Bonn; Saturday, 10 July, 2010

I had a leisurely breakfast and then set out into the wall of heat that met me as I opened the door of the hotel. If yesterday had been baking then I didn’t know how I was going to describe today, as it was due to be even hotter, though thankfully, considerably less humid.

First stop of the morning was the Haus der Geschichte der Budesreupublik Deutschland (the House of the History of the Federal Republic of Germany) at catchy name for what is a really interesting museum. From there it was a short U-Bahn ride back one stop to Museum König and a look around there, before heading back into the city in search of more water as I was almost out and starting to feel parched.

I stopped for a very light lunch before having a wander around the Munster, and then with the heat now really building headed down to the river.

There was no way I could do any more wandering around with the heat as high as it was, so it felt like the ideal time to take a cruise down the Rhine and I arrived at the landing stage a couple of minutes before the 2pm departure to Linz was due to set off.

The journey was very pretty with beautiful scenery all the way down to Linz. Heading against the flow of the Rhine it took nearly two and a half hours to make the journey (bang to the timetabled times all the way along). The return, if I had wanted to do it, would only take 90 minutes, which goes some way to explain the power of the Rhine in this area.

I had a brief wander around the town centre before heading off to the station to play timetable roulette. I couldn’t decide whether to catch the train back into Bonn, or carry on upstream to Koblenz. I decided that whatever the first train was I’d go in that direction. I got to the station five minutes after the Bonn train, but five minutes before the one to Koblenz, so Koblenz it was.

The train runs parallel to the river most of the way along, but beyond Linz the scenery, in places, gets a little more ‘industrial’ so I was rather glad that I hadn’t bothered getting the boat any further on. The final part of the journey is an impressive sweep around the back of town. The train stops on the East bank of the Rhine opposite the ‘Deutsche Ecke’ monument which marks the confluence of the Rhine and the Mosel. It then carries on a bit further, climbs up into the hills above the city, through a tunnel and then out onto a bridge across the Rhine, before turning back to head into the Hauptbahnhof.

I caught the bus from the station down to the Deutsche Ecke. When I came here last time everything was closed, the same was true today. The first time was because it was a cold, foggy, Thursday just before Christmas and everything was locked up for the winter. Today it was because it was just gone six, I had lost track of the time a bit!

I tried to have a wander down to the Ecke, but it’s in the process of being re-landscaped so access was pretty impossible and most of the area was a building site, so instead I had a bit of a wander through the old town before stopping for a bite to eat. I was purposefully timing this. Germany were playing in the Third place playoff at the World Cup final that evening and I wanted to time getting the train to match so it would be nice a quiet. It meant that I managed to get a fair choice of restaurants as all were set up with outside seating, but nobody had yet turned up as there was still nearly two hours till the match, so I was able to have a very pleasant light meal before wandering back to the station and catching an almost empty train back to Bonn, and from there a very empty bus back to the hotel.