If you’re now tuning in, this is an ongoing collection of stories from travels to the German city of Bonn. The city of Bonn’s borders on Cologne which it also shares an airport with. Upon arriving I took the train from Cologne to Bonn where I’d be staying which is a good way to take in the sights aboard the rail.
That said one thing that did catch my eye was a peculiar thing that I noticed on the Bonn bridge. I had the chance of watching the sun rise along the Rhine. The Rhine river’s a lovely river winding down through the city and a memorable city in German history as well.
My sunrise on the Rhine was a great chance to put the S4 through its paces and especially the panorama feature of the phone. For those curious I use Snapseed for my post-production of my photographs.
One quirky thing about the bridge I noted with my good friend and host Jordis was the padlocks on the bridge. It looked a little bizarre to me as the padlocks were way too small to be for bikes or anything of value. Yet there were what seemed like dozens and dozens latched on. Puzzled, Jordis told me the story of “love padlocks” and how couples would get married in either one of the cities (both Cologne as well as Bonn) and lock a padlock onto the bridge. Their love sealed with a key (and in some cases a very elaborate set of padlocks) and the keys tossed into the river beneath. It turns out to be a global phenomenon too (and made me think of the Kenyan equivalent – how soon should we expect people to leave love padlocks on pedestrian footbridges?)
Jokes aside, the reason I was there in Bonn was to take part in Deutsche Welle’s own Global Media Forum where as part of the pre-conference the Grimme Institute selected several folk from across the globe to come into Bonn for a Digital storytelling workshop.
My showpiece had me do audio recording, video recording and use the S4’s own gif-making camera feature in my story.
Even though I won’t link to the story here my story touches on my own reflections of life, travel and my own fears, challenges and thoughts on what it means to be successful.
There was some goofing around as I discovered, below are a couple out-takes of some of the moments we had in the studio. I was able to record my segment of my out-takes of me doing the audio for my digital story. More of the gallivanting and stories coming up next week.
