Monday 27 August 2007

Bonn, Germany

Well, I was lucky enough to get to attend a conference in Bonn, Germany just now. Bonn was the capital of West Germany during the split time, but it's a relatively small and quiet city. A wonderful place to just walk around. It's also along the river Rhine, there are boat cruises on the river (we went on one on the Poseidon, there was practically nothing for a vegan to eat) and the scenes were lovely. It's also great fun to walk along the riverside, in the evening lots of people gather there, put in camp fires or have small or big parties, live music, or just play around in whatever way they might feel like.

As for food, German supermarkets are packed with meat alternatives, especially fake sausages, since the Germans like to eat sausages. I quite like the hemp sausage, I already had tried them in Finland but they are German and much more common (and cheaper) over there. As for restaurants, that's a more difficult thing. There are usually some vegetarian dishes in the restaurants in Bonn, but not a lot, and they're generally not vegan. Of course there are falafel places all over the city, so you can have a quick vegan meal with that. And then there's one restaurant that's a buffet where you pay by the weight of the plate, I think it was completely vegetarian and they had marked the vegan things with a green dot. I think about 75% of foods were vegan. The place is called Cassius Garten and is located on Maximilianstraße, very close to the main railway station. Well, practically everything in Bonn seemed to be pretty close to the main railway station. They even have a web page.

On my way back I visited Frankfurt very briefly, just for a few hours. I asked the tourist information for vegetarian restaurants near the main railway station, but apparently there are none. I don't know how far they count "in der Nähe" though, so if you have more time in Frankfurt you can probably find such places. As for me I went off to an Indian restaurant near the station then, they did perfectly fine vegan food also. Strangely it seemed the neighbourhood around Frankfurt Hbf was filled with sex shops, one right next to the other. It's also a much bigger city and doesn't have the charm of Bonn.

6 comments:

dreamy said...

Hemp sausage! I have never tried it before, infact I have never tried anything hemp.

Great you are exploring all these places, do explore more, I like to see pictures hehe

Anonymous said...

Hello,

Sorry to hear your experience of Frankfurt.

I visited for a day (and night) last weekend and had heard of Naturbar, a vegetarian restaurant. http://www.naturbarfrankfurt.de/

It's near Eschenheimer Tor U-Bahn and was wonderful.

As you can see from the menu, there are a couple of things which are vegan, although the meal they modified for me (using soya cream) doesn't appear to be on there, but was delicious. So much so, that I need to go back to Frankfurt one day, if for no more reason than to enjoy another meal there.

Hank Freid said...

It is really nice post about Germany which emphasizes the different aspect of life in Germany, especially about their tradition, food & people. After reading this impressive post, i am also looking to have a trip of Germany in next coming holidays

Anonymous said...

Hi,

I begin on internet with a directory

Greeny said...

Thank you for your nice report about Bonn. It is also possible to get vegan food in the restaurant of the university (Nassestraße 11, 3 OG.) It's very cheap and tasty. In the city is a traveling snack named Vegibo it's vegan too. Germans like to eat sausage that's a cliché.I had to laugh :-)The young gerneration preference eat lightly with Asian, French and Italian influence. I hope that it will offer more food Vegan restaurants.When you're next in Germany, do couchsurfing or register in a vegan forum. There are a lot of vegans happy about the visit and a cooking evening.

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