Friday, 22 June 2012
Friday morning came too early – 3:00 am to be exact. Our
flight was at 6:30, but we had to catch a bus to the Stansted airport, and the
bus that would get us there on time came at 4:40. Luckily, the bus ride was a
little over an hour, so I was able to take a decent nap. I was also able to
sleep on the plane and the train from the Weeze airport (where Ryanair flies
into) to the city of Düsseldorf. Being in Germany without being able to speak
or understand German was an interesting experience. Also, I found that Germans
live up to the reputation of being brusque. When we arrived in Düsseldorf, we
didn’t know how to get from the train station to our hotel. We didn’t want to
take a cab because we thought it might be too expensive and we also wanted to
get day passes for the metro. We followed the signs (which were all in German)
to a little kiosk with the information i
over it. We thought we would be able to get directions to the hotel there, but
the woman got mad at us and told us that she didn’t have that information and
that we would have to go to a different information kiosk. Luckily, the people
at the next kiosk were a bit nicer and they told us what tramline to take and
what stop to get off at, which was good, because we wouldn’t have found the
hotel otherwise.
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| Düssel River |
After dropping off our backpacks at the hotel, we headed out
into the city to walk around and do some site seeing. We didn’t really do a lot
of research about the city before heading to Düsseldorf, so we were kind of
lost as to what to do. Düsseldorf isn’t a huge city as far as tourism goes, so
there wasn’t a lot to do. We just walked by a lot of statues and cool buildings
that we took pictures of before heading back to the hotel early because we were
utterly exhausted. It turns out that despite the fact that we didn’t think we
were getting anything accomplished touring wise, we actually saw a lot of what
Düsseldorf has to offer without even knowing it.
Saturday, 23 June
2012
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| Düsseldorf Skyline |
We slept in a bit on Saturday because we were all so tired
from the day before. When we finally woke up and got going, we decided to be a
bit smarter about our touring and went on a bus tour. The bus tour turned out
to be the smartest idea we had all weekend because we saw all sorts of things
on the tour that we didn’t know existed. It even took us across the Rhine to
see the part of the city on that side. We also learned cool stuff about the
city that we would have learned otherwise. For example, we had been seeing a
lot of Japanese things, such as bubble tea and Japanese restaurants, but we
didn’t know why. We just thought it was strange that a city in Germany would
have so many Japanese things. On the bus tour, we learned that Düsseldorf has a
large Japanese population, numbering several thousand, making it one of the
largest Japanese populations outside of Japan and the largest foreign
population in Düsseldorf. There are a lot of businesses in Japan that use
Düsseldorf as their connection to the western world, and consequently, they
send a lot of their employees to Düsseldorf for around three years before
bringing them back to Japan. After the bus tour, we walked back down to the
river to eat dinner. I decided that I wanted to eat things that were
specifically German, so I ordered wiener schnitzel, pomme frites with
mayonnaise, and apple strudel for dessert. It was delicious! Following dinner, we walked around the
area for a little bit before heading back to the hotel.
Sunday, 24 June 2012
Sunday was a bit of a let down as far as touring goes. I had
been warned that things in Germany, and Europe in general, aren’t really open
on the weekends, but I didn’t really believe. But we learned the hard way when
we wanted to go souvenir shopping and all the shops were closed. Our flight
wasn’t until 7:00 that evening, so we decided to pass the time by going to get
one last piece of apple strudel. Despite all that, we still ended up at the
airport almost four hours before our flight because we had nothing else to do.
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