Aachen - Life is Good Here; and on to Bonn

Thursday, May the 11th, would be a very emotional day. We started out with Vee feeling as if she was coming down with a nasty cold, and I was paying the price of last night's double-schnitzel. So, it was not until later in the morning that we got going. Finally all cleaned up, we started our walk towards the city center and popped in for two coffees and some pastries, which we took with us to the really nice green park near the domo. We sat on the fresh cut grass and enjoyed the sun, the morning buzz of activity around us, and of course our coffees and pastries. Satisfied and very happy, and feeling better from our various morning ailments, we continued on our way towards the part of the city that was the setting for Vee's childhood as a little girl. With gasps, and tears, shiny eyes and dropped sentences, Vee re-discovered the apartment where she grew up. It was surrounded by 3 high-rise student dormitory buildings, and was almost exactly as she had remembered it all. She showed me the front door to her family's apartment, her bedroom window, the hill where they used to sled in the winter, her favorite tree, her best friend Sandra's apartment, and her first boyfriend Dennis' family's apartment, the walkway where she learned to ride her bike, and where she learned to rollerskate. It was a beautiful and extremely special time for me, and especially for her as the rush of memories bombarded her one after the other. We discovered the house where the family lived before moving back to Bolivia and Vee spoke with an older tenant in the apartment building next to it to see if her friends the Muhlers still lived there and found out that they did not. But, she did verify that we were in fact looking at the right house, as it had changed alot over the years, since a number of floors had been built on top of it as separate rented apartments. We walked through the park where she and her brothers played, and it looked exactly as it did when they were little, giant sandbox and all. We walked to her kindergarten, and with the friendly teachers' permissions, even got to walk inside and see the classrooms. We found her elementary school, and again, got inside, and even got to talk with a few of the teachers there, and verified that the Don Quixote painting was still on the wall of the stairway leading upstairs. Outiside, at the entrance, we stood in the exact spot in the street where she was run over by a motorcyclist on her first day of first grade...this time, she looked both ways. From there we found the little park and pond where Juber adopted "Columbo" for Vee as a birthday present; Columbo was a goldfish with a deathwish that survived multiple suicide attempts and kept Vee good company before his re-adoption by Sandra, Vee's best friend, and his eventual final successful suicide attempt. Columbo is a legend for me, and I get a good chuckle everytime Vee reminisces about that darned fish. We walked to a really nice area packed with bars and restaurants where Vee's Mom would come for lunches with friends, and we walked through an interesting old tower with an arched and turretted gateway through which Vee would walk with her Mom sometimes. We quickly popped into an Internet cafe there to check emails, and then into a pizza shop across the street to get some bottled water and then walked back to the hotel for a short breather before heading out again for the rest of the late afternoon and evening. After a quick nap, we found a grocery store where Vee picked up a few apples, and after dropping them off in our room, we walked back into the city center. The plan was to get a take-away pizza and eat it on our little towell/blanket in the park. Instead, by the time we decided on a place to eat, and finding the prices to be so amazingly reasonable, we ate at a wonderful little table amongst seemingly hundreds of others out by the domo and fountain of Charlemagne. We had a delcious thin crust pizza topped with prosciutto, fresh parmesan pieces and whole green leafy thingys for which I need to learn the name and make sure we find them back at home in the U.S. Then we shared a super-tasty salmon, cheese, olive oil and pesto baguette. After dinner, we walked some of the streets that we had not yet covered, and made our way back towards the main park, got two take-away coffees and sat down with our little blanket to enjoy them and a little chocolate-hazlenut pastry we picked up earlier. It was a perfect day, and a perfect night. We were relishing our beautiful surroundings, and the memories past and still in the making. With darkness finally beginning to set in around 9 or so, we went back to the hotel, window-shopping the real estate listings along the way, and a really cool looking grill-at-the-table restaurant that we hope to enjoy at some point. Once in our room, we hooked up a speedy Internet connection (we're on a roll!!!) and made Skype calls home to Bolivia, home to West Chester with no luck, and then to the Reeves!!! It was so good to hear everyone's voices. Then, we slept hard.

Friday, the 12th of May. I am blogging this in our new room in Bonn, on the morning of the 13th. I just finished blogging everything for yesterday, clicked the wrong button, didn't read the pop-up message clcked another wrong button and lost the entire thing. So I'll summarize: checked out, did laundry, secured bags in locker at train station, bought needed supplies at pharmacy, walked to city center, no market or fried fish, no rathaus, Domo, sandwich on towell/blanket and snooze in park, bought new books, salmon and shrimp appetizer and drinks at outdoor restaurant, latin jazz band sound-check, train ride to Koln and Bonn, long walk to hotel, packed restaurants outside, late night falafel. It was a beautiful, fun, full and productive day in Aachen and we really really want to come back.

Saturday morning the 13th, we took the bus to the train station and from there began our exploration of the city center. After some coffee and pastries, we continued our walk through the many streets loaded with shops, restaurants, cafes, bars, and packed with people buzzing around. It would be a gray, and rainy day, and this wouldn't help our initial perceptions about the city. It just didn't quite have the charm and character and cleanliness we were anticipating. Another very sad observation was that there seemed to be alot of mentally-ill, homeless, alcoholics, disabled and beggars here; many more than we've seen almost anywhere else. I think it is partly because we are still coming off our Aachen-high, which we loved so much. We strolled down the banks of the Rhein, and then wandered back into the city center. For much of the rest of the day, we continued to explore the many pedestrian-only streets in downtown. Hoping to learn about a symphony orchestra show, we went by the Beethoven theater, but there were no conciertos scheduled for the time that we were going to be here. We walked back to the operahouse where the Bonn Bienale was anchored for the week, and attended an extremely interesting afternoon discussion about the westernization of India. We never could have imagined coming to Bonn, to learn about India. Actually, this bienale is going to be running all week long, and the itinerary is loaded with films, operas, plays, discussions, concerts, etc., and we hope to take more advantage of it during our time here. The discussion today was fantastic, and really opened our eyes to India, a place neither of us had really thought a whole lot about before. The two main speakers included an Indian princess who talked about the influece of westernization on Indian music, literature, painting, dance, etc., and the second speaker was a very intelligent historian who talked more about the history of India and the affect that western modernization ideologies have had there. We were so happy to have been there, and it was totally by chance that we even chose to check it out. Afterwards, we bought tickets to the opera later on in the night, called "Satyagraha", by Phillip Glass. There was quite alot of time before the show, so we walked more, shared an ice cream, went inside a cathedral, read our books by the river, played with a fearless black pigeon, had coffees and a pretzel inside the opera house, and finally went to the show. Ashamedly, we left at the first intermission. Vee got more out of it, and appreciated it more than I did, but neither of us really enjoyed it. Luckily, they gave us a student discount, so our tickets were not that expensive, and we didn't feel too terribly guilty about leaving before it was over. We walked back to the hotel, and called it a night.