It’s fantastic to have a little piece of California right here in Bonn 🌳❤️
One of the great perks of living in California was being surrounded by beautiful nature everywhere 🏞️
Now, when I find myself missing the magnificent sequoias and redwoods, I love visiting the botanical garden in Bonn where they have a small section dedicated to the flora of California and the Pacific Northwest.
Für den zweiten Termin kann man sich noch bis Montag anmelden!
⛺ Hack'n'Sun, das #Technik-Sommercamp für #Kinder von 9 bis 15
📆 16. bis 19. Juli 2023
📍 Jugendzeltplatz #Bonn
💸 125 € Teilnehmerbeitrag (Reduzierung ohne Angabe von Gründen möglich)
🎬 Die 39. Internationalen Stummfilmtage in Bonn werfen ihre Schatten voraus: Vom 10. bis 20. August 2023 öffnen sie wieder ihre Pforten im Arkadenhof der Uni Bonn.
Der Wahnsinn geht weiter: Nach dem Stopp zahlreicher Radverkehrsprojekte und dem Rückbau eines neuen Radwegs, prüft die CDU jetzt wohl das temporäre Parken von Autos auf Radwegen. Unfassbar, das "Miteinander" entpuppt sich als Angriff auf die Sicherheit hundertausender Radfahrer.
@Perowinger94 Nachdem 1999 die CDU die Mehrheit im Stadtrat von #Bonn zurück gewinnen konnte, haben sie tatsächlich alle Radwege (mit ganz wenigen Ausnahmen), die in den 5 Jahren zuvor unter Rot-Grün entstanden waren, zurückgebaut. Also monatelang Farbe von den Straßen gekratzt.
Ich war damals new in town und konnte es kaum glauben. Provinzposse.
Jetzt also #Berlin. Mehr als 20 Jahre später. Weite Teile der CDU sind im Kopf noch in den 90igern. #mitRad#Verkehrswende
Seid bereit, eure Instrumente zu zücken und eure stimmlichen Talente zum Besten zu geben! Beim 38. OPEN #JAMMING#BONN im Freiluft-Theater in der #Rheinaue Bonn wird's so richtig nett. Egal ob Gitarre, Banjo, Geige oder Trompete - alles ist erlaubt! Vergesst nicht eure Songtexte mitzubringen und seid bereit, kräftig mitzusingen. Eintritt frei, lasst uns gemeinsam einen unvergesslichen Abend erleben. Wir freuen uns auf euch! Bis Sonntag 25. Juni 2023 17 Uhr in Bonn! 🤩 https://fb.me/e/3HV5au9uS
Sechs Menschen haben heute Mittag in Bonn den Verkehr unterbrochen. Ihr Protest gegen die Zerstörung unserer Lebensgrundlagen stellte sich zugleich solidarisch gegen die geplante Öl-Pipeline #StopEACOP in Tansania und Uganda.
Klimakonferenz in Bonn beendet: Überschattet von Spannungen
Die Zwischenverhandlungen in Bonn haben laut Beobachtern die Weichen für die Weltklimakonferenz in Dubai nicht stellen können. Umweltverbände kritisieren Streit über die Finanzierung von Klimaschutzmaßnahmen. Von J. Schreiber.
Als deutscher Softballmeisterinnen 2022 hat sich das Damenteam der #Bonn Capitals :capitals: für den Europacup in Italien qualifiziert. Um als Schülerinnen und Studierende ihren Eigenanteil reduzieren und Deutschland/Bonn vertreten zu können, haben sie ein Crowdfunding-Projekt gestartet.
The husband of an immigrant acquaintance of mine is looking for a job in the #Köln/ #Bonn or #NRW area. This is his bio:
Sergei Degai is a network engineer with 10+ years of experience in the telecommunications area, with a focus on LAN/WAN design and administration, routers, firewalls, network hardware, monitoring, and troubleshooting of complex networks.
Der #Chor Gemeinsang lädt ein zu einem #Doppelkonzert mit dem Hochschulchor HörsaalEINS.
Es findet am Montag, dem 19.6.2023 um 19:30 Uhr im Hörsaal 1 (Audimax) auf dem Campus Sankt Augustin, Grantham-Allee 20 der #Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg statt.
Es erwartet Sie ein abwechslungsreiches A-cappella-Programm von traditionell bis Rock/Pop. Die Dauer beträgt ca. 75 Minuten.
Kennt irgendwer in #Bonn gute Campingplätze? Ihr findet meine bisherige Liste in den Kommentaren, aber finde die Preise bisher etwas problematisch! Gerne Empfehlungen zusenden ^ ^ #camping
This would be done on this account, sadly Träwelling, the train/tram/bus trip recording client I use ( #traewelling@traewelling ) doesn’t yet support anything but Mastodon to auto-post to. Once #MastodonDE is done and ready, my trips will be Auto-posted on my main account there (or I’ll make a separate train account, not sure yet).
2023.06.29 Update
I’ve decided to put travels that happened mostly within an city with city transportation (bus, metro, tram, etc.) as part of the same trip into one post! If such a thing is documented, then my description of what happened on that trip will occur in that post, not the post about the way back as was the case previously.
One day after getting back from Brussels me and my friends decided to go camping in Bonn, Germany’s former capital city. One my friends, Floyd, who initially only agreed on going camping, lives there, so that’s why we decided on it.
As I was so busy the past couple of days with the campaign in Brussels, I didn’t find the time to search for a good camping spot, even though that was my task. Floyd pressured me to do it the previous days, but I just couldn’t find the time, so I did it on my way to Bonn.
My mother, who just walked home with me for about an hour, in which I explained to her EVERYTHING we’ve done in Brussels, the day prior, was very surprised to see me leave so soon. My communication about these plans was and is very bad - I’ve started noting everything down in the family calendar these days so that they know when I’m where.
She wasn’t shocked or anything, just probably expected me to stay home some time first.
Regardless, on my way to Bonn I searched for many camping spots and this list is what I came up with:
I’ve also made this Reddit post frantically asking people to help, because for some time I just couldn’t find any camping spots!
So, after a while I found this spot in Asbach, a city “nearby” to Bonn, which seemed very nice. Their website had no functional page except for the price list, but well, the prices were good:
2€/Person/Night
7€/Tent/Night
Though, this didn’t end up being true, it was more like:
2€/Person/Night
2€/Car/Night (website didn’t state this)
50c/KWh (we just agreed on 2€/night for power)
10€/Tent/Night (we had a big tent)
This wasn’t all too bad though, and I’ll explain why in a second…
First off all, when I called these people on the train they had to endure the extremely loud sounds and semi-regular call interruptions, second off all: they were willing to keep someone on the campsite until 23:00 (11 PM), so one hour after their regular closing time, to help us get a camping spot in the first place.
As you can see from my travel log, I only arrived around 22:00 (10 PM), our friend Nick (same Nick working on #MastodonDE btw), however, took a bit longer, Floyd still needed to pack his things, etc. etc. so we didn’t leave he spot we met at and headed towards the campsite in Asbach before 22:30. Without their generous help, we wouldn’t have camped that night!
So, we arrived at the campite in Asbach, are shown our place to put up our tent, told “we can figure the money stuff out later” (actually giving these people money was hard because they’d always want to do it later haha) and then began around 23:15 with setting everything up.
About half an hour later Floyd realized he packed only half of the tent, so him and Nick went back to his house to get the rest. This took until 1:30 or 2:00 AM the next day.
When the monstrosity of a tent, which could house 5 people and had multiple rooms, was put up and done at around 4 AM, we didn’t hesitate to get our stuff inside, roll out the sleeping bags, and try to fall asleep with the world already waking up again. We heard birds chirping, saw the sun rise and let this wild day finally come to and end.
I will post more specifics about what we’ve done in the post about my travels within Bonn. For this thread, I’ve decided to only mark travels from city to city (as part of some different event) as a new post, and then just combine travels from one trip / within one city into one post!
We’ve awoken in our newly built tent around 10 AM as its flimsy material would let in the sun as if it was shining directly at us. Not only that, but when going to bed at 4 AM this day I out on a sweater due to it being incredibly cold, that morning at 10 AM I felt like I was cooking. Tents truly have this ability to be either too cold or too hot, but nothing inbetween.
We began our day with tea made on a camping cooker and some good, bread based, breakfast! We explored the campsite and looked where the showers, bathrooms, etc. we’re.
After we sort of settled down, we instantly got going. Nick has a car, so he mostly drove us to places - hence our public transport usage I quite spotty.
We usually drove to a nearby train / tram station and then used public transport from there, as using public transport from Asbach was hell (more on that later).
First order of business was visiting Floyd’s best friend Josh, whom I’ve never met or talked to before. He’s very cool though. We went to his house, petted his dog. He’s studying physics so he got little time, but it was neat seeing the projects he worked on and that he was into the maker scene too.
Around 15:00 (3 PM) we were hungry again and decided to go to an Aldi on our way to our next destination. Now, in a crew of 5 (Floyd, Nick, Martyn [Floyd’s brother], Josh, and me), wanted to go to the Haribo factory. Some of you may not know this, but Haribo actually stands for Hans Riegel Bonn, the names of the founders and the city they started in - to this day a large part of the gummy bear production happens in Bonn. So, the neat part is that the Haribo factory sells reject products (that are still perfectly healthy to consume but just don’t abide by some of their internal quality codes) for super cheap. Multiple kilograms for a few euros. Absolutely worth it. So, that was our plan to get, but before that I was introduced to Franzbrötchen, a cinnamon based sweet morning bread that I’ve become a large fan of, we’ve got it at the Aldi.
Having eaten well we’re walking to the Haribo factory and my friends got copious amounts of gummy bears. We would continue to eat them the coming days, but had so many leftovers they’d still take tons home. I was a bit tight on money at that moment, so I didn’t get anything, but that was okay because the others really wanted to share.
Regardless, that same day the group broke up again and Floyd, Nick, and me went to walk trough the inner city of Bonn a bit, then got back to our campsite. We had a BBQ until 23:30 (11:30 PM) and then fell to bed.
2023.06.04 — Day 2: Sunday Trip to the Agathalsperre
Waking up in this tent was always fun, because both of my companions are incapable of waking up through an alarm, so they always have 3-5 set (on extreme days 7 or more) with heavy metal music which they won’t wake up from. I’m Instantly WIDE AWAKE at 7 AM as they sleep through several alarms until 10… I love them, but this is not okay :(
Today we didn’t have much in mind except for a trip to the Agathalsperre, or Agathal-Reservoir/Lake/Dam, to go on a canoe / paddle boat trip there!
Josh was a fan of this idea, so he came with us. First, we went to his house and drank some really profound coffee, however, since “we” overslept by a lot we drank that coffee not in the morning but by 14:00 (2 PM).
The ride to the Agathal-Dam took us a bit, so we only arrived ~16:15 and then needed to inflate our boats. We had an electric pump but Nick’s car didn’t have a working on-board voltage socket, so we asked a nearby car owner if he’d lend us a helping hand which he did. It was very nice, only bothered them for 05-10 minutes!
We had our boats ready, got into the Agathal-Dam, tied both boats to one another with a line, then paddled away in the search of a good spot. Josh had his wetsuit which he used to swim even during the paddling action, Nick also pushed the boat(s) from behind in the water. It was very fun.
Sooner than later we found the right spot and had a good meal close to the water. Mangos, cooled water/soda, we brought everything we usually carry with us into the canoe as well. No pictures exist of this, sadly, as I left my phone in the car for good reasons.
We had a race on the way back, me and Nick won. We packed everything up, then, when it was already night (23:00) we looked at the dam itself and the water / height difference on the one and the other side. It was pretty massive and beautiful.
Nick sadly has a job at the DENIC eG, so he had to leave right after bringing us to the campsite from the Agathalsperre and drive to Frankfurt until Monday to… work… ew
HOWEVER! He would make a comeback on Wednesday and stay for the rest of the trip thanks to the national holiday Corpus Christi (Fronleichnam) the day after.
Also, Nick promised to bring a server cooler to deal with the MASSIVE heat in our tents during the morning - we’ll see how that turns out…
I don’t remember doing much for the rest of the day, the ride home probably took long, we reheated leftovers from the BBQ, the usual.
2023.06.05 — Day 3: Monday Learning for the Driver’s License
Floyd doesn’t have a driver’s license and was about to take the theoretical exam, so this day we mainly spent with walking through a beautiful park and me giving him my phone so he can go through the ADAC driver’s license app. In Germany there are around 1000 questions that could come up in the theoretical, many of them video or image based where you’re asked to judge a specific situation or what to do here or there, etc. I never found it entertaining, I only passed my theoretical exam on the third try! Hah.
Throughout the day I also called a really good friend of mine from Hannover many times and it was nice to catch up on things and hear how they were going.
Regardless, in the evening we made a really awesome stew from whatever was left from the BBQ, Floyd’s incredibly hot chili sauce, self made Chili Sin Carne, Noodles… It was a feast!
2023.06.06 — Day 4: TuesdayAttending the Driver’s License Theoretical Test, an Impossible Task
We had a great breakfast, black tea again with cereals and RHABARBER CAKE! This was a highlight for sure.
As Nick was still gone we needed to rely on busses connecting to Asbach in order to allow us to go to Bonn, this, sadly, often had complications, as they were often late and only came once an hour.
Floyd had to take his theoretical driver’s license exam today and we needed to be at the testing station in Brühl by 15:00. We got into our first bus ride by 11:46. The ride from the Bonn central station to Brühl only took 12 minutes, and we arrived at the Bonn central station 13:53. What could go wrong?
Well, the train was magically delayed by an hour. It’s a 12 minute ride, how far could it be? There gotta be other trains taking that same route, right? Absolutely there were! But all of those were delayed too, because the specific route itself was broken / blocked. We only got into a train going to Brühl by 14:54, best we could do was get there at all.
I let Floyd use my phone to continue study through the app. He studied a lot the past couple of days, used the app the first time the day prior, but actually got 99% of all questions tight, so I had a good feeling about this.
We arrived in Brühl ~15:06, took a bus to somewhere nearby the TÜV testing station, and literally ran there. Against all odds he still made it in time, or rather they were okay with a 10-15 Minute delay. He got in, and, to the best of my knowledge at that moment, took the test.
I went away, drove back to Bonn, took a seat somewhere outside the central station and had a call with Nils @ilohi_uwu! It was great and he told me of his travels and what crazy things once again happened.
Something weird happened, however: Floyd wrote me that he wasn’t allowed to take the test because some form his driving school needed to transmit was missing. Floyd was certain that he told his school to send it, and that he was eligible etc. etc. but there was nothing he could do. All that studying and this immense journey of rushing in time to the testing station for nothing.
Since we didn’t really have a motive for this day beyond the driver’s license thing so we just went and got some essential food items and had a slow, relaxed time.
Throughout the day Floyd told me so much about the Bonn public infrastructure network that I made this meme.
At ~19:51 the doors of the tram we were in broke, as they would remain open due to an issue with the sensor. The conductor himself needed to come into our wagon and do some funny stuff with the wires (???) on the top next to the doors. It was great to witness, yet sadly caused a delay which meant we’d miss the connecting train.
Thanks to this error, however, we’d be stuck in some beautiful place for some time and were able to witness the sunset:
We arrived home soon after, went to bed, the usual… Me and Floyd were of course frustrated about what happened, but there was nothing we could do about it and he’ll have to take the test another week.
2023.06.07 — Day 5: Wednesday The Run and Troubles with the Police
This day was a special day for a multitude of reasons. First: I would come with Floyd and his brother Martyn to help organize a night run with the Boy Scouts (Pfadfinder), which Floyd is a member of. Second: Nick would finally come back!! He still worked this day, BUT he’d drive to us right after work. Very happy about this information.
We didn’t do much for the whole day until ~17:00 which is when we went to Floyd’s home, packed everything, and arrived in the park where the run was to be held ~18:00. We got tape, high-visibility vests, and traffic cones to show people where to go.
Before the run began I was tasked with getting a Döner (Kebab) for Floyd, Martyn, NICK (!!!), and myself because we’d spend the whole evening at that spot ensuring the runners would go the right way. I traveled to Bonn central station and got a Döner nearby, the whole operation took about an hour but the food was still warm when I came back, also Nick showed up while I was gone! We ate the food and talked about the coming days…
About this time I tried reaching my friend from Hannover again and I was mad because the line was busy, but once I got through it was honestly one of the best conversations we’ve ever had.
Some time in the future the run was over and we decided to pack our things and go, now with Nick’s car, luckily.
Once in the car we drove through an American-style suburb they built for the many American diplomats and military personell that would live in the newly founded West Germany.
However, one our way home something strange happened…:
Nick was probably driving weird and they stopped us, brought us to a McDonald’s parking spot, had the whole eye light and breathalyzer thing, then we were free to go.
Afterwards one police officer asked the other “Wanna grab a bite” pointing at the McDonald’s sign, they both laughed. We left. I am not sure to this day whether that was a joke or meant seriously.
We went home, fell asleep, all was good in the end.
2023.06.08 — Day 6: Thursday Breakfast and Museum
We had a great breakfast in a place Floyd recommended called Gilgens, then went back to our tent so that Nick could install the server fans he brought to cool the place down in the mornings, and finally went to the museum of German history! There they had a section on digitalization which we stayed in the whole time. We needed to come back for the rest later on, but they really nailed it for that section on digitization in Germany and the world overall.
In the evening we ordered KFC and watched some television show about firemen. I was incredibly tired for some reason (PROBABLY BECAUSE I’M THE ONLY ONE WHO WAKES UP FROM ALARMS!!) so I fell asleep on the couch in Floyd’s house, hence they decided to just stay there as they apparently couldn’t drag me to the car. It was a nice evening.
2023.06.09 — Day 7: Friday Only Museum
We went back to the Museum of German History and went through all the other sections. It was impressive what they got, many modern aspects too. From before the war, posters post-war, how things looked like in the GDR or West Germany. It was interesting to see promises made by political parties back in the day that they still haven’t kept (for example, the CDU, the Christian Conservative Party of Germany once promised to ‘overcome capitalism’, oh the irony!)
We had a good day there, didn’t need to do much more or less, but we already planned where we’d spend our next day and knew it would be GREAT!
2023.06.10 — Day 8: Saturday The Radio and the Train Station*
On our way to a train station specifically for showcasing old steam locomotives and restoring them to old glory we listened to the radio, more specifically WDR 5 (West-German-Broadcasting) where they asked people that were interested to call and participate in a discussion about climate change as part of some philosophy program they initiated. We just decided to have me call on a whim as a joke, and it turned out to be among the most memorable experiences.
We had to stop our car and park on the side somewhere because they didn’t like to talk to people while driving (noise, danger, etc…) and it was a pretty interesting discussion. My contribution to it was tiny but at least stirred the pot a bit. I talked about revolutionary measures necessary to overthrow capitalism, the only reason climate change exists. Class war. Most people agreed on my analysis, even agreed on capitalism being the problem (it was a based circlejerk after all) but may have not been radical enough to suggest such “extreme” measures ;)
I think I talked or was part of the discussion for a good 20 minutes or so and that was nice as one of my first conscious and political radio appearances!
Afterwards we continued, though with a little delay, to the train station. It was a train station / museum about old steam locomotives like you had seen it from Thomas the Tank Engine, with a rotary wheel and all that.
We saw people work on restoring the trains, putting new varnish on them, connecting wires and so on. When going around Floyd even explained so much about them! How there’s apparently a website that shows the whole history of every train, and that some of the trains here were dug up as they were hidden by the French during WW2 so that the Nazis couldn’t utilize them… It was a completely different world to me.
I even happened to chime in a conversation about the NGO managing these locomotives needing a website where I offered to help! I’m now in contact with Ullrich Menzl and we’re working on creating a website where people can even book rides once these steam locomotives are operational! Very excited to help out on this (without compensation, of course).
We also heard that there was a functioning locomotive going the next day, so we immediately agreed on wanting to ride it!
During the afternoon we went on our way to Floyd’s house because he was invited to go to his brother’s graduation ceremony, so we dropped him off home, then me and Nick went back to the tent. We discussed lots about #MastodonDE and even finalized many plans about it, as a matter of fact, I’d say this camping trip was the final act of planning (if not the only real act of planning) that made MastodonDE even possible.
On the way to the tent I think we just called the radio again for the lolz and I participated in a discussion about stoicism, or I think I did because my microphone was muted after just giving my experience regarding sadness and depression. Thinking about it, I think they specifically asked people to share their experiences with those topics and how to overcome hardship, so I guess I fulfilled my function.
Nick and I heated up some Chili and had a good evening.
We later picked up Floyd and Martyn from the ceremony / party, drove Martyn home, went to our tent and set many alarms for the coming day, as this time we were on a schedule, and this train wouldn’t be stopping for us…
2023.06.11 — Day 9: Sunday An Accident, A Steam Locomotive, A Train Hunt, and our Final Day Together
We woke up on time, got all our food, then began driving, no breakfast, no nothing. We needed to be on time this time! Nick wanted to withdraw some cash from an ATM, he pulled the car over to a spot with one and whilst doing so his exhaust just… fell off. Well, since the exhaust and the device attached to it are connected to the car, they didn’t entirely fall off, just slid on the ground as all connectors that connected it to the bottom of the car broke, apparently. Nick and Floyd instantly jumped under the car and tried to see what was going on. They ended up using a rubber band to fix the exhaust to the top again. Apparently this was okay. The car is still running to this day on that hotfix.
We just stood in front of the locomotive’s engine and had the water vapor condense on our skin, see the trees and bushes move out of the way as this unstoppable force pushed itself onwards. It was magnificent to witness. Hella slow and probably massively bad for the environment, but it had a special charme to it.
The train left us off at a train station about an hour away where we then could wait and have breakfast (finally). Since we brought EVERYTHING (including the gas cooker) we straight up just made good tea again, had cereal, Franzbrötchen. A profound experience served once again by Floyd.
The way back took far longer, and even when we arrived we just stayed at the train station for some hours and looked at everything. Nick fairly quickly complained that we need to leave soon as he still needs to drive home to Frankfurt for a couple of hours AFTER we’re done packing, so we should get everything together.
About 14:00, when another train ride began, we took Nick’s car and drove station to station, trainspotting or train hunting. It was a niche experience, can be done once in one’s life, I enjoyed it, but kind of crazy as an every day hobby.
By ~19:00 we arrived at our campsite, packed our stuff and crammed it all into the car. We filled the car to the brim multiple times and drove all of the transported things to our camping spot, so, to get it all in one car was impressive. It only worked because I became part of the cargo. Floyd told me to sit in the car and then positioned every piece around me. I couldn’t move anymore, but we actually managed to transport all of our stuff.
We packed out everything at Floyd’s home, said goodbye to Nick and that was it for our eventful camping trip! I stayed the night at Floyd’s, but left the next morning at 8 AM, so one can’t really call it a camping trip day anymore, especially with Nick not being there, but I really enjoyed my time with everyone and was ready for finally having some rest the coming days without any Pfingstcamp, Brussels EU Parliament, or Camping Trip… Finally time to finish my college applications and continue private projects! I was very exhausted, but also very happy. More about my ride home on the thread post regarding that!
If you actually read all this, you’re an absolute legend!