Bonn Voyage

(Daily Mail, April 2006)

Like all the best trips, it began with an argument in a pub. Innocently asking if anyone had been to Bonn recently, I was laughed down by someone who was adamant that it no longer existed.

I was fairly certain this couldn’t be right. I knew that in 1991, a year after the Berlin Wall came down and Germany was unified, Bonn was stripped of its status as the old West German capital, and most of the government, along with the diplomats and the focus of the German people, went to a reborn Berlin. The falling of the wall became like a falling curtain for Bonn, its time in the spotlight suddenly over.

Understandably, the place would have undergone something of a transformation, but a complete disappearance seemed unlikely, and so I went to see for myself.

Admittedly, there were few signs of Bonn’s existence on the shelves of the airport bookshop. For a sense of context, though, it should be remembered that Bonn is only the 19th biggest city in Germany. It’s the equivalent of, say, Wigan being the capital of England for forty years after the war, or Lonely Planet dedicating an entire volume to Bolton.

Absent from the list of this year’s football World Cup venues, and with seemingly no-one I asked knowing anything about the place, could Bonn really have gone from being the capital of a leading nation to no more than a faded memory? Even on arrival, it wasn’t cut and dried as Bonn humbly shares its airport with Cologne, but as I checked into the new Derag Hotel on the Adenaueralle, around the city’s ‘museum mile’ district, I was reassured that I wasn’t staying in a figment of my own imagination.

The city, which dates back to Roman times, grew up as most places did, around the church, now the Munster Basilika, a blend of Romanesque and Gothic styles that dominates the city centre skyline. Completed around 1248, it has a famous modern-day graduate in the shape of one Father Joseph Ratzinger – His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI to you.

A stroll across the main squares of Munsterplatz and Markt revealed colourful Baroque buildings, such as the Altes Rathaus, a striking pink and gold Town Hall. Turreted relics of the medieval fortification peep out unexpectedly, and the magnificent university, restored to its 18th century glory, hinted at a place of some refinement and elegance. This is mostly due to Bonn having traditionally been a dwelling of terminally wealthy aristocrats and acolytes of the church, with no stinking, working-class industry churning out smoke or industrial waste. It was a place of art, religion and cultural pursuits.

Granted, the RAF did essentially use the place for target practice during WWII, and some of the main shopping streets are now the standard issue Starbucks and McDonalds drags, but considering it’s something of a forgotten city, Bonn has lots of memorable sights. It just seems to suffer from a particularly low profile.

My misinformed pub friend was evidently not alone and Bonn’s anonymity is equally rife among many Germans. “Even here, people think that the lights have gone out,” said Jean Hilck, who has lived in the city for over 30 years, a lament reinforced by most of the locals I met.

“When the decision was publicly announced from the town hall (to move the government to Berlin), you could hear a pin drop. There was a quiet devastation for some time,” said Jean. “Our identity has changed, but we’re still here. We may no longer be the political hub, and there are a few less glamorous international balls, but we are still a cultural centre, and we’ll always have Beethoven, of course.”

Ah yes, Beethoven. You might vaguely be aware of this obscure composer, who was born in Bonn in December 1770. Slightly sidelined for this year of Mozart-mania, in this city his image looms large, even if they do have to share bragging rights with Vienna.

The sculpted brow of his statue scowls across the Munsterplatz as well as from various types of confectionary in the local bakeries. You can even visit the very room where little Ludwig came screaming into the world, a rickety wooden cupboard of a place that now forms part of the impressive Beethoven-haus museum on Bonngasse in the city centre.

The wealth of exhibits betrays a true obsessive’s collection, with everything from original symphonic manuscripts, the composer’s own instruments and even his outsized ear trumpets, used in vain to address the trifling matter of his deafness.

One of the highlights is in the newly-built cyber-showroom, where you can sit in a dark room and enjoy a psychedelic, 3-D rendering of his Fidelio with abstract, laser-beam characters that you can actually control. It’s a novel way to experience opera if nothing else. Meanwhile, the study rooms are filled with enthusiasts lost in their headphones as they plunder the digital back-catalogue.

Bonn has long welcomed those of an artistic bent, and as the ‘Gateway to the Romantic Rhine’, it has hosted poets, artists, philosophers and all manner of heavyweight thinkers seeking inspiration from nature. It was also the launch pad for affluent travellers on their valley-bound grand tours, past the medieval castles and down the valley through the wine regions.

The river bookends the eastern boundary of the main city, though across the water, the district of Beuel has been incorporated into Bonn. It’s one of Europe’s busiest waterways, and Bonn’s is the longest Rhine promenade, with almost 30km to walk, jog or cycle along.

There are plenty of opportunities for replenishment, and according to reports, Bonn has among the most gourmet restaurants per head in Germany. The traditional Rhenish pubs around Markt offer temptation enough though, and at places such as Brauhaus Bonnsch, locals devour hearty dishes of venison and wild boar, washed down with miniature glasses of beer brewed on the premises.

Besides good living, it’s artistic endeavour and progressive thinking that have been hallmarks of the city’s development, and this legacy is readily apparent in the Museumsmeile (‘museum mile’), a collection of world class museums along the highbrow highway running south out of the city.

The first I came to, the Koening Museum, is where the constitution for the Federal Republic was hammered out in 1948, the following year seeing Bonn named ‘temporary’ capital of the new state. It is now one of Europe’s most respected Natural History museums. A short walk away is the snappily named Haus de Geschichte der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (The Forum of Contemporary German History), a veritable wonderland of multimedia exhibits (mainly in German) that detail German history since World War Two.

Just next door, a hulking art complex houses the Kunstmuseum (Art Museum) and the massive exhibition centre, the Kunst und Ausstellungshalle. The decidedly postmodern surroundings and architecture are fitting for the thoroughly modern collections, including August Macke and a host of German expressionists. Completing this handily located batch of museums is the Deutsches Museum Bonn, which focuses on the country’s technological accomplishments.

This set up may smack of prescriptive German efficiency, but it highlights the real selling point of Bonn – essentially that it is well organised and compact, with all the infrastructure and cultural advantages of a large capital city. Bonn has been referred to for some time as The Federal Village with more than a hint of mockery, but to my mind, this should be a boast as opposed to a stigma.

The people of Bonn have the reputation of fun-loving, beer-drinking realists, with a strong sense of humour and liberal attitudes. Their local motto translates as “it will come as it will come”, a kind of Teutonic ‘que sera, sera’ that has stood them in good stead during their strange journey as they begrudgingly stepped down from the world stage.

For now, the city eagerly awaits the Japanese World Cup squad, who are guests for the duration of the competition this summer. Perhaps some downtown Tokyo izakaya is even now witnessing a heated debate between two strikers about whether their host city really exists. They will be pleasantly surprised.

(back to Arrivals)