with dinner before discussions of the US economy and politics came up. Concerns over a lengthy American recession and the crashing dollar were on their minds, and I couldn't help telling them that it is what it is, and that America has pretty much brought it upon itself, and that any pity would be best reserved for those who deserved it. They were quite alarmed when I had told them how far civil liberties have slid in the States in the past 4 years. National ID card in the works, expanded surveillance powers of the intelligence community and law enforcement, the suspension of habeas corpus, among other things. All of these things they took in solemnly, with their final conclusion being "We Germans have seen this sort of thing before." How spooky it is as an American to hear this from a people who lived through one of the worst fascisms imaginable. Luckily they asked me who I would be voting for come November, and this gave me great joy to spread word of the Ron Paul Revolution to them, for when I told them Ron Paul, they had no idea who I was talking about. And this did not surprise me in the least.

After dinner Chris' dad had to depart for a business trip to another part of Germany, and left us to our devices. Chris, leading me like the pied piper, took me on a crawl of the many bars that make up the social heart of Bonn. Everywhere we went the beer was relatively cheap (by European standards) and incredibly good. Most beer clocks in at ~9%, so it only took me a couple beers to start feeling sloshy. We eventually met up with Chris' girlfriend, Anna, and her dad, who is probably one of the coolest 50 something year olds I had ever met in my life. We continued to many bars that night, honestly I lost track after the 3rd one. I think we went to this bar where they played electronic versions of old Mo-Town hits and redubbed disco songs. It didn't matter, I was dancing like a drunken fool and didn't care.

We eventually got home, where I preceded to bring out my laptop and put on a South Park episode. This particular one happened to be their spoof on Scientology. Chris told me that Scientology is banned in Germany, and that this was one of the reasons Tom Cruise had scrapped a film to be made in Germany. Ha, right on! I dozed off halfway through the show, so Chris put me to bed. It was the first real sleep I'd had in 2 days, and it was incredibly sound.