Sunday, September 13, 2009

First Weekend - Bonn

I arrived in Frankfurt, Germany at about 11 a.m. on Saturday, September 12th. I made my way to the meeting point in Terminal 1 of the airport where I met another member of my group, Julie Baker Richard of Louisiana. We waited quite a while for the other two McCloy Fellows, Steve McShane of California and Marjorie Browning of Pennsylvania. We then went to the train station to catch our train to Bonn. The train ride took us through the Rhine Valley and there were some beautiful views. When we arrived in Bonn we were suppose to ride a bus to our hotel. This proved a challenge but we finally found the right bus and made it to the Andreas Hermes Akademie, which is owned by the Deutscher Bauernverband (DBV), the German Farmers Organization. After a short break for a quick shower, we went to dinner with Dr. Klaus-Martin Lotz and Willi Kampmann. They were wonderful hosts and took us to K. und K. im Weinhauschen at the Rhine River. The food was very good and we had a lively policy discussion over dinner.

On Sunday, Dr. Klaus-Martin Lotz picked us up at 9 a.m. and we drove to Eltz Castle. The castle has never seen destruction and is still very original to the way it was originally built. It is a beautiful place and sits by itself in a wooded area. We were given a English language guided tour. There are several more pictures from the castle available at the Fellowship Pictures link on the right hand side of this page. Unfortunately there was some renovation work going on and there is scaffolding in the pictures.


After leaving the castle we visited the home of a friend of Dr. Lotz in the nearby town of Munstermaifeld. This gentleman spent many years as caretaker of the castle and helped to renovate it and open the castle to the public. He and his wife showed us great hospitality and served us a local sparkling wine. Below is a photo of their home.

They also took us to see their local catholic church which is very old and very beautiful. There are also many more pictures of the church at the Fellowship Pictures link. I am sorry that the picture below is sideways but I couldn't figure out how to turn it.

We ate lunch at Loffel's Landhaus. They specialize in potato dishes because this town is known for potatoes. Our lunch was delicious with very large portions. After lunch we drove back towards Bonn and attended a band concert in which Klaus was preforming. It was a very pleasant afternoon and everyone made us feel very welcome.
Tomorrow Klaus will pick us up again and we will visit Cologne before we drive to Brussels, Belgium tomorrow evening. I will post again soon.

1 comment:

  1. Thanks Hope. This will be helpful for me to see. I leave in about 20 days and will hit Brussels first. If your fellow Fellow Marjorie went to VA Tech, please say "hi" for me!

    Jay

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