day-trip: bonn

As H was away this weekend for a conference in Berlin, I thought it would be fitting for me to take a trip to the other Federal City (Bundesstadt), Bonn, former capital of West Germany, to scout out the area. Before coming to Bonn, on the Rhine’s southern reaches of megalopolis of the industrialised Ruhrgebiet and surrounded by the Siebengebirge—the seven verdant peaks with picturesque valleys, I stopped in the vineyard village of Königswinter and climbed the first ascent of the Drachenfels, the dragon cliffs.

There was a funicular train or donkeys for hire for journey but I passed those to try the steep hike myself. It was very beautiful with the Post Tower of Bonn’s skyline already visible and a host of castles and fortifications hewn out of the mountain-face but on this day, I only wanted to make it to the first station and hold off on exploring the whole trail until we could see it to together. Having learned about this strange attraction quite by accident and then having planned this little trip, I could not skip a visit to the bizarre, Art Nouveau temple to composer and myth-maker Richard Wagner, the Nibelungenhalle, dedicated in 1913 by a devoted fan-club on what would have been Wagner’s hundredth birthday. The interior included a lot of documentation apologising for the “Swastika” motif—explaining it was ancient Germanic rune and had a series of murals of the saga of the Ring Cycle.

The woman at the counter turned on the music after I had come in—being the first visitor, I suppose, and there were a lot of random, non-contiguous artefacts present that made me think of the curating work in the museum of the Colossus of Prora which was a lot of fun to try to unravel but I suppose sadly it’s not there any longer since there converting the Nazi resort to luxury apartments. After viewing this altar, one was to walk down through an artificial grotto (which was a little a frightening because it was not illuminated although one could see the way out ahead, one had to trust that the path was manmade and free of obstacles) that led to a small garden and then quite inexplicable to a good old-fashioned roadside reptile farm, with lots of anacondas and pythons curled up and rest and a couple of lively crocodiles.

I walked back down to the Drachenfels base camp and proceeded on to the main attraction, Bonn, only a few kilometres away. Bonn was chosen to be the capital for symbolic reasons, a small city and not the nearby Köln or Frankfurt or Hamburg that might have seemed more reasonable, because Berlin, east and west, was enshrined as the true capital and the situation was understood as only temporary.

Had a larger, more prominent city been created as the West German Hauptstadt, then Berlin might have lost its rightful place, though the temporary situation lasted for over four decades. Also the industrial heft of the Ruhr region and its natural resources was a point of contention just after the war. I enjoyed a very nice stroll along the Rhein and up and down the length of Adenauer Allee, the once and present corridor of power and governance, with six federal offices still stationed along this boulevard and venue also to the representative second residence of the Chancellor and cabinet.

The route paralleling the river, begins with the castle since turned into a university and concludes with a United Nations campus housing nineteen institutions. In between were the former residences of the chancellery, which were disappointingly inaccessible it seemed—although I was excepting to be able to traipse through the rumpus-room, I did think I might see the bungalow up close and not through a fence with bales of razor-wire. I also passed the zoological museum that hosted the Bundesrat and Bundestag for the first few years of the provisional government.

A stuffed giraffe and other taxidermical creations were witness to proceedings as they could not be removed from the gallery without being decapitated. Despite not having access to the halls of power, it was nonetheless, an interesting experience to reflect on everything that had transpired on this one street. Aside from the secular, recent history, I was surprised to learn of Bonn’s religious connections and significance as the seat of the archdiocese and did not have the wherewithal to explore the old town too much—there was some festival that rendered the market-square pretty hectic and crowded—but it did of course seem worthy of further investigation, with Beethoven’s home, its Roman origins and fortification and many corporate headquarters as a sign of homesteading in the former capital as prognosis for what’s yet to come.

adobe flash

Via Dangerous Minds’ Dangerous Finds comes a fantastic demonstration of a giant three-dimensional printer, inspired by the hives of wasps and hornets and architectural techniques from time immemorial, that can cheaply construct shelters out of clay or any other in situ building material, on Earth and for the off-world colonies as well. This fusion of ancient and cutting-edge still requires logistics and capital to bring it to the construction site, but 3-D printing is really starting to shine and come into its own as a cottage-industry in creative ways.

kalends oder guthaben

Finally having a telephone contract with all calls being free, I’ve graduated somewhat from being miserly about returning calls and reached a new plateau of parsimony, I’m afraid, with one’s monthly data allotment. I’ve adjusted to rationing my browsing and usually don’t deplete it until the end of the month (Kalends, as it was known to the Romans, and hence the calendar that counted backwards from the end, the Ides and the Nones from the month prior), but also lacking a land-line, wary to enter into a commitment for what’s a temporary housing situation—during the work-week, it can get a bit frustrating when there’s something interesting to research and investigate and particularly when it comes to posting something fun. There’s no real opportunities to poach a Wi-Fi connection—unless one is willing to loiter at a pay-phone converted into a hot-spot. It’s a strange, trifling dilemma to traffic in such abstract limitations. Slow I don’t mind but sometimes things just time-out and I think there’s plenty of incentives for decelerators, and I suppose I could always top-up but with just a few days remaining in the cycle, I try to avoid this little luxury.

noxious

On first hearing of the scandal over a major German automotive manufacturer falsifying emissions trials to make their fleet of diesel vehicles appear cleaner than they were, I was naturally disappointed but I thought it was little more than the third installment of a series of bidden character-assassinations of German institutions of late.

Drawing sparse attention off the Autobahn, first a German driving club, which provides roadside assistance, was discovered to have auctioned off its accolades and awards for the most roadworthy cars to the highest bidder. Next, there was the FIFA football corruption case—which struck me as another rather open-secret that although it had certainly outlived it’s tolerability probably came to light through zealotry rather than necessity—the collapse of something corrupt and rotten and distractions from more serious affairs. Some people fall on their swords with a flair for the dramatic and others simply trip. I felt the same way about this latest sensation until, courtesy of Super Punch, I learnt that the amount of greenwashing, the phantom sustainability and good-stewardship could be measured in enormous terms, equated with the gross annual contribution of whole countries to air pollution and greenhouse gases.

5x5

sword and sandal: jazzy Italian cinematic score to enjoy

cogwheel: insects had evolved gears long before humans discovered mechanical advantage

rubbing elbows: any and every New Yorker cartoon wants you to join them on LinkedIn

potus: obscure, offensive 1967 “Super President” cartoon pilot

pig-pen: each human has a distinctive cloud of germs that shadows us

primary packaging

Via the ineffably fascinating Mental Floss comes the innovative news that a design company in the UK is poised to revolutionise the way people transport, store and imbibe their beverages.
Called the Ooho, liquid is stored in a transparent membrane made mostly of algæ, completely biodegradable and even edible. Now one can stay hydrated like the astronauts that get to chase down floating blobs of water. Sloshing sacks that resemble silicone implants may not immediately strike the market as the intuitive alternative but, like wine skins, the small portions could be bundled to be delivered in larger containers and the idea confronts one immediately with unadulterated sustainability, using completely natural substances and forgoing the plastic bottle altogether.

choose your poison or balance of trade

Not terribly keen on Western goods and for the most part self-sufficient, for European naval powers—especially the British with their particular weakness for Asian luxuries and tea—Imperial China from the early nineteenth century became known as the Silver Bone Yard. This comparison to a gilded grave was employed as the only enticement for the Chinese—the only reserve-currency that they’d accept, not wanting truck with pelts, flagons of beer, bales of wool, missionaries or whatever else was a typical European export at the time which was not derivative of what the Chinese culture had already perfected, like gunpowder and the printed word—was silver dollars minted from bouillon from the colonies in North and South America.
The discovery of New World silver had initially glutted the market and the commodity temporarily lost some of its shine. The Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch and British were willing to part with huge sums of specie in exchange for keeping up the trade in tea, silk and porcelain. As more and more silver went into China and none came out, however, a market-correction was due and again prices rose and the demand for precious metal grew, especially with wars to finance at home. In order to reverse the outflows of hard currency, merchants (with support of Parliament) plied the Chinese market with opium culled from poppy fields in Turkey and British-held India—which was an acceptable swap for a spot of tea, in lieu of coinage. Although used recreationally and for medicinal purposes—reintroduced to Western medicine as laudanum—use of opium as a war with drugs does strike me as rather unique, to flood one market to secure cheaper access to another, ostensibly equally habit-forming and ritualised item. Faced with a growing drug problem and traders flagrantly overstepping the bounds that had been proscribed for them, China capitulated (and the degree to which China was compromised is a matter of debate) by expanding access to British merchants that extended beyond a few select entrepôts and granting leases in perpetuity to foreign traders. Though of strategic importance and to modern eyes a serious territorial incursion, China had a standing practise of ceding land in the name of peace-keeping and appeasement, and in addition to the special administrative areas of Hong Kong (UK) and Macau (Portugal)—there was also Tsingtau (Prussia), Tianjin (Italy), Shanghai (Japan) and Shantou (jointly controlled by the English, French and Americans).