Düsseldorf and the Flight

After a two hour delay due to bad weather, I boarded the plane. I was lucky enough to sit next to the girl I had been talking to for 2 hours already; I didn't have to go through all the pleasentrie and introductions again. Talking and laughing and eating and very unclear maps made 6 hours go by pretty fast. I arrived in Dusseldorf around 10 in the morning, and after some coffee I bid farwell to Marcelline, and set out to explore the city. She had to catch another train to take cross country to her home.

I headed to city central. I wanted to go see the Rein river. When I got off the train I found myself quite tired and a bit lost, so I decided to have some snack before I continued. A nice looking greek cafe did the trick. I had Turkish Coffee and some large cheesy flaky pastry. They seemed to make a big deal out of the fact that they gave me water with my coffee, later i found out that they generally serve bottled water in germany, so you have to pay for it. Actually you have to pay for the bottle when you bu water or cola, and then sell it back. In the states basicly we do the same thing, but in Germany its a seperate charge, and sometimes bottles are rather expensive, as much as 50 cents.

Düsseldorf was a very impressive city, it was full of old style buildings, alleyways, parks, musuems and also a lot of rich people. There was a very sudden and noticeable class difference. If you weren´t dressed in designer clothing you were begging for money, or a german "punk" more on punks later.

Later I went to explore a bit around the Rein river. Mostly I just saw people enjoying cold drink looking out on the water trying to survive the heat. It was a good 100 degrees that day. I wandered around until I found an art musuem. It was a rather large and diverse collection of art. They had a room with some of Napolean's belongings and portriats as well as a photo project of different ethnicities and some art satirizing the Nazi party as well. I was the only person in the museum, so I was able to enjoy it all my own.

Then I spent the next hour or two trying to get to Köln.