Most of you probably know I'm travelling around Germany for 17 days with another exchange student. Our plan looks something like this:
23/3: London to Düsseldorf
25/3: Düsseldorf to Köln (hopefully including day trips to Bonn and Aachen)
28/3: Köln to Frankfurt
30/3: Frankfurt to Berlin
3/4: Berlin to Prague
6/4: Prague to München
9/4: München to London
Generally the days should be easy to fill, there's plenty of touristy/historical/authenticy stuff to do everywhere, and it's just the evenings that could potentially pose a challenge. Neither of us are massive clubbing fans, so we plan on lots of night exploring (safely of course Mum), perhaps some culture, food and anything else we can find that won't cost us lots of money and will let us be in bed in time to be up bright and early the next day.
Currently I'm sitting in one of the communal spaces of the Düsseldorf hostel - Backpackers Düsseldorf, and I would seriously recommend this place for anyone coming to Düsseldorf. Free internet, bed linen, towels, breakfast (toast, tea, coffee) and very easy to walk to everywhere in the city. The beds are wide and comfy (I note the wide element because my bed at UEA is very narrow, so it's nice to not feel like I'm going to fall out if I breathe in), the rooms are quiet, the lockers huge and the bathrooms not as dirty as is often expected. We hope that the rest of our accommodation is as decent - went for the cheapest places with the highest ratings on Hostelworld.com so hoepfully we won't have too much grottiness.
Düsseldorf has been nice. It's not the most interesting of cities, and I doubt I would ever have come here if it weren't for the super-cheap Ryanair fares we got. Which incidently landed us about an hour out of the city centre (although we knew this before we booked). There was something slightly confronting about landing at an airport that is an ex-WW2 military airbase, having just written an essay on the end of that war and the beginning of the Cold War - I'm discovering that history is still taught with a bias towards the allies, and when faced with solid evidence of the war, I still struggle to throw off the 'Germans equalled the enemy' prejudice years of school history has given me. Totally unfair, but I am working on it.
Ryanair. Not bad. Got us from A to B without any hassle, expect a lack of information about which desk to go to for baggage check-in. I was mildly concerned to see what looked like a teenage boy tending to the engine and checking the tyres and doing all those things you usually see four people doing on less-budget airlines. But he drove off in a buggy, so must have at least been old enough to have a driver's licence. And I felt both infinitely more relieved, and almost just as concerned when I saw Jesus was to be our flight attendant. I hadn't realised being a carpenter back in the day was of the same level as working for Ryanair today, or that the second coming would take place while I was strapped into a Boeing 737-800. But really, such things shouldn't come as a shock.
Back to Düsseldorf. We arrived, got into the city and realised it wasn't too far from the train station to the backpackers, and decided to walk. No problemo, except that the particular street it's on was numbered by a three year old who didn't realise 80 goes between 79 and 81. After staring at what should have been the right building for a little while, someone stopped and told us where to go, without us even asking. Earlier we'd had another helpful citiyen try to help us, only for us to tell him how to get to where we wanted to go...
There isn't all that much to do here. I'm quite relieved we're only here for a day and a half. Last night we went wandering, found dinner and then slept dinner off. Today we went wandering, went into the most unfriendly museum I've ever seen (the city museum what's more), tried to goad some swans into doing something other than sleeping, found Mo's Oma's old house (now above a McDonalds) and spent the best €3,60 ever going up the Rheinturm. If there's one thing you do in Düsseldorf, go up there. It's amazing. The lift goes at 4m/second, and the tower is about 240m high. You can spend as long as you like wandering around the 360 degree windows that have a magnificent view over Düsseldorf. Wandering, sitting or sleeping I should say. Photos to follow when I am on a computer through which I can load some pics.
After that we wandered back to the hostel, found some dinner and wandered until we ended back here again. We've now worked out a vague plan for Cologne, and will head there first thing tomorrow morning.
So far my German is coming back fairly well, but I'm not getting many opportunities to practise it - as usual everyone is überkeen to 'help' by speaking English, and it's so sporadic that we have to use German that I'm not tuning in quickly enough from the beginning of a sentence, and miss the first thing anyone says to me. But hopefully by the end of the time here I'll be a lot more confident, and will snap into the language just like that.
Well that's all for now. More to follow, not sure if any of our other hostels offer free internet, so you may have to wait until I get back to the UK.
Tschüßi bis später!
Generally the days should be easy to fill, there's plenty of touristy/historical/authenticy stuff to do everywhere, and it's just the evenings that could potentially pose a challenge. Neither of us are massive clubbing fans, so we plan on lots of night exploring (safely of course Mum), perhaps some culture, food and anything else we can find that won't cost us lots of money and will let us be in bed in time to be up bright and early the next day.
Currently I'm sitting in one of the communal spaces of the Düsseldorf hostel - Backpackers Düsseldorf, and I would seriously recommend this place for anyone coming to Düsseldorf. Free internet, bed linen, towels, breakfast (toast, tea, coffee) and very easy to walk to everywhere in the city. The beds are wide and comfy (I note the wide element because my bed at UEA is very narrow, so it's nice to not feel like I'm going to fall out if I breathe in), the rooms are quiet, the lockers huge and the bathrooms not as dirty as is often expected. We hope that the rest of our accommodation is as decent - went for the cheapest places with the highest ratings on Hostelworld.com so hoepfully we won't have too much grottiness.
Düsseldorf has been nice. It's not the most interesting of cities, and I doubt I would ever have come here if it weren't for the super-cheap Ryanair fares we got. Which incidently landed us about an hour out of the city centre (although we knew this before we booked). There was something slightly confronting about landing at an airport that is an ex-WW2 military airbase, having just written an essay on the end of that war and the beginning of the Cold War - I'm discovering that history is still taught with a bias towards the allies, and when faced with solid evidence of the war, I still struggle to throw off the 'Germans equalled the enemy' prejudice years of school history has given me. Totally unfair, but I am working on it.
Ryanair. Not bad. Got us from A to B without any hassle, expect a lack of information about which desk to go to for baggage check-in. I was mildly concerned to see what looked like a teenage boy tending to the engine and checking the tyres and doing all those things you usually see four people doing on less-budget airlines. But he drove off in a buggy, so must have at least been old enough to have a driver's licence. And I felt both infinitely more relieved, and almost just as concerned when I saw Jesus was to be our flight attendant. I hadn't realised being a carpenter back in the day was of the same level as working for Ryanair today, or that the second coming would take place while I was strapped into a Boeing 737-800. But really, such things shouldn't come as a shock.
Back to Düsseldorf. We arrived, got into the city and realised it wasn't too far from the train station to the backpackers, and decided to walk. No problemo, except that the particular street it's on was numbered by a three year old who didn't realise 80 goes between 79 and 81. After staring at what should have been the right building for a little while, someone stopped and told us where to go, without us even asking. Earlier we'd had another helpful citiyen try to help us, only for us to tell him how to get to where we wanted to go...
There isn't all that much to do here. I'm quite relieved we're only here for a day and a half. Last night we went wandering, found dinner and then slept dinner off. Today we went wandering, went into the most unfriendly museum I've ever seen (the city museum what's more), tried to goad some swans into doing something other than sleeping, found Mo's Oma's old house (now above a McDonalds) and spent the best €3,60 ever going up the Rheinturm. If there's one thing you do in Düsseldorf, go up there. It's amazing. The lift goes at 4m/second, and the tower is about 240m high. You can spend as long as you like wandering around the 360 degree windows that have a magnificent view over Düsseldorf. Wandering, sitting or sleeping I should say. Photos to follow when I am on a computer through which I can load some pics.
After that we wandered back to the hostel, found some dinner and wandered until we ended back here again. We've now worked out a vague plan for Cologne, and will head there first thing tomorrow morning.
So far my German is coming back fairly well, but I'm not getting many opportunities to practise it - as usual everyone is überkeen to 'help' by speaking English, and it's so sporadic that we have to use German that I'm not tuning in quickly enough from the beginning of a sentence, and miss the first thing anyone says to me. But hopefully by the end of the time here I'll be a lot more confident, and will snap into the language just like that.
Well that's all for now. More to follow, not sure if any of our other hostels offer free internet, so you may have to wait until I get back to the UK.
Tschüßi bis später!
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