By bike

When I moved to Bonn seven years ago I thought it would be fun to go to Cologne by bike instead of by train. Of course I never got around to actually doing it – until it almost was too late. Two weeks ago, just a few days before we moved, I figured it was now or never, so I took a break from packing boxes and spent one afternoon on my bike. I took some photos along the way, but it will take a while to edit them, so here’s a little preview.

Even though there is some heavy industry along the river between the two cities, much of the way the Rhine looks like this:

And here’s a shot of the famous cathedral in Cologne, seen from a distance.

Community

Happy 49th birthday, Hal!

Ch-ch-ch-changes

Whew! We finally moved last Saturday, and I’m happy to report that everything made it to our new flat safe and sound. In case you’re interested, we now live in Andernach (site in German – sorry, I couldn’t find a good one in English). The town has about 30,000 inhabitants and is next to the Rhine (just a few kilometres upstream from Bonn), but also close to the Eifel (deutschsprachiger Link). Both offer a lot of beautiful scenery and opportunities for outdoor activities like hiking and biking.

Apart from a few very minor scratches, our furniture is still in one piece and mostly in its new place, about half of the 50 or 60 moving boxes are unpacked already, the kitchen is fully functioning and we even have curtains and lamps in every but one room. As you can see, the phone and internet connection is functioning as well (the Telekom managed the transition without a glitch, yay!), which is good.

I’ve been offline for a couple of days, so I have a lot of online-reading to catch up on, but I have little time for that before everything is unpacked and sorted. Besides, the weather is absolutely gorgeous here right now, so I much prefer to spend some spare time on our new balcony instead of in front of the computer. We really need a wireless internet connection so I can combine the two.