Dusseldorf

So now the travel shinnanigans begin. Skip forward to the train to Dusseldorf starting to stop (nothing happened on the train anyway), and I was kinda sleepy, so I looked at my watch in it was the time at which my stop was due. So I quickly picked up all my stuff and hopped off the train. I had talked to Dave (who I was meeting and staying with in Dusseldorf) and he suggested I should go to Schloss Benrath, so I put my bag in a storage locker, found a train going there, and went. I found it a little odd that the train I caught there was not the one that Dave had told me to get, but there was only a couple of numbers different, no worries right? (sounds kinda like a Tui ad). I arrived at the stop for the castle and went for a quick walk up the road to see it. Now at this point you are probably expecting I have cocked something up, but no! Here is the castle:

Its pink! Hilarious. Unfortunately the last tour was at 4pm and it was 4:10 so that was crap, but not the end of the world. So I went back to the station and got someone to help me get a ticket back to the central station, where my bag was, and where I would meet Dave. Apparently the "Central Station" is called "Hbf" so I went to Dusseldorf Hbf. It was when I got off the train I started to suspect that something had gone astray. This station looked very different to the one I had stored my bag at. Hmmmm. I went to an information desk and described what had happened.They were pretty confused and I think they had pretty poor english for information desk workers (said like a true lazy english speaker). They asked for the key I had to the locker and looked it up. Apparently it was a key from a locker in Duisburg, but that was impossible because I had stored it at the main train station (central station). I txt Dave and said I had a problem and he said "OK, I will wait at the main entrance of Dusseldorf Hbf for you", then it dawned on me. Up until then I was convinced that I had dropped my bag off at the central station and now I was standing in another station. To test this theory I went to the main entrance. Unfortunately I found Dave there and proved my theory wrong. Which meant my bag was somewhere else. But now that I had an excellent english speaker that could also speak German quite well (he is, in fact, German) we managed to figure out that I had got off in the wrong station to start with (it honestly didn't seem that obvious at the time, you know how you get thoughts fixed in your head). He was absolutely amazed that I had got to the Benrath Castle though. So we went on a tiki-tour to Duisburg to re-obtain my bag. I then also found out that the tickets I was buying were about half the price I should be paying and you are also supposed to "validate" them. Hell, gimme the oyster card any day! It took us about an hour to get back to square one but we had a good yarn on the way. We then put my bag in another storage locker (this time at the real central station, not the one pretending to be) and went for some well deserved beers. We bought beers from a news agent "kiosk" (apparently you can do that) and went for a walk around Dusseldorf. It is a really cool city, quite an outdoor feel with lots of outdoor seating and umbrellas. We found this cool thing:

The whole thing is made of 4 smaller things that are actually dials that read out: electricity usage, district heating, gas and water consumption. Pretty cool for an energy nerd like me. On the way back there was a pretty cool sunset:

Most of what we drank was "alt" beer (translated to "old") which I am yet to look up but I think it is a style in itself. Very tasty. We went to one really cool bar:

There was no free tables so we sat down with two older women. In Dusseldorf (and I guess other places) when you order a drink they put a mark on your drinking coaster as a tally and pay when you leave. There was barely enough room on these womens coasters for any more marks! So we had a bit of yarn to them (as you do). I could hear Basil Fawlty in my head saying "don't mention the war". Well, I mentioned it once and I think I got away with it! I think one of them brought it up though. When the older one was just born a bomb went off very close by and she was completely covered in soot. It was really cool that we had quite a candid yarn about it and how it affected both sides. They also suggested a jazz bar for us to go to, so we went there afterwards. We brought the average age of the place down a fair few years but it was pretty awesome, there was a band playing with: Trumpet, Double bass, Trombone and a banjo! They did lots of different music including a really cool jazz song and an awesome blues song featuring a harmonica solo.

Then we picked up my bag and went home with no further travel fehlers. I really loved Dusseldorf, Dave has done lots of travelling (I think he collects countries, he is up to about 60 I think) and says it is his favourite city in the world, and I can see why. Thank you very much for showing me around it! Proost!

We had to get up at 5:30am in the morning so that I could catch my train so not much sleep last night either. I am writing this on the train to Brussels (while eating a sandwich that was expertly prepared by Dave, Danker Shun!) where I hope to taste some fantastic Belgium beer. Seems like this trip is turning in to one big pub crawl but I'm genuinely interested in the different types of beer so I think that makes it OK. So I'm sorry about the ridiculously long post but you've finished reading now so well done.