A Visit to Cologne Part 6: In which the author confesses he's not a huge Beethoven fan.

Let's just clear the air right now: I'm not a big fan of Beethoven.

I've got nothing against the guy, really I don't (I like him WAY more than Mozart, who I couldn't care less about). And I've enjoyed playing his piano pieces when I was taking lessons more frequently. But outside of one CD of string quartets I've got at home, I don't listen to him much. Being honest with myself, the name Beethoven brings up memories of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure more than music.

And while in Bonn, I insisted on pronouncing his name like Bill and Ted: "Beeth-oven" not "Bayt-hoven."

So there was a humorous touch of irony when Chris, Kelly, Megan and I headed off to the maestro's home town of Bonn and we were almost single-minded in our effort to search for the grave site of Clara and Robert Schumann, who Chris and I like quite a bit.

But let's give ol' Ludy a break here. We did go on the walking tour, and it was quite a bit of fun swinging by the home where he was born, peeping out the pipe organs that he played (there's really not a pipe organ in Bonn that he hasn't played) and the public square where he macked on some local girl.

One sad note about the walking tour we picked up at the tourism office, one of his homes was rebuilt in the 1970s into an apartment building. They really need to just take that one off the tour. There's not even a plaque.

But then we hit the cemetery, which includes the mystery gravestone of Beethoven's mother. Someone came along, saw a neglected plot, put two-and-two together and figured it out. Now there's an updated, well-kept but modest site with a quote from a letter little Ludy wrote during her life.

But all of that paled in comparison to the giant marble behemoth of a memorial left for Clara and Robert Schumann. When I die, I want someone to erect something like this for me. There be angels, little girls with butterfly wings, it's got the works.

The main part of the site appears to be a statue of Clara, looking adoringly up at the relief profile of her husband. It's a little sad that one of the few women composers recognized in our history is depicted in her site looking up at her husband, who in relief profile seems somewhat outside of reality. But I also can't criticize because when I talk about it Megan elbows me in the ribs to remind me that there's another body under there other than Robert's.

Walking through the entire graveyard it's easy to get lost in the grandness of it and the history. The plots range from beautifully maintained homages to Bonn's lost saints to illegible rocks overgrown with green ivy. There's nothing new to be found here.

Those passed are long past at this site, and each plot, whether unkept or meticulously cared for, seems almost otherworldly to my American eyes.

Chris has lots of photos of the graveyard in Bonn found at his Picasa page.

The rest of our trip to Bonn involved a city-wide search for a chocolate shop Megan saw earlier in the day. We finally found it, and it was well worth the trip.

Megan snagged a whole bunch of chocolate that we enjoyed for several weeks after the end of our trip.

The shop doubled as a little cafe. The menu consisted of a tray of truffles, fondu or (what we ordered) dark chocolate hot chocolate! They brought out our glasses which had powdered chocolate hearts sprinkled on top. I almost couldn't drink it, until I remembered I had a camera. *click!*