1. Rheinaue Park.
I liken this park to Cental Park in NYC. The park is huge and has several facets to it. It is on the Rhein river, but away from downtown. It has restaurants, beir gartens, playgrounds, ball fields, trails, ponds, gardens, and meadows. They hold several big festivals there every year and one Saturday a month is the flohmarkt (flea market). That is always fun, because there is no charge to set up a "booth" so this is where people come to have their "garage sales". After experiencing my first flohmarkt, I tended to avoid the park on flohmarkt Saturdays. A little too chaotic for me. My favorite festival was Rhein en Flamen. This isn't unique to Bonn, it is a festival held up and down the entire Rhein River, but at Rheinaue they set up a carnival with rides, concerts, and fireworks. We lived right on the edge of the park, so it was so easy for us to enjoy these things. Mike's favorite was always the BierFest. Bier stands from around the world were set up all over the main meadow, and you got to keep the glasses.
2. Public Transportation
It was so easy to get around in Bonn, actually in all of Germany for that matter. Trains and buses within the cities were very accessible and not tough to figure out. And to travel from city to city, even country to country was simple. The only time we didn't travel by train was to the south of Spain, and to Italy when we had a serious time constraint to catch our cruise ship. Even when we flew back to the states for a visit, we took the train to the airport. We had the bag toss down to a science. I was in charge of getting the kids and personal items (carry ons, stroller) on board. Then, I'd haul the bags out of the dorrway as Mike threw them in. The trains wait for no one, so it an important skill to have down.
3. Deichman's Shoes
No photo for this one, but this was like Payless in Germany, but better! Don't get me wrong, I love Payless, but this place had top quality shoes for super cheap. I still have several pairs purchased there. It was also great for kid's shoes. At the preschool the kids went to, they were required to have house shoes and boots. Well, the PX being what it was, slippers for little kids was hard to find. Boots too, and I had no time to oder anything online. When I was told I needed house shoes for Joey, I asked around about where to get them. Our Irish friend told me about Deichman's. He gave me some rudimentary directions. It was located off the Theatreplatz in the downtown shopping area. There are no streets in the shopping district, its all plazas and alleys. But, I needed the house shoes. So, one afternoon I loaded up Mackenzie in her stroller, got on the bus and headed out. I could not find the store! After a couple of hours wandering aimlessley, I finally sat down and tried to calm myself. I decided I would go back to the fruit stands I'd passed, get some fruit and just go home. As I was walking back to where the fruit stands were, there it was. I must have walked past it a hundred times! But, I got the house shoes and boots as well. And lots of excercise!
4. Getrankemarkts
The drink stores. These are stores set up specifically for beverages of all kinds. Beer, soda, water, wine, alcohol. They have it all. The beauty is the recycling system. You pay a pfand, or a small fee per case or vessel of beverage. When you return the empties, plastic or glass, you get a refund. The grocery stores do this as well, but they don't have near the selection.
5. Recycling.
Germany made recycling easy. Outside of your apartment building were several containers. You had your paper/plastic container, your metals container, your compost container, and then your trash container. These are huge dumpsters. All you had to do was seperate inside, then put it in the correct bin. And honestly, you didn't have to seperate a whole lot. I realize Washington is good at this, but not every state is. In Tennessee, we had to drive our recyclable materials to the processing place ourselves. And the only processers around were for paper and aluminum. South Carolina, same thing. Oh, and how could I forget Spurmule? That is big trash day. Once a quarter, the city would post the dates for each neighborhood's spurmule day. People then would put out the unwanted furniture, appliances and what not. Then, the public at large had a day to "browse" the neighbor hood for finds before the city picked it up and depending on the condition, toss or reuse what was left on the sidewalks. How cool is that?
1 comment:
napoleon had spring and fall pick up. i loved this. you could put out all that stuff like broken appliances, paint cans, furniture and stuff that you would have to take to the dump around here. it was great. people would start their piles about a week early and then the scavengers would drive around in pick up trucks looking through other people's trash. that was kind of weird, but the convenience of it was wonderful. and they would seperate out stuff that was fixable or recyclable too so you didn't have to feel too guilty about throwing all that stuff away!
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