August 2016
Growing up, I learned of Bonn (population 300,000) as the capital city of West Germany, a rich European country. Thus, I just assumed that it would be a huge metropolitan city like New York or Paris. I was surprised to learn later on that it was a much smaller town meant to be a temporary capital for a divided country. Then it was forgotten in my consciousness once Germany was reunified. We never thought to stop there on our many trips to Germany.
Then we signed up for a last minute river cruise deal offered by Vantage River Cruses via Travelzoo, and it happened to start in Bonn. We took the train from Berlin and got there after an uneventful 6 hours efficient Deutsche Bahn (make sure to buy tickets at least 2 weeks in advance for a deep discount) ride.
We took the tram from the central station to get to our Airbnb apartment just a bit north of the city center. Once we parked our bags safely in our room, we went out to explore. We meant to take the tram, but, as we started walking, we realized we were not that far from the center.
Bonn definitely has a small town feeling. If we ever go back, we will try to rent a bicycle and go everywhere that way. Surprisingly, though, it has many international organizations headquartered there, and University of Bonn is one of the biggest in Germany with 35,000 students. You can feel the cosmopolitan vibe and the young energy in the city. Then there’s Beethoven everywhere, which seems natural given the fact that he was born in Bonn.
We did not have time to visit any of their museums, but they do have more than a few. We walked through a couple of them to get to our boat the next morning. River cruise passengers are routinely getting picked up by the cruise company as they arrive at the airport, thus, they do not make it easy for independent travels like us to find the exact location of the boat. We thought we’d be able to see it docked on the riverbank, but Rhine River was big and rather wide in Bonn. Unlike ocean cruses, river cruises are small with only about 200 passengers, and it was not obvious among many similar boats docked about. That little struggle was easily forgotten, though, once we began our journey.
Small Wide World 