Bicycles!

This was a stay at home and relax kind of weekend. All the haribo candy is gone which probably wasn't the healthiest thing I've done lately. Saturday passed by with my bed holding me in its clutches but on Sunday I went for a bike ride. With the sun lighting up the kitchen my host mom checked the temperature and saw that it was 0 degrees. I think that's the warmest it's been in a while. She invited me to go on a bike ride around Ramersdorf but said we should go before it gets late and the temperature drops. Thinking that my body would be warm from the exercise I forgot to consider that my hands and head pretty much stay still while on a bike. I brought gloves at her suggestion but left behind my beanie and scarf. At first the bike ride was nice and the temperature wasn't too bad. We crossed the Konrad Adenauer bridge and at that point my hands and ears were freezing. Next to the Rhine there are streams or ponds or something but some body of water that had frozen over and there were so many people ice skating that it was like seeing something from a movie. There were people on the ice playing with their dog by throwing a stick. The dog couldn't keep himself steady and he would run after the stick while slipping and when he caught the stick he couldn't stop and just slid into some bushes. We kept going and found the Japanese garden that was so small but really adorable! Pretty much all that water was frozen over except where the water pump was. Right next to the Japanese garden was a little pathway that had Roman headstones on both sides. My host mom also told me

that in April the Rhinegarten turns green and is covered in flowers but towards the end of the month the park is one giant flea market with people selling just about anything. There was also a garden for the blind near all this. It was a small cute park with a statue of a tiny elephant and kids and the signs were written in Braille and German.

All this was going on in the area to the left of this poorly taken photo

So we continued on and somehow made our way to Bad Godesberg and there were two semi-large fenced in areas with deer in one and goose in the other. The goose were being ignored but there was an elderly couple feeding nuts and bread to the deer so we stopped to pet them. When the deer realized we had no food they turned and left us alone. After the deer there was a mausoleum, a church and a castle and the former buildings that used to house the embassies before they moved to Berlin. All the buildings around this area were so pretty! Here's the mausoleum (using a photo I didn't take).

We crossed the Rhine on the ferry and quickly made our way back to Ramersdorf. She was explaining places to me that I think I'm supposed to know but I have no idea what she was talking about. I just listened to her and wondered how the heck we made it back so quickly when instead of getting farther away from the house like I thought we were getting closer. Looks like after 3 weeks here I'm still directionally challenged.

(for the photo! http://mw2.google.com/mw-panoramio/photos/small/26384420.jpg)