Bonn - all about Beethoven

The Beethoven festival is over for 2011.  It is held in Bonn annually, in late September and early October.  Nevertheless, there are still concerts, two or three a week, in Bonn, featuring the music of their greatest (to the fly) citizen. 

Off the train, take a mental snapshot of the location of the station  so that it can be found again later, and head in the direction of the Tourist Information Bureau  (standard procedure, that).  Have to pass by the Square with a massive statue of Ludwig van before getting to the Bureau, where, immediately inside the main doors, is another statue of himself, in a very fetching blue cloak with music printed all over it.  The map of the inner city area is exemplary.  Not only does it list the ten-top-things-which- flies- with-only-one-day must see, but it maps them out in a logically sequenced walking tour.  (Note to the French –  something to be learned from the Germans here).  

A re-fuelling stop first:  hot chocolate (still mostly eschewing the coffee, though it is not as strong as that stuff in Canada) and some ‘gebacke’ product – I point at something I have not yet tried.  This one was very ‘heavy’, deep-fried, a bit like French toast, and I only managed one of the three pieces they served me. Sat out in the square with Beethoven to eat this, read from my Kindle, and batted away the leaves swirling onto my lunch-plate. (Kindle has proved to be the one thing without which I will never travel again.)

The Beethoven Haus.  By the time Ludwig was born, his family had been church and court musicians for several generations, and were reasonably well set-up.  The house is big, with many rooms, a courtyard and a garden.  Beautifully maintained, it has many original manuscripts on display, as well as various instruments he played including his two grand pianos, which are set up facing each other as he always had them.  Also a number of the ear-trumpets he used, without much success, in the last twenty years of his life.  Heavy brass things, ugly and uncomfortable-looking.   His ‘conversation books’ became his means of communication. Beethoven left Bonn in 1794 at the age of 24, propelled by French incursions into the area after the Revolution.   He moved to Vienna, and never did return to Bonn.  

A look at the Rhine as it flows through Bonn was compulsory.  Again a wonderful Promenade; much river traffic, several bridges.  One of the newer bridges had solar panels right across the structure on the south side.