greetings, once again, from bonn, germany, where we are currently experiencing karneval (mardi gras.) things are a bit crazy here and there this weekend and it is all new experiences for us.

our friend, dano, arrived in bonn last friday morning and we have been seeing the area and travelling around with him. on his first day before he could get any sleep we took him out to one of the university cafeterias and met a woman from eastern germany whom we spent two hours or more talking with. this was a typical dano experience. he has a knack for meeting people.

we spent the rest of the day dragging him around in his mostly conscious state to see the area and the zentrum. he even remembered things from this day!

the next day we went to bad honnef, the last stop on the southernmost metro line, where the birkenstocks factory outlet is. as happened the last time mrk. and i went there, time warped and we spent a couple of hours. but dano walked out with two pairs of inexpensive shoes, so it was successful. we spent the rest of the day trying to figure out the best way to make use of the all day pass we bought. we partially succeeded by taking an s-bahn just out of town during sunset, just to do it. after that we wandered almost all of the steets of the old city center, the zentrum. after dinner dano and i went to meet a friend to do a bit of the nightlife. one of the people with us had on tennis shoes and the club we wanted to go to wouldn´t let us in. so we went to a more relaxed bar and just hung out there. it was actually my first european bar experience. it wasn´t all that different from any american bar as far as i could tell, except that good beer wasn´t as expensive! we had a good time.

sunday is walking day. everyone around goes for family walks on sunday. this sunday was predicted to be sunny and relatively warm, so we were just one of many groups that day to walk up to drachenfels, a castle ruins on top of a hill overlooking the rhein valley. we met britta and a couple of her coworkers in bonn and the 6 of us went down to koenigswinter to begin our walk. it was a nice walk, all uphill. the views from the top were quite nice. we could see much of the rheinland spread out below us. we learned a couple of the stories that surround the castle and its name, all related to dragons, of course. in two of the three stories the dragons were, a little surprisingly, the good guy. we had a very enjoyable time and after eating a little lunch we headed back down.

the next day we went to luxembourg.

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