I’m not entirely sure why I’ve decided to stay on in Europe as it approaches winter. Where was I on that one, dipshit? Sheesh! It has stopped raining for about a total of fours in the past few days. Sigh. Consequently I didn’t really see much of Dusseldorf. When I left the hostel it was raining. I had no umbrella (and I’m certainly not carting one around), so I had to make do with my scarf and the overhangs on the buildings.
I essentially walked around for about an hour or two and then headed back into the warmth of the hostel. I don’t think I missed out on much though, to my knowledge there’s not a whole lot in the city. A few nice buildings, a nice river to walk around….and lots of rain. Apologies to all the Dusseldorfians who no doubt feel that I’ve misjudged their city.
Sitting in the hostel I got talking to guys in an American band called Caspian who I gather must be reasonably successful to be touring Europe. I had a great conversation with them about random crap that I can’t remember now, and to top it off I really enjoyed their music – kind of instrumental rock, for a crude description.
The next day I went off to Cologne, although it took me some time at the train station to realise that I wanted to go to Köln – why don’t we actually use the freaking names of places! Sheesh! We could at least use something that vaguely represents the real names – I mean really, how on earth does Germany represent Deutschland?? Sigh. So….off to Cologne. After checking in I waited around for the Snuffmeister and fam for a while, and joined them for a tour around the Dom and din dins. The one sight in Cologne worth seeing was the cathedral (the Dom) which happens to be the biggest cathedral in Germany. It survived WWII, though by no miracle – the Allies used the cathedral as a landmark when they flew over so they deliberately didn’t bomb it. It is yet another beautiful dirty Gothic cathedral which was so freaking big that we strained ourselves to get the entire thing in a photograph and failed miserably.
It was great to see everybody again, and even better that I’ll be seeing them again tomorrow night in Frankfurt! Hurrah!
So…today I walked around Cologne reasonably uneventfully, as there is not a lot here to do apart from soak up the atmosphere. I accidentally went shopping, but you would not believe how difficult it is to find a freaking blue skirt! I know they’re going into winter, but jeebus! To make up for it I bought a dress with some blue on it. I also found it nearly impossible to find a bloody patch of a German flag that wasn’t ridiculously big.
For an introduction to the next scene I should direct you to the scene in South Park where Cartman blows a funny fuse? With me? (If not – essentially Cartman sees something so funny that he is unable to react or find anything else funny again). So….I was walking along the street when I saw an entire store dedicated to the sale of Lego. Just awesome, just…..awesome. I was like a kid in a toy store… They had clear ‘buckets’ of lego piece to choose from just like a candy store…and then I saw something which although I realise has been around for a while, I had never actually seen it….Star Wars Lego. It was so unbelievably cool that I didn’t know what to do. And then it happened. I blew my cool fuse. Up on the shelves, standing in all his glory….was a Lego General Grievous. My eye twitched, my cool fuse blew and I was standing there dumbfounded. Nothing will ever be cool again. I cannot express my feelings about this.
Anyway…got back exhausted after my shopping expedition and ended up talking for hours on end with two people in my dorm, Chris from Oz and Sarah from the States. Yep, politics, science, teaching….all the hot topics. I love my life.
And now I’m off to bed. Heading to Frankfurt to see the boy and fam which will be nice. I am exhausted from talking and blowing my nose from some ridiculous allergy I’ve developed in this hostel. Sigh. G’nite!!
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Dusseldorf and Cologne photos
Politics
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