An adventure to Bonn, and an abbreviated farewell.

When Monday morning came around, Johannes was lucky enough to have the day off, but he did have other demands, as I imagine the doctor profession typically does, so we went off on our own. We decided to buy the all day pass that was valid for up to five people all throughout the state of North-Rhine Westphalia, and made our way to Bonn.

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I'd been to Bonn once before, last year for an afternoon, and it was the cutest little town I could imagine. While I wouldn't want to live there (likely too boring) it is charming and fun to walk around in. PLUS, it has the Haribo store, which we'd both been dying to visit. Gummy candies (including gelatin-free ones!) in cheap, bulk form?! Who can resist?

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After we got off in the neighborhood, we stopped at pizza place on the corner, which was both cheap and delicious, and then walked the few blocks to the store. We both ended up walking out of there with a ton of candy and other Haribo items for under 10 euros each - something which would have cost at least $30 each back home.

Elia wanted to leave afterward, but we ended up missing our train by one minute, so we decided to walk around downtown Bonn and the square for a bit, where we went into various stores and got some ice cream, before heading back to the train station to catch the next train, which we also just missed.

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Finally we told a lady at the counter that we had purchased the all-day passes good throughout the state, and she told us the next train we could take was in about 10 minutes. So we sat down and waited, and once on-board, of course, a ticket checker came around. I showed her my train and apparently we had been misinformed, because she told me it wasn't valid on this particular train. I was frustrated but calmly asked her in German if she could speak in English, to which she responded, "Ohhhh, nevermind" and walked off. Apparently being American does have its advantages from time to time.

Less than an hour later, we were back in Düsseldorf but with very little to do, so we decided to get on a random train and get off when we saw interesting. Of course, in all our hopes, we forgot where we were and realized that there was not much interesting to see that we hadn't already seen. So we gave in and took the train back to Johannes' apartment, and luckily, he was done for the day.

We decided to take advantage of the daylight and go for a walk through the nearby park, but Elia wanted to take a nap, so it was just me and Johannes. The park was extensive, with paths and trails leading around fountains, flower gardens, in cemeteries and even through peoples' own personal gardens. He explained to me that it's a very German thing to have an area with just a bunch of gardens that people own or rent outside of where they live, to go as a place to escape a bit. The concept was a bit bizarre at first, but it makes sense, and the gardens were quite beautiful.

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We were gone for perhaps an hour, and came back to figure out the dinner situation. We decided to stay in, and Johannes made us pasta while we hung out and listened to music and worked on our journals and such.

After dinner, I took a shower, and then we looked up information on how to get to our airport for the following morning's flight. When I initially booked our flight out of Düsseldorf, I had little idea that there were three separate airports in the area. It turns out we were flying out of Weeze which is an hour by train plus another 15-20 minutes by car. All the shuttles were booked, we couldn't reach any taxi services, and the morning trains didn't run early enough for us to make it on time, so our only option was to leave on the last train (just past 11 p.m.) and somehow get to the airport from there (either getting a cab, or waiting at the station until 4:35 a.m. for the airport shuttle to begin running).

We didn't want to risk missing our flight, so we quickly rushed to say our goodbyes, and Johannes took our heavy backpacks and escorted us to the train station, and saw us to our train. Then we waved through the window and disappeared, and our train was off.

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