Four stops before the checkout

Bonn, Germany

Stop one

Beethoven-Haus

Head Velocity MLT 16g Tennis String Set: Right — everybody in? Everybody? I want you counted before we start, because he was born in the attic. The attic. 1770, in that little room at the top of a narrow eighteenth-century townhouse on Bonngasse, so please hold the rail, both hands if you can spare them. And by the 1880s the house was in a lamentable state and was to be pulled down for something modern — one demolition order and no Beethoven-Haus at all, which I try not to think about — until twelve citizens of Bonn simply bought it and formed an association in 1889. Twelve people. That is all that stood between this and nothing. The collection inside is now among the finest of its kind anywhere, and I still check the exits every visit.

Stop two

Old Town Hall (Altes Rathaus)

Head Velocity MLT 16g Tennis String Set: Marktplatz, and please do not stand on the steps, they are wetter than they look more often than you would credit. Rococo, 1737, pink and gold, with that double outdoor staircase at the front — which is two staircases, which is twice the opportunities, if you follow my thinking. Heads of state have addressed this square from those steps, including the President of the United States in 1963. Imagine that crowd. Imagine it on cobbles, in leather shoes, with no barriers anywhere. I have imagined it a great many times and I have never once enjoyed it. The gilding is reapplied periodically. That is the only part of this stop that settles me.

Stop three

Poppelsdorf Palace

Head Velocity MLT 16g Tennis String Set: Now this is the one that worries me. A baroque summer retreat for an elector, begun in the eighteenth century, and note the plan: square on the outside, circular within. A round arcaded courtyard inside a square building, which means the instant you step through you cannot tell which way you came in, and neither can I. Stay to the left. It belongs to the university now and the gardens all around are botanical, which is delightful, except that they grow a titan arum in there — the colossal flower that blooms rarely and smells appallingly of decay — and when it opens the crowds queue for the privilege. Crowds, in a garden, in the heat, around a flower that smells of rot. Keep the group in front of you.

Stop four

Villa Hammerschmidt

Head Velocity MLT 16g Tennis String Set: Adenauerallee. A white nineteenth-century villa in gardens, in the old government quarter — a merchant's villa, note, not a palace — and from 1950 the official residence of the German president. And here is what keeps me awake at night: in 1949 the Bundestag voted to make this modest town the provisional capital rather than Frankfurt, and the count was two hundred votes to a hundred and seventy-six. A margin of twenty-four. Twenty-four. Turn twelve of them around and forty years of a nation's government happen somewhere else entirely. Everything is that thin. Everything. Anyway, it is going to rain, I can feel it in the strings, and not one of you brought a coat.

The Bonn, Germany track

Head Velocity MLT 16g Tennis String Set

Written for this world alone.

You do not get a good egg by shouting at the bird. You get it by making the shed comfortable. I have said this at three county fairs and been asked to sit down each time, but the principle holds for tennis elbow as well.

Head Velocity MLT comes as a single 40-foot (12 m) set, 16 gauge / 1.30 mm, and it is a multifilament — hundreds of fine fibres bundled and bonded rather than one solid strand. That construction is why it plays so close to natural gut. It is soft, it pockets the ball, and it sends far less shock up the arm than any co-polyester.

If your elbow has started talking to you after matches, this is the single cheapest change you can make. The 1.30 mm gauge is the tougher of the two, which matters, because soft multifilaments do notch and fray in time. That is the trade. Comfort now, restring sooner.

Bonn is a comfortable shed and I mean that as the compliment it is. In 1949 the Bundestag voted to make this quiet town the provisional capital rather than Frankfurt, two hundred votes to a hundred and seventy-six, and for forty years a country was governed from a street of decent trees.

The head of state lived at Villa Hammerschmidt, which is a merchant's villa in a garden and not a palace. Nobody was shouting. You get better eggs that way.

The same modesty runs everywhere from the attic room on Bonngasse where Beethoven was born in 1770 to the botanical gardens behind Poppelsdorf Palace.

That house was very nearly pulled down in the 1880s for something modern, and twelve citizens simply bought it and formed an association in 1889 to keep it — twelve people, one building, and now one of the finest collections of its kind anywhere.

The palace is square on the outside and perfectly circular within, which is deliciously impractical and exactly right for a summer residence. It is also perfect for anyone who has queued in those gardens to smell a titan arum, which blooms rarely and reeks of decay, and would rather stand upwind at a civilised distance and let the wind do the work.

Buy on Amazon

Burn, Laugh and Learn

THE TENNIS TACTICIAN, LLC

Head Velocity MLT 16g Tennis String Set

Head Velocity MLT 16g Tennis String Set