Rainy season

Garret, I’d gladly send you over some of the rain we get here in Bonn at the moment, and take a few degrees from your heat in exchange.

It’s July – where’s the “Bonn is the northernmost city of Italy” heat?

Music

Craig went to Willie Nelson’s Fourth of July Family Picnic. Among many others (the concert was 12 hours long!), they saw Joe Ely, who seems to be one of Craig’s favorites. When André and I met Craig in Koblenz, he brought us a CD of one of Ely’s concerts: “Live @ Antones”. It’s great!

Titanwurz

The giant titan is 255 cm tall today (noon)! But it has grown only 4 cm in the last 24 hours, which is an indicator for a soon opening of the flowers, expected to happen on Friday or Saturday.

By the way, yesterday I wrote the plant was called “gigant titan” instead of “giant titan”, due to a typo on the Botanical Garden’s site. I was wondering whether it might be “giant” without the additional “g”…

Harry Potter

Hilfe, der vierte Band von Harry Potter erscheint übermorgen in Großbritannien. Dazu die Zeit: “Potter- Aktien fallen!”

Und ich habe noch nicht mal den dritten Band gelesen…

Erin Brockovich

I just returned home from the movies. The film, Erin Brockovich, was great. I’m not a special fan of Julia Roberts, but she played very good. Also, the story was gripping, even more so because the film is based on a true story. Here is the official home page of the film.

Botanical Gardens

On Saturday, Sheila had several links to Botanical Gardens. I added some, among them the Botanical Garden in Bonn. But somehow I missed that the giant titan (Amorphophallus titanum) is devolopping a new inflorescence. Only some parts of the page are in English, but you can see a picture of the giant titan, and the size of plant is displayed (today at noon: 251 cm, about 8 or 9 ft). There are also graphs showing the total lenght of the flower (in red) and the amount the flower grows every day (in blue).

The giant titan was discovered in 1878, grows only on Sumatra, Indonesia, and has flowered only about 70 times in botanical gardens. The largest flower ever developed in New York in 1932 (282 cm), and it is expected that this years giant titan in Bonn may even top that!

Auf deutsch heißt die Pflanze übrigens Titanwurz, und hier gibt es eine ausführliche Beschreibung.

Humor?

Susan found this quote on this page:

“Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.”
Douglas Adams

Wanna go sightseeing in Bonn?

When putting together the German part of today’s posting, I noticed some of the museums in Bonn have websites in English, too. Besides the Regierungsviertel, Bonn has lots of museums:

• Kunstmuseum Bonn, Art Museum
• Haus der Geschichte, History Museum (German history from 1945 to present)
• Museum Koenig, a natural history research museum

Here is a visitor’s guide to Bonn. And here are some webcams: a view of the market square, and a view of the city center. And Bonn from above.

Weblogging

Hmm, must have missed this yesterday. Maybe I was in bed already.

Al is (was?) rethinking ViewFromTheHeart and has gotten some interesting responses:

• Jeff: “What you, or any of us, do on ETP may be the most important thing we ever do.”
• Dave Rogers: “The structure and pace of our lives affords us only limited opportunities to have the kinds of conversations many of us seem to be having here. […]
  putting parts of your life on display requires a certain amount of courage, or ignorance, I’m not sure which.”

I have never really thought about this. When I learned about Manila and ETP, I started a weblog right away to try it out. I was not sure then that I would continue to update the site regularly, and I didn’t have a certain topic in mind, but it turned out it was fun! And kind of addicting, I’m afraid…

I still have no real topic, but post links to sites I happen to find, interesting thoughts I happen to read on other weblogs or elsewhere, and the occasional little thing that happens to me. Sometimes it resembles a scrapbook with pictures or quotes I like.

I met lots of people I would never had gotten to know otherwise, and there are many interesting things to think about that come up on other people’s weblogs.
Although I never had thought that other people would be interested in my postings, it seems there are quite a few who read my site, and that’s kind of amazing.

Al, keep up you weblog (as long as you enjoy it) because we love to read it! The same goes for many other webloggers, too!

Sightseeing in Bonn

Abgesehen vom nicht (mehr) sehr spektakulären Regierungsviertel, das jetzt eigentlich einen neuen Namen braucht, hat Bonn noch einige andere Dinge zu bieten.

Am Wochenende waren André und ich zum Beispiel in der Kunst- und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland auf der Museumsmeile. Dort haben wir eine Ausstellung mit Fotos aus dem National Geographic (von dem es auch eine deutsche Ausgabe gibt) und eine mit virtuellen Rekonstruktionen deutscher, vor und im zweiten Weltkrieg zerstörter Synagogen angeschaut. Der National Geographic hat auch eine Seite mit Fotos.

Gleich daneben liegt das Kunstmuseum, in dem am 12. Juli Die Ordnung der Farbe mit Bildern von Macke, Klee und anderen startet.

Noch eine Tür weiter befindet sich das Haus der Geschichte; dort gibt es zur Zeit Spuren der Macht zu besichtigen. Die Fotografin Herlinde Koelbl hat acht Jahre lang bekannte Persönlichkeiten portraitiert und interviewt.

Und dann gibt es auch noch das Zoologische Forschungsinstitut und Museum Alexander Koenig und die Bonner Version des Deutschen Museums, das August Macke Haus, das Arithmeum und einige andere Museen…

Hey, bei dieser Art von Sightseeing wird man nicht mal naß, wenn es – wie jetzt gerade – in Bonn regnet…

Und gerade habe ich noch eine Luftbildkarte beim General-Anzeiger gefunden.

Imressive!

Rick Saenz and his son have encountered really cool scultptures on their trip. How about this dragon?

Homeschooling

Rick Saenz has returned from a weekend trip and tells why he and his wife are homeschooling their kids.

Pictures

Jeff has colorful pictures from cows on parade in the Yerba Buena Gardens in San Francisco.

I especially like these cows.

Sightseeing in Bonn

Yesterday, I went for a walk in the former Regierungsviertel, the part of Bonn where the government used to be. I took some photos of the new building for the parliament (which was finished in 1992, three years after the wall came down and it was decided that Berlin was going to be the German capital once again…) and the Langer Eugen, the only skyscraper Bonn has. It used to be an office building for the members of parliament.

Gestern bei einem Spaziergang im (ehemaligen) Regierungsviertel von Bonn habe ich einige Fotos gemacht:

	This is the front side of the Bundestag. Die Vorderseite des Bundestages.
	The main entrance is on the left of this picture. Der Haupteingang dieses Gebäudeteils ist links am Bildrand.
	This is the side of the building that faces the river Rhine. Der Bundestag vom Rhein aus gesehen.
	The Bundestag with the office skyscraper. Der Bundestag und das Abgeordnetenhochhaus (“Langer Eugen”), mit abstrakter Kunst in rot.
	The Langer Eugen from a distance. Und nochmal der Lange Eugen aus einiger Entfernung.

Botanical Gardens

A few links to botanical gardens I’ve visited for Sheila‘s collection:

• Botanical Garden of the University of Bonn (short information)
• Hortus Botanicus Amsterdam (I visited it while in Amsterdam in May)
• The Berggarten is the botanical garden of Hannover. This is their web page, but it’s in German. Howeever, it has a nice plan of the garden. The Berggarten is part of the famous Herrenhäuser Gärten, the baroque gardens in Hanover.

I visited Strybing Arboretum last year while in San Francisco. I liked it a lot, especially the garden of fragrance.

School and University in the US and Germany

Garret, Scott and André contribute to the discussion.