February 12, 2012.
For a soft lad from Melbourne who has never really skied or spent significant time in the snow, I'm struggling to find the words to describe how cold 11 degrees C below zero really is. 'Bloody cold' doesn't really seem to be adequate. I bought myself a pair of serious Thinsulate gloves today and they seem to be doing a better job than ramming my hands deeply into my coat pockets. But only marginally; even through the gloves my fingers actually hurt with the cold. I guess I'm soft as I notice local walking with bare hands ...
I arrived in Bonn at about 4pm Thursday night and barely managed to stay awake til 8pm. But I got a good sleep right thru til 5am, had a 30 minute run on the treadmill and then a nice breakfast in the hotel.
The immigration stuff is now happening Monday so that left me with some free time on Friday. It gave me a chance to explore my surroundings, work out how to get to the office.
So it's all good! I went for a walk last night and noticed about 4-5 people jogging the frozen streets of Bonn. But they were being very careful about where they placed their feet and there was no pace on at all. I'm not ready for that! I could barely walk without slipping but there is something quiet and relaxing when walking on even an inch of snow. The snow softens the foot steps and it makes everything feel soft and peaceful.
Anyway, although it was snowing as I walked out of the railway station on Thursday afternoon, there hasn't been any snow since. Even though it has been freezing cold since then, most of the snow has now been walked in or driven away. So the sun shines but the sky won't snow (as the Don Henley song almost goes) meaning we have freezing cold without the visual pleasure of snow on the ground.
I've found a little Asian wok restaurant only 10 minutes walk from where I'm staying. I had dinner there on Saturday night. For €6 I had a pretty good meal. And this was after cooking spaghetti on Friday night. Yes, amazingly, I found the local supermarket and picked up the fixins for a nice spaghetti sauce. Who'd have thought it possible?!
I had great intentions for Sunday morning. I'd head to the Altstadt and get some advice from the tourist information folks and do one of the walking tours. But honestly, it would have been wasted today as it is so cold. I left the apartment at about 10:30 but even then it was still -11C. It was like being in Singapore in reverse; that is, you felt the need to sneak inside to warm up as opposed to the inverse of trying to cool off in Singapore. It's supposed to warm up during the week. Tomorrow the maximum is actually a positive 2C - woo-hoo!! Maybe next weekend it will just be cold rather than freezing and I'll have another crack at the walking tour.
Sunday afternoon will see me trekking along the Rhine, finding a way to Drachenfels, a ruined castle about 12km from the hotel. There is tram I can catch most of the way but it might be fun to see just how far it is to walk. I'll head out and see how the walk unfolds. The ruins are about 1,000 feet above the river so should provide a wonderful view back to the city.
OK, I've now worked out that this will be a full day's excursion and that I should save it up for next weekend. I did walk down to the Rheinaue which is a beautiful park down by the river; a huge grassed area with a lake running through the middle of the park. Even though it has warmed up to -4C this afternoon, this is still well below freezing. So mix a lake with freezing conditions and you have ice. The amazing thing is how many people were down at the lake enjoying the skating! There were games of ice hockey, some reasonable figure skating right down to little kids being dragged in sleds.
Nothing opens on Sundays in Germany so there is literally nothing to do but make your own fun. So skating and sledding it is!
But even in this cold weather, it's amazing how many people are walking thru the park. Families, young couples, old couples, folks walking their dogs; just people everywhere.
I walked across the Rhine (basically so I can say I've walked across the Rhine and to work out the path to the castle for next weekend) and was fascinated with what I thought was the huge amounts of plastic flowing along in the river. On closer examination, I noticed it wasn't plastic but huge shards of ice. Did I mention that it was cold :)
So the weekend is over now and it's off to work we go (from tomorrow morning). So far so good. Not being able to speak German is posing some issues but so far I've been able to order lunches and coffees with minimal embarrassment all round. I think its time to hit the language lessons with a little more fervor and diligence.
For a soft lad from Melbourne who has never really skied or spent significant time in the snow, I'm struggling to find the words to describe how cold 11 degrees C below zero really is. 'Bloody cold' doesn't really seem to be adequate. I bought myself a pair of serious Thinsulate gloves today and they seem to be doing a better job than ramming my hands deeply into my coat pockets. But only marginally; even through the gloves my fingers actually hurt with the cold. I guess I'm soft as I notice local walking with bare hands ...
I arrived in Bonn at about 4pm Thursday night and barely managed to stay awake til 8pm. But I got a good sleep right thru til 5am, had a 30 minute run on the treadmill and then a nice breakfast in the hotel.
The immigration stuff is now happening Monday so that left me with some free time on Friday. It gave me a chance to explore my surroundings, work out how to get to the office.
So it's all good! I went for a walk last night and noticed about 4-5 people jogging the frozen streets of Bonn. But they were being very careful about where they placed their feet and there was no pace on at all. I'm not ready for that! I could barely walk without slipping but there is something quiet and relaxing when walking on even an inch of snow. The snow softens the foot steps and it makes everything feel soft and peaceful.
Anyway, although it was snowing as I walked out of the railway station on Thursday afternoon, there hasn't been any snow since. Even though it has been freezing cold since then, most of the snow has now been walked in or driven away. So the sun shines but the sky won't snow (as the Don Henley song almost goes) meaning we have freezing cold without the visual pleasure of snow on the ground.
I've found a little Asian wok restaurant only 10 minutes walk from where I'm staying. I had dinner there on Saturday night. For €6 I had a pretty good meal. And this was after cooking spaghetti on Friday night. Yes, amazingly, I found the local supermarket and picked up the fixins for a nice spaghetti sauce. Who'd have thought it possible?!
I had great intentions for Sunday morning. I'd head to the Altstadt and get some advice from the tourist information folks and do one of the walking tours. But honestly, it would have been wasted today as it is so cold. I left the apartment at about 10:30 but even then it was still -11C. It was like being in Singapore in reverse; that is, you felt the need to sneak inside to warm up as opposed to the inverse of trying to cool off in Singapore. It's supposed to warm up during the week. Tomorrow the maximum is actually a positive 2C - woo-hoo!! Maybe next weekend it will just be cold rather than freezing and I'll have another crack at the walking tour.
Sunday afternoon will see me trekking along the Rhine, finding a way to Drachenfels, a ruined castle about 12km from the hotel. There is tram I can catch most of the way but it might be fun to see just how far it is to walk. I'll head out and see how the walk unfolds. The ruins are about 1,000 feet above the river so should provide a wonderful view back to the city.
OK, I've now worked out that this will be a full day's excursion and that I should save it up for next weekend. I did walk down to the Rheinaue which is a beautiful park down by the river; a huge grassed area with a lake running through the middle of the park. Even though it has warmed up to -4C this afternoon, this is still well below freezing. So mix a lake with freezing conditions and you have ice. The amazing thing is how many people were down at the lake enjoying the skating! There were games of ice hockey, some reasonable figure skating right down to little kids being dragged in sleds.
Nothing opens on Sundays in Germany so there is literally nothing to do but make your own fun. So skating and sledding it is!
But even in this cold weather, it's amazing how many people are walking thru the park. Families, young couples, old couples, folks walking their dogs; just people everywhere.
I walked across the Rhine (basically so I can say I've walked across the Rhine and to work out the path to the castle for next weekend) and was fascinated with what I thought was the huge amounts of plastic flowing along in the river. On closer examination, I noticed it wasn't plastic but huge shards of ice. Did I mention that it was cold :)
So the weekend is over now and it's off to work we go (from tomorrow morning). So far so good. Not being able to speak German is posing some issues but so far I've been able to order lunches and coffees with minimal embarrassment all round. I think its time to hit the language lessons with a little more fervor and diligence.
Here are the folks skating at
the frozen lake at the Rhienaue. I took this picture from the Konrad Adenauller Bridge that
crosses the Rhine. The building to the right of the picture is the United Nations offices.
The building in the centre is the Post Tower where I'll be working.
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