Bonn

Bonn, the old West German capital. Dwarfed by it's near neighbour of Cologne, it was -- at face value at least -- a strange place for a capital. Hamburg has close to two million residents, Cologne well over a million, Munich too. Why Bonn? The reason has never been stated, but most believe it was to give the West German state a feeling of impermanence, and the sense that Berlin was the capital in waiting of a united Germany. That has come to pass, but Bonn still retains some of its former status as a place of government and politics. Many NGOs are still based in the city. And, indeed, the preliminary talks for the UN Paris 2015 summit on climate change have been and are taking place in Bonn. To most people, though, it's just a small, cozy university town, much like Oxford with whom it's twinned.Read more