Bonn: A Neanderthal, a river, and a turtle

From Koln, we did two day trips - the first to Bonn, about 30k or so up the Rhine, and to Aachen, about 70k west on the borders of Belguim and the Netherlands.

We caught the rail from Koln to Bonn, accidentally purchasing the more expensive tickets because everything was in German and it wasn't clear. Don't go for the high-speed train. Take your time. Or, catch the ferry...

In Bonn we mostly wandered. We found the Botanischer Garten, which was quite pretty. It was a sunny day and the frogs, moorhens and one turtle were out enjoying the weather. We ate lunch looking out over the pond, watching silver fish under the surface, and the little chicks running along lillypads. We also discovered a section for Neuseeland plants - most notably some rather sad, small cabbage trees.

I was taken with the Rhine, and there are some beautiful parks along it that stretch down beneath a bridge that seems to be on the edge of the town. We walked through it, and I bought a kirsche (cherry) und bannana juice box which was quite tasty. Everything was green (well, not the juice) and lush. There were geese in the feilds, grazing, and people going for all sorts of walks.

By the Rhine I could smell the water, and although it's inland it reminded me somehow of an estuary. Although the banks were covered in stones there was a smell of mud, and something like salt. Then looking up the Rhine, deeper into Germany, was beautiful. There were hills there breaking out of the flatness of the places we'd been, covered in forest. A building on a hill gleamed white - a church perhaps, or someone rich's mansion, we couldn't tell. I imagined walking over the hills and through the forest. I reminded myself how much I want to visit the Black Forest, some time.

Bonn is home to the first Neanderthal man, found in the Neander Valley (about 12 miles east of Dusseldorf). We visited the LVR- Landes Museum. Everything was in German, but there was still a lot to see, including a surprising number of portraits and paintings and a collection of religious relics.

But it was the Neanderthal man I came to see. In Biology classes at high school one of my favourite topics was human evolution. I was very pleased with myself for memorising names like Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy) and Paranthropus robustus. Then in Germany I was looking at an example of Homo neanderthalensis, the first one given that name. I must confess it wasn't as much to look at as perhaps I might have hoped, just some fragments of bone that, to my untrained eye, looked like any other random selection of ancient human bone. But, perhaps that's an important point. There was so little difference between one Homo and another - us. We are all Homos. And if there's so little between Homo N and Homo sapiens, how much difference can there possibly be between all us modern "wise" Homos?

In Bonn one can also visit the Beethoven-Haus, where the great composer was born. We didn't visit it - there was a long queue of Japanese tourists - but we did visit his statue, which we eventually got to see once another queue of Japanese tourists had taken sufficient photographs. It looked like Beethoven. Flippancy aside, it was quite neat to think that I was in a city where someone who did create some truly breathtaking - and significant - music had been born.

We caught a ferry back to Koln, and found that we got a discount by showing our train ticket. The journey was a couple of hours, and you don't realise quite how fast you're going really until you pass underneath a bridge. We sat on the deck and watched the flat wide water, the flat banks edged in green grass or stony banks, pieces of towns and cities. There were some people camping by the river in a white tent. And then we approached Koln, and the two prongs of the Dom showed up and neared. Everyone took photographs. The sun was setting bright red and gold behind it.

Services, Bryson, and little wonderful things

It’s remarkable how difficult it can be to get things done without internet. At least, that’s my pitiful excuse for my lack of blogging and writing, recently, anyway.

Punters punting in Cambridge

Along with my angst over how crap services are here (bank services, mobile services, trying to set up internet with EE services, even the service at a cafe in the West End which took 45 minutes to deliver us the most basic of brunches and, when we went to leave, informed us there were no card payments on Sundays and we should have known).

Last night M and I went to hear Bill Bryson talk at the Guardian’s book club event. It was well worth going. For those of you who have yet to encounter Bill Bryson’s work, go and do so immediately. I still have a lot to catch up on.

Autumn in Hampstead Heath

Bryson is originally from America but fell in love with England, and has been living here for decades (with a brief return to America to give his children the great experience of two countries). He was talking mostly about his 1995 book Notes from a Small Island, a book about his travels around Britain, with references to his new book Little Dribbling which revisits the same topic.

Bryson said that when you move somewhere, no matter whether you have lived there for a long time, you will always be a bit of a foreigner and there will always be things that just don’t make sense, that “befuddle” you – why, in the teeth of hell, do they do it that way? But there are always good things, always the wonderful and different things.

It was nice, on that particular day, to be reminded of such things.

Last week, S and I took a trip to China Town and had dinner in the marvellous Cafe TPT (I had eggplant, mmmm, and for dessert some kind of sago mango deliciousness) then wandered around the streets, finding wonderful places we will return to to buy mocha and pandam buns stuffed with red bean paste and cakes and these crazy bun things with pork shavings on the end and these tiny, beautifully formed fish-shaped cream pastries. It was night, so the woman in the shop was cleaning out the irons they cook them in, but there were some samples set on a small dish in the window – about the size of a thumb, perhaps, with details pressed into the pastry.

China Town

And I was so excited, to be walking around there at night, with a hum and bustle underneath the rows and rows of red lanterns strung up, banners set for the Chinese president’s upcoming visit, people everywhere. I forget, sometimes, how much I love being outside at night. It has a different feeling to the day, a kind of opening up of a new world. I believe the people change, and the buildings and streets pick up a new air, and in this part of London it is wonderful.

And what else? Dinner with my friend near Liverpool Street Station, a quick catch up and meal while she was in transit between Spain and Oklahoma. Seeing the neighbourhood fox at last (he told me his name is Sigil). The light in the mornings coming through our window, and the light over the bridge walking home from work in the evenings. (Walking home from work, in London? How lucky am I!) Train travel – I love travelling by trains – with scenery and weather travelling past, and that close feeling of being in yourself.

The bustling weekend Columbia Road flower market, where the street is lined either side with flowers and potted plants all the way down, and I got the fern for our bedroom. An unexpected 'Natural Park' near Kings Cross with a pond and a red robin and bees. A walk in Hampstead Heath with a friend, and a plastic heeled shoe filled with rainwater and leaves.

Camley Street Natural Park beehives

A trip to Cambridge on the weekend – my first visit – with all the canals and a view of punters from afar, so it looked as though they were pushing themselves through the land with giant poles, with the autumn leaves scattering everywhere. That was the first thing I noticed getting off the train – the scent of autumn leaves, the sound of them scudding on the pavement in a slight breeze.

And this weekend, I am going to attempt to get up North to visit my friend I met on the Isle of Skye last time – who gave me a ride back from Elgol and the wonderful Loch Coruisk to my grotty hostel in Broadford. I have a plan to get me there cheaply but will not find out whether it will work until I attempt to implement it on Friday evening. I will let you know, but fingers crossed for Yorkshire and a night sky where I can see a whole lot of stars.

More pics on my Instagram

A replica painting in the Plimco tube station