Holy vertigo

“The weather was wretched. A blank Rhineland mist, like breath upon a mirror, lay over the whole developed wilderness of bureaucratic Bonn.” John Le Carre, A Small Town in Germany

Recently, living in Bonn has felt like living in a cloud. A grey, soggy cloud inhabited by lots of old ladies instead of cool people like Zeus or Anansie. Not that old ladies aren’t cool. Today at the doctor’s surgery I saw an old lady who looked exactly like a turtle. Facially, I mean – she didn’t have a shell. Can’t wait for that to happen to me.

Yesterday was a holiday in Bonn but we went into work anyway, and the for-once-not-foggy streets were so empty that on the way to the office I could wheel around on them like a clown on a bike. This is one of the main roads at 7:45 am:

It was Allerheiligen, or All Hallows, and apparently people in Catholic Germany spend the day solemly remembering important saints, holding vigils and visiting the grave sites of relatives. Not the highlight of the party season, then. On the fun front, I believe that at best you can expect a visit in the evening from some cheek-pinching godparent bringing the traditional Allerheiligen confection (which is bread-based, by the way, just to shake things up a bit).

Clearly, Germany needs more rampant commercialism. Enough dull days when nothing is open! Mind you, I think even the most ruthless corporate forces would struggle to commercialise a day when you mourn the passing of loved ones. Still, people who can turn the murder of God’s son into a weekend-long chocolate Easter egg hunt must have ninja skills.

By the way, I hope that the many readers of this blog appreciates the extreme vertigo I suffered to take that shot of the empty motorway. I was on the highest footbridge built by man, as you can see:

I think this bridge was in the first Indiana Jones film. Certainly you could bungee jump off it. Probably you could base jump off it. To take the photo, I had to ditch my bike (in case it suddenly came alive and made me leap off) and walk to the top while crouching, like ET. What I’m saying is that this bridge is a DEATH TRAP. I can never bring myself to look down, but no doubt if I did I would see many skulls of perished cyclists who have fallen off, like piles of buffalo skulls at the bottom of a cliff.