The Ripuarian says hi.

Originally this blog was supposed to be called „the hinterland“, for that term seemed to describe quite accurately the kind of physical and - as I have to admit – sometimes even mental surrounding I am situated in and accustomed to, but that url was long gone.
So “The Ripuarian” it is. Ripuarian is the scientific name of the dialect spoken in the very region of Germany I am living in and was born to, which makes me technically a Ripuarian, although I don´t speak dialect very much.

I am living in Bonn (pop: 316.416), a fair city of modest extent, located at the banks of the Rhine (in German “Rhein”), where the river gets broader and lingers in deserved lazyness after having done a marvellous job carving out the ravines and gorges of the more spectacular Mittelrhein area south of Bonn, where all the tourists go to see the Loreley, the Drosselgasse in Rüdesheim (famed for the world`s largest winebarrel) and ruins of medieval castles, destroyed by history`s various German-French wars or the even more frequent battles between rivaling “Burgherren” (a feudal title my dictionary won´t translate).



Bonn, founded as a fort on the wild frontier of the roman-germanic borderland about 12 BC, boasts with being the birthplace of Ludwig van Beethoven, who made it to Vienna straight after highschool. Bonn made then - courtesy of Ernst Moritz Arndt, August Wilhelm Schlegel and a couple of other boffins with spectacular sideburns - some decent contributions to the intellectual life of 19th century Germany, before it hit the news again in 1948 as capital of post-war, pre-unification West-Germany (a country that no longer is, as you will surely know).
Given the much more suited candidates for the job, such as the labourous yet glamorous Frankfurt our cute lil`provincial town of Bonn was an odd, rather unlikely choice, but since Harris` British Bombers had been utterly occupied targeting nearby Cologne, Bonn made it through the war relatively unharmed. Compared to the Mad Max-like wastelands of other cities in post-war Germany that was a convincing unique selling proposal. Besides that, the first chancellor of the second German republic, a staunch catholic yet ruthless politician named Konrad Adenauer, proclaimed it in a grand autocratic gesture capital for the simple reason that he was living in the neighbourhood.

It is getting late, dear bogus reader, and I will rest now. But if - by chance - you did enjoy my rant about this little town of mine, lo and behold, there´ll be more musing of that sort. Good night.