It has been a while since I’ve posted anything to my blog, mainly because since New Zealand not a great deal has happened that is very interesting. I am now in my final year of University already appreciating how daunting the workload has become, and have had little time to go travelling. Well that is a little untrue, I found the time to drop everything and go to Germany for a long weekend. Unlike New Zealand however, I went to go visit someone very dear to me, and so I didn’t have to pay for accommodation. Instead, I spent my days lounging in the lovely little city of Bonn and my evenings enjoying the sights and sounds of Cologne.

For those of you green with jealousy and cannot wait to do the same thing, I would strongly suggest waiting, because when I went it was just not cold enough to be pleasant, and it can only get colder from now. Plus it would mean that the flights would be even cheaper then the already reasonable price I paid for my tickets and Germany in springtime is even more magical than in the autumn. Enough of that however, let us go down memory lane (last weekend).

After a decent but lengthy seminar about the origins of the Irish Sea Vikings (stop yawning, it’s interesting) I hopped onto the train to Manchester airport, which to this day surprises me with its size and connections. A short flight later and I was greeted by the lovely Yvonne, the aforementioned dear person if you had not guessed already. As it so happened it was her birthday, so to celebrate we stared at Cologne cathedral both inside and out and then went home to exchange presents (the more observant of you would remember that it was my birthday in New Zealand). We went to bed fairly early by student standards to make the most out of the next day, and ruined those prospects by getting up at one in the afternoon.

One lazy day and a pretty fantastic Chicken Biryani later and we were in Bonn drinking on the banks of the river Rhine. Now, as city nightlife goes, Bonn is a bit of a mixed bag. It does have a decent set of bars and pubs, notably an Irish pub which I’ll talk about more later, but clubbing wise there is a reason why the trains to cologne are always full to the brim on a Friday night. So instead we decided to drink at a place called Alter Zoll, which during the day has a wonderful beer garden, but at night is a bit dark and frightening until you reach the banks of the Rhine. A short but pleasant evening to be sure.

The next night (what we did during the day is none of your concern) we went into Cologne itself, first going to see the Hohenzollen bridge, named after that little dynasty that formed what we know today as Germany in 1871. Ok, the chancellor of Prussia Bismark did that, but they became Emperors of Germany after that so close enough anyway. Since 2008 young couples have taken to putting love locks on the bridge, which is an extremely sweet concept. We didn’t do the same because we mused over how many of those couples who put locks there were still together. But it is still an acutely romantic gesture, where even though your relationship does not last, it is a constant reminder of a moment in time when it was all that mattered to you.

After the required tourist photos we went off to a part of Cologne called Friesenplatz, where all the young hip things of Cologne go to get absolutely wasted. I have to tell you, its pretty amazing, with a great mixture of bars, clubs, restaurants and shisha places it was a great place to be. We ended up going to a nice Shisha bar that was decently priced and had a great atmosphere. I would recommend it but I have no idea what it is called, but I will definitely say if you ever find yourself in Cologne, you owe it to yourself to go to Friesenplatz at least once.

My final day was again a nice lazy one, with much lying in bed and watching various amusing youtube videos, because we had very little sleep that night and because my return flight was at a time that no sensible human should even be awake we tried to conserve our energy as much as possible. Nothing that would interest anyone other than myself and Yvonne happened for the rest of my stay, but we did go see the love locks on the Hohenzollern bridge one more time. To think that at one point Deutsche Bann wanted to remove these locks and only backed down because of public pressure.

So there you have it, my decadent short trip to the continent to escape from the pending doom of my workload. Now unfortunately it is back to reality and the grindstone. On the bright side, I have a trip to Prague lined up for New Years, so I have that to look forward to.