World Cup Fever and Kate's Birthday BBQ in Bonn

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I'd been looking for an excuse to go for a proper motorbike ride for ages, so when Kate Hairsine's birthday in Bonn, Germany (about 250kms away) happened upon the gorgeous sunny World Cup opening weekend, Jeannie was good enough to let me jump on Katie (my bike, not Hairsine) for a quick spin across the border.

The plan was to arrive in Bonn on Friday night, in time to catch the second half of the game with Kate and her mates at an outdoor area set up with giant screens in the middle of town.

Disappointingly, a work-related late start meant that I didn't actually see or hear a single minute of the game. As these things often go, I arrived in Bonn at almost precisely the same moment as thousands of drunken Germans jumped into their cars and started doing bog-laps while hanging out of windows, beeping horns and flying German flags to celebrate their 4:2 victory over Costa Rica.

Despite missing the football, however, I can honestly say that I WAS in Germany for (most of) the opening game of the 2006 World Cup.

Somehow in all the mayhem, I managed to find Kate and her posse and we went to one of the local favourites for a feed washed down with a decent German beer or two. It was a lovely opportunity to catch-up (we hadn't seen each other since Lowlands in August last year) and finally got to meet her man Andy - who turns out to be a top bloke indeed! Nice work Kate ;-)

After politely turning down an offer to join some of the posse who were going "clubbing in Bonn" [1] with the excuse that I was plum-tuckered after the ride and saving my energy for the big birthday the next day, we turned in for the night at Kate's cool flat in Bonn's Altstadt (old town).

Jeannie joined us the next day (after a more leisurely drive) and we all headed to the banks of the Rhine to enjoy a wonderfully chilled afternoon and BBQ with some of Kate's mates.

It was actually a combined birthday/going-away since Kate was also preparing to move to Karlsruhe. There was a bittersweet vibe in the air for much of the afternoon; while Kate's friends were all happy to see her moving on and up into new stage of her career and a grown-up shared house relationship type situation with A BOY, they were sad that the extra 2 hours or so would mean that they'd see much less of wonderful, bubbly Kate :-( Likewise for Jeannie and I it was a reminder of the missed opportunities to spend time with Kate while we were so close. Kate's big move to Karlsruhe means that there's now a whole extra country between us! -- Granted, that country is Luxembourg and it only takes 30 minutes to cross, but still, it all just seems sooo much further now :-(

Nonetheless, we left determined to spend some more quality time with Kate and Andy, and look forward to checking out the new digs and exploring some more of beautiful Deutschland soon...

The return journey the next day (after being well fed and loaded up with leftovers) was fairly uneventful, if a little rushed due to my flight to Barcelona - see next post...



[1] If you've spent any time in Bonn, you'd know that tongue is firmly in cheek when that phrase is uttered by the locals - Bonn, being the former administrative capital (Aussies think Canberra) of West Germany has apparently lost the little nightlife it might have boasted before the fall of "the wall" and return of the capital to Berlin. Not that Bonn ever really had much excitement apparently, since people would generally just hop on a train to the much hipper town of Köln, just 30 mins away. back