Bonn Travel Forum

Hello all To-Be Participants and everybody else who's interested in coming!
This is a thread to discuss issues of the meeting.

I thought for all those early birds, I might already post some hotel recommendations:

Youth Hostel Bonn (elevated standard, also family and single rooms)
http://www.djh-rheinland.org/jh/bonn/eng/index.htm
-- inexpensive, excellent value for money, on a hill about 3 km from the city centre (bus connection, taxi to/from city centre will be about 15 EUR)


Hotel Burg Dottendorf
http://www.burgdottendorf.de/indexeg.html
-- small and very neat, prices about average

Hotel Garni Jacobs
-- inexpensive, compareable to a British guesthouse
http://www.hotel-jacobs-garni.de/
also appartments available

Thanks Win for organising such a top notch VT meeting,
I had a great time and it was good to meet some new faces and of course lets not forget tasting some great new wines :-)

Win..........perfectly executed weekend!

Thank you so much for all the effort you put into getting the weekend to flow so well. Your knowledge of both wine and your home country made the whole event a wonderful success and very interesting.

I cannot congratulate you enough on your perfect hosting to us VT'ers. It was lovely to meet new people and old friends too.

Once again thank you.

Thanks for your flattering comments @Jo and Donna :)) I am happy the weekend went so well and that you liked it. I might write an email summarizing a couple of things and giving links to additional information later this week. I hope you realize that the success of an event also very much depends on the people involved -- and so I can happily return your compliments :))

Morning everyone. I'm so glad to hear that the Wineroll was a great success :o)

I was sulking all weekend!

I can't wait to start seeing the write-ups and photos.

Hiya guys,

I can only second the statements of Donna and Jo. It was a fulous meeting; very well organised by Win.

But I am also glad that soo many international VT members joined us here in Germany. We were 13 members from 5 different nations. That's not too bad ...
:-)

HORSCHECK :o)

I agree with that Holger -- since there are lots of international conferences in Bonn now due to Bonn's promotion to an official U.N. city, we should have more international visitors. I have been noticing an increased number of relating questions in the forum. I hope this will lead to more international diversity at our meetings in the future. Having said that, it was good to see the "usual suspects" as well :))

I might post a meeting request for the very first December weekend in order to visit the Ahrweiler Christmas market and I am also determined to buy a large box of that red wine we had at the Mayschoss winefest. (A 2005 Edition Saffenburg Pinot Noir by the Wine Coop ("Winzergenossenschaft") Mayschoss-Altenahr. It sells in our region's stores for about 11 EUR per bottle, 1 EUR is being donated for the preservation of the Saffenburg castle ruins.

Hello Win,

... just don't forget that there is already a VT Gluehwein (hot wine) meeting taking place in Karlsruhe on the 15th of December. It is scheduled in the meeting calender and some international VT legends have already signed up.

HORSCHECK :o)

seen it. Looked into my calendar to see if I could attend that one, but I'm very likely to follow last year's tradition to attend the wheelchair basketball xmas tournament in Belgium and stay there overnight (either Gent or Antwerpen) to sample the delicious beers rather than the Glühwein from Baden :)

Thus, I am planning for the weekend of 1st second December. It failed last year as a VT-meeting as well, but I went with 2 local friends anyway and we had a great time. Later in December everybody's calendar usually gets so crowded with meetings and celebrations that it becomes even more difficult to find a date.

That wine at the festival was yummy & considering you paid Euro 15 at the festival Eur11 is a great price - I might indulge your smuggling alto ego :-)

I can't make the gluwhein meeting as I'll be in sunny SA :-)

you wouldn't believe it ... today not a single cloud in the sky and it just got so warm in my office that I had to open the office window really wide... it's definitely 20 degrees outside...

Yep, I can say I had loads of fun with you guys! Thanks, Win, for sharing your knowledge with us!
I'm afraid there won't be any VT meeting in december for me, as I will be in Rio the first half of the month - and mostly working the other half...

*sigh* the money spending continues... I just got notice that next week in Bonn my favourite band from teenie times Level 42 will play a revival concert. You guys are probably either too old or too young to remember their wild early times from 1982 - 1985 when they were playing the meanest funk on the planet, way before they became too poppy...

....hmmmm, I am almost exactly your age .... :o)

HORSCHECK :-)

then you should know...:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QKI8pFqWm0s&mode=related&search=

I am happy to hear you all had a great trip wine-tasting trip on Saturday. The more sorry I am that I could not join.
It was great fun meeting some of you on Friday night and hope to meet you again sometime somewhere.
Thanks a lot for organising it, Win!

Thank you Win it was fantastic!

I'm rolling as I'm typing this as we are just off the train back from Germany this morning :))) Alice is happily playing with her friends outside so I've taken the opportunity to throw myself onto VT.

Had a great time! We went from Bonn to marvellous Speyer and walked on aircraft wings! Then to Heidelberg and its castle where we also tested its Kulturbrauerei and Vetter brewery before getting rid of those calories hiking up the Schlangenweg for great city views...phew! Alice scouted on ahead and kept shouting "more stairs", "another bend" :)))

Then went on to my cousin and her husband in Köln where we had an early Kölsch night in less touristy breweries and yesterday we had Sabsi showing us Düsseldorf! Action packed all the way. :) Now both my feet and liver need a rest so back to work tomorrow...

Thanks you lot for the postcard. I was feeling sorry for myself with a cold so this really cheered me up :o)

We missed you!

Have just found out that we were lucky to catch the night train back north on Saturday night. Our train departed Cologne at 22.39 and around 22.00 there was a huge electricity failure all over Europe, centred around the Cologne region with lots of cancelled trains...

Wouldn't have been so bad being stranded in Bonn eh Charlotta, just for a while longer ;o)

Not at all! I can hardly speak English today, having listened to a Cologne-dialect "folk song" CD on my way to work, which my cousin gave me - she knows I love cultural education, although having visited Sabsi in Düsseldorf too, I'm not sure Cologne would be considered cultural :)))

A note on the power failure -- they still are trying to find out the exact cause, but at the moment it looks like it was caused by utility company eon turning off one of its main power lines across the river Ems because a large newly built cruise ship was sailing downstream from the Meyer shipyards into the Dollart/North Sea. The ship's masts are so high that they nearly would touch the electricity cables. At the same time, there seems to have been a surplus of electricity generated by the many wind turbines in Northern Germany. The theory right now is that there's been something like a regional overload in the grid due to these two combined factors which then caused the other outages chain-reaction style.

Yes I saw the ship in a paper yesterday evening. Amazing how that can switch off Europe if it is indeed the cause!

By the way, what happened to your thread about unknown places in Germany? It seems deleted??? What was that town in Bavaria called?

It seems the thread was deleted. One more instance where I feel that VT deleting policy is handled a bit too narrow-sightedly :( The town is called Riedenburg, I'll soon make a page about it.

Thought so! I am a strong believer in synchronicity and well...I got engaged in your thread on those places yesterday only to come home and find that Keith had bought some ecological German beer. He was very happy to have found something eco labelled and when I examined the bottle to see where it came from, it said...you guessed it...Riedenburg!

Until yesterday I'd never heard of this place and voila, twice in the same day by two people I know...

LOL what a coincidence! I had bought a bottle of Riedenburg beer as well last weekend, reminding me of my visit to this place :) Amazing that the stuff is available in Sweden too :)) Did Keith buy it at Systembolaget? Unfortunately, I did not pay attention to the label and caught the alcohol-free variety tasting a bit like the very first Clausthaler that came out in the 80ies :) The brewery is very visible in the town occupying a nice historic building.

I paid 99 Eurocent and 5 cent glass bottle refund, not sure whether it was a 0,33 or a 0,5 bottle though