To take full advantage of the singular full day we would have in Bonn, an attempt was made to be up around 8. It was incredibly quiet at BaseCamp last night. Aside from Brandon and I, I had only seen two other older couples roaming around. When we got upstairs for breakfast, I noticed there was also a father-son duo and one other older couple I had not seen the night before. By all accounts, I think we were the only ones who did not arrive by bike.
Breakfast was a nice buffet bar of various cereals, bread options, meat, and cheeses, not unlike the breakfasts we enjoyed with Alina and Peter (except BaseCamp didn’t have Frischkäse [cream cheese], so I was a little sad). After breakfast, we walked a couple blocks down the road to catch the bus to the Deutsches Museum. It was a cute STEM-based museum with a good number of hands-on activities. Naturally, all the signage was in German, so we tried our best to read some, but not all of it. At one point, there was an activity with a camera that took about 1000 photos of an object placed in front of it and then showed how those thousand(s) of images got processed in order to actively identify the item. A gentleman who worked there explained the process to us (again, in German), which we followed a bit of. We had said to him at one point that our German wasn’t so good, and all that did was change some of his verbiage to words I felt were maybe a tad easier for us to process…but he never spoke English. Again, it was good practice, though! It took less than an hour to go through the Deutsches Museum, so we headed to das Haus der Geschichte, or the History of the Federal German Republic Museum, which was closer to the center of town. The ride to the museum was interesting because our bus driver never actually stopped at the stop we requested, but he did stop at the following one, so we just walked a little. Brandon figured he was new because he was showing some indications of checking a schedule or something. I was just glad we were only one stop from where we had to be :) At the history museum, they had an extensive display on the history of Germany from the end of WWII to present day. There were a lot of very humbling artifacts from the liberation of the concentration camps, and signs throughout the displays were in both English and German, so we could track pretty well. There were about 4 floors of video screens, artifacts, and information about the difficulties of dividing the country after the war, how life differed between the two sides, the divide between older and younger generations with the dawn of the 70s, Germany’s reunification and the celebrations and struggles that resulted, Brexit, and so many other things. A lot of the material we read and propaganda posters on display in the section about the two sides of Germany, and the information about the political atmosphere at the time, felt a little close to home for us. The parallels were not ideal….It was a really great opportunity, though, and especially with the museum being free admission, I highly recommend it if you ever go to Bonn. Following the museum, we were a bit hungry, so we found a restaurant about a 12-minute walk away to get some food. I had bratwurst and Kartoffelsalat. Brandon had this delicious pork “chop” with pineapples and cheese, and it came with fried potatoes. By the time that wrapped up, we were ready to head back to BaseCamp to chill. *Side note: We LOVE BaseCamp so much, and we cannot wait to come back again! At BaseCamp, we took some time to relax. Many of our folks from breakfast seemed to have moved on because there was a swarm of teenagers when we arrived. Not sure if it’s a school trip or a bunch of friends on holiday, but it’s a little rowdier currently than it was this time last night. But it’s okay they’re having fun :) We ordered dinner for delivery tonight from a local Italian place. It was a experience we may not try again, given the language barrier. The delivery driver called when they arrived, but hung up before Brandon found them, so we thought they left. Luckily they hadn’t, and we got our food :) Tomorrow is primarily a travel day. We’re going to a very special place in Switzerland, but you’ll just have to wait to find out why ;) Not a lot of pictures today, but please still do enjoy!
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