Diminishing Returns

Well, in typical fashion, a planned grand excursion, the envy of my peers, suffered a series of setbacks and revisions to the point that it became unrecognizable in its mediocrity. Two weeks ago, I had a majestic vision in my head to take advantage of the opportunities afforded by my first extended holiday overseas. My friend Zack would come on Sunday and take in the sights of Bonn until Thursday afternoon when we would leave to spend the long weekend in Amsterdam. Signs of trouble emerged almost immediately when a lunchtable conversation indicated (and a quick internet search confimed) that just about everyone other college student in Europe was headed to the city of legalized pot and hookers as well, leaving us with, literally, no room at the inn. Almost immediately following this revelation, I was informed by Zachariah that he would be headed to Salzburg to visit someone else, instead of Bonn for the first part of the week, but would head over my on Wednesday. And since he was going to be incommunicado in Austria, he left me to plan the whole thing. Further indications that I was not meant to leave the Rhineland this Easter came when I tried to book a flight to Dublin from Frankfurt and ended up booking a flight to Frankfurt from Dublin. RyanAir being the most unforgiving airline ever, it cost me an additional €100 to set things right. Complicating things further was the fact that even in Dublin there were no hostels available on Saturday night, though wandering the streets all night "would be fine with me" according to one of the few e-mails I got from Zack during the planning stages. So with poorly thought out plans tentatively in place, Zachariah arrived and as I was explaining to him what the itinerary for the weekend would be, it became abundantly clear to both of us that not only would it be nearly impossible to both sleep on Sunday night and make the 7am flight to Frankfurt on Monday morning, but we'd really only have 48 hours of time in Dublin max. Thus it was decided to investigate travel options in the future and just stay in Bonn for the weekend.
This is not to say, however that we didn't have a good time. We ventured to the Cologne Ikea after classes on Thursday, situated near an attractive Shell Oil refinery and various other heavy industry type structures. On Good Friday, we saw Mr. Bean and took pictures of ourselves on giant heads in front of the Bonn cathedral before heading to the ol' Irish pub for drinks with some Erasmus pals. On Saturday we went with some of those same Erasmus pals on a boat ride down the Rhein to Königswinter where we climbed a big mountain to see a dumb rock dragon. Saturday night we went to the famously breath-taking Kölner Dom (Cologne Cathedral) (second tallest Gothic structure in the world) for Easter Vigil Mass presided over by the Cardinal, who gave a wonky homily involving an over-extended candle metaphor and how much better we'd all feel if we went to Confession regularly. Across the street from the Dom on what must be the business offices of the Archdiocese, there was a banner at least ten stories tall featuring Pope Benedict XVI (who is German, and thus a really really big deal). Easter Sunday was spent walking around the posh, residential section of Bonn, South of the city center, and topped off with an all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet. Over the course of the weekend we also watched an episode of "Graf Duckula" and countless hours of "Spongebob Schwammkopf" as well as 300 and Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie, and ate real food prepared by Zack, who also introduced me to the Dutch delicacy of "syrup waffle" cookies. It is nice, I must say, however, to have some time alone, as the one-person dorm room, definitely doesn't lend itself to comfortably accommodating more than said one person.
Easter Monday is an official holiday here, so it's sort of thrown my schedule off, but I'll be back in the swing of things tomorrow, so enjoy the funny pictures of heads and I will write again soon.