What do they have? Bonn Capitals and the Bonn Carnival Festival Committee together? Both sell fan scarves! While the BC scarf highlights the Bundesliga baseball team’s green and white club colors, the festival committee’s new motto scarf is particularly colorful. “Colorful and tolerant, meet me in Jeckenland” is the appropriate motto. At one or two bar tables at the Bonn Connect event, the conversation about carnival automatically turned to politics: The federal election is scheduled to take place on February 23rd, when the carnival parades are already passing through Ippendorf and Schweinheim and the people of Dransdorf meet for a big morning pint.
“We are turning the festival tent into a polling station,” said festival committee president Marlies Stockhorst with a wink. And added seriously: “The first civic duty is to vote.” The festival committee is already looking for replacements for the volunteers from its own ranks who are election workers and therefore cannot be on duty for the carnival on Sunday.
Carnivalists and athletes: The interlocutors on stage showed the range of topics that Bonn Connect is about. At the invitation of RKG and General-Anzeiger, around 230 participants came to the Mercedes house of the Rheinische Kraftwagen Gesellschaft on Bornheimer Straße on Thursday evening.
GA managing director Kersten Köhler and the RKG managing directors Kai Uwe Frank and André Garrels welcomed guests from business, trade, culture, politics, sport and society from Bonn and the region. People from urban society should get to know each other better and exchange ideas on current topics.
“A lot is changing in the world, a lot is in motion, but we can be here for the sixth time,” said Kersten Köhler and thanked all the partners who helped shape and support the event. Kai Uwe Frank reported on the ongoing renovations on the RKG area and wants to present the Stellantis Group brands there next year in addition to the Mercedes world.
André Garrels, who returned to RKG as Managing Director two months ago, was at Bonn Connect for the first time. “Back to the roots, with the home brand and in the hometown,” said the native of Bonn, who grew up on the Heiderhof, graduated from high school at the “Päda” (Otto Kühne School) and studied at Mercedes in Stuttgart. “I already met someone here with whom I played music when I was 16,” he reported on his first conversations at Bonn Connect. He added that he was looking for an apartment in a conversation with GA editor-in-chief Helge Matthiesen. “We are here in the Rhineland, that should work. “You know each other, you help each other,” said Matthiesen.
Before guests can see the next game of the Bonn Capitals, they will have to wait until next April. “Baseball players are fair-weather players,” said chairman Mirko Heid. “We have real German champions here, which we don’t have that often in this city,” Matthiesen also welcomed the young player Erik Kunze and the former player and coach Markus Solbach to the stage. The Capitals still have the capital in their name. They have decided to keep this tradition. At the final series they had up to 2,000 spectators in the Rheinaue and are therefore in second place in Bonn, after the Telekom Baskets. “Baseball is no harder than Brennball,” said Held.
With wines and catering from the house Brogsitter The guests easily got into conversation with the Gasthaus Sanct Peter, which served autumnal venison ragout, pumpkin gnocchi and marinated beetroot. Oliver Coppeneur, head of the Coppeneur Confectionery, had brought a sweet selection of chocolates for dessert. For everyone who prefers to cook for themselves, publisher Antje Heel has published the hot-off-the-press book “My Court. Cooking with a professional” from the GA series of the same name. And if you’ve had enough of the November gray, you can fly to the warm with the tour operator Seychelles Insider. Everyone will be back until the next edition of Bonn Connect.
