World Germany Nordrheing Westfalen Dusseldorf

Molly's Irish Adventures!

Germany Adventure Nov 4, 2009

The next chapter in my crazy journey in Europe is a new adventure in Germany! There were two open days for new students to visit the school on Tuesday and Wednesday of this week (the week of the week of the 12th) and Nico was off to Italy to visit a friend and Miranda’s family was visiting and she was off exploring with them. So one night the week before my friend Amy (Amy is another exchange student from England) was over and i was just like, “Hey Amy wanna go somewhere next week?” and she was like, “Okay sure”. So we went off to the computer and found some cheap flights into Dusseldorf Germany.

So i set to work planning out our adventure. I was looking for places to stay and out of no where i remembered hearing about something called couch surfing somewhere before and decided to look into that. Couch surfing is an online sight that allows people to stay in other people’s hoses for free all over the world. You can look at their profiles and read reviews of people who have stayed there before and it’s actually a really safe and legitimate way of traveling, and fairly well know throughout Europe.

At first i had all these fancy plans spending our first night in Dusseldorf, then going to see a castle an hour away, taking a night train to Berlin, staying with Amy’s friend for one night in Berlin, then taking a train to Hannover and couch surfing there (i actually found a gay couple we were going to stay with which would have been fun) going to Amsterdam for a night, then taking the night train back to Dusseldorf to catch our flight. When i was looking the prices seemed decent and the travel time was long but i thought it was do-able... later when we got there we realized that the prices i was looking at were actually super saver prices for booking eight months in advance or something and the real prices were astronomical and the travel times were ridiculous and Berlin was way too cool to only stay in for one day... so needless to say our plans changed once we got there. Anyway i’ll get to that in a second.

So we got up ridiculously early to get a taxi, to get a bus, to get an airplane, to get a shuttle bus, to get a train, to get a tram, to get to Dusseldorf lol. But to back it up a bit, we got to the airport and it turns out we were in the middle of no where airport instead of the main airport (yay cheap airlines! lol) so we were confused by the info our first couch surfing host, Jutta (pronounced utta) gave us because they were from the main station and the number she gave me didn’t work. So we got to the train station and asked the girl who worked there for help, luckily everyone in Germany speaks English, so she was super sweet and let us use the computer and put us on the right train.

We got there and met up with Jutta, who was super sweet and welcoming right away, if a little flustered. It was her 30th birthday and she had to run off to get her hair done and then her parents were coming over, so we dropped our stuff in her apartment and set off to explore the city.

We had no idea where we were going or where to go, so we just would spot what looked like a church or something in the distance and walk that way, or decided which way to go by which street crossing signal was green. We saw a bunch of really cool churches (and they weren’t even the major ones, we had a map and couldn’t find any of the ones we saw on it.... so we came to the conclusion that Germany is quite church-filled lol). But we went on a search for Bailey’s to give to Jutta (we got her an irish shot glass that said “work is the curse of the drinking class” haha and a goofy pen that light up but we wanted to add some liquor to our gift to make it truly Irish lol) and we ended up stopping for some groceries so we wouldn’t have to by food (we awesomely got bread, nutella, and chips...way to be health and cheap haha). Then it started to rain so we headed back.

When we got back we gave Jutta her presents and she loved them and then we helped her decorate for the party. We also had some amazing sauerkraut soup that her mom brought over for dinner. Then we waited around for her friends to show up and partied with her. Her friends were super nice and all spoke english, but at one point it was amy and me with three guys all speaking in german so we entertained ourselves by filling in their conversation for them. It was a lot of fun while we were hanging around the house. Then we tried to go to a club and they wouldn’t let us in because they said we were too drunk. When we got back i kind of went to sleep and everyone else stayed up for a while. It was a really fun night.

But of course I paid the price in the morning... I learned a valuable lesson... mixing redbull vodka and my medicine is not a good combo, i was kind of destroyed. And i slept in my contacts and that resulted in a nasty eye infection in my left eye, i couldn’t open my eye, it was bright red, and hurt like a mofo. But Jutta helped us look at the logistics of the next step of our plan and we discovered my mistake in the price and decided to take a different course of action. There is something called car-sharing in Germany, it’s something everyone knows about and is very common. Some people do it for a job and other people just bring people along with them. So we found a car going from Dusseldorf to Berlin the next day for 20 euro, which for that distance is an amazing price. We ended up stay the day with Jutta and helping her clean up. She also had another couch surfer coming that day, so we got to hang out with Evan from Canada too. He was super cool and really good at the guitar. It was a really crummy day so we just lounged around the house and hung out. Jutta showed us her favorite movie, Into the Wild, and we just chatted and had a great time.

The next day Jutta took us to the meeting place for the car. It turned out to be a big van full of kids in their 20’s. One girl spoke English really well and was super nice to us. I was still really out of it because of my eye and i was still kind of sick (i don’t know if i’ve mentioned this but i had a chest infection for 4 weeks and constantly had a cough of death... it was pretty bad, but i didn’t let it hold me back!) so i just slept the whole 6 hour drive. But it was pretty cool they even played movies and made pit stops (we stopped at a rest stop with a Burger King... that was out of burgers... seriously) and such. It’s a really cool system, leave it to Germany right? lol But the driver actually dropped us off right at Amy’s friend’s house.

We got there and met Des, Amy’s friend. Amy lived in Australia for 7 months when she was 18 and worked all over the place and stayed in hostels and such. Des worked at one of the hostels she was at for a long time and they got to be really close friends. It was cool because this was the first time they had seen each other in 3 years, so they had a lot of catching up to do. Des is really cool, he is from South Africa, but Africans is his first language and he spoke english with an Australian accent. He is in his late twenties to thirties (i’m guessing) and ended up meeting a German woman, Liza, in the same hostel where he met Amy, and falling in love. They lived in South Africa for a while, but had been living in Berlin for a while. Des is now a goldsmith there and works from home. A very cool guy.

We got there and Des took me to a pharmacy to get something for my eye, because i was still kind of dying and couldn’t really open it. We got some drops that made it a lot less red and after some more catching up, he took us to see the King’s old house. It was beautiful with gardens and changing trees and old buildings. I took a bunch of pictures so i could actually see them later lol.

We got back and met Liza and her 16 year old cousin that was visiting her. She made us an amazing dinner and then we just kicked back and enjoyed some German beer after dinner (i only had one due to my dying state haha, i was just sitting on the couch with an ice bag on my eye... real life of the party i know). I was surprised to hear some of the things that they had to say though, especially after a few drinks. They defiantly had some strong negative opinions towards the US and i learned a lot about the actual state of things in South Africa, which is actually pretty nuts. I was pretty taken aback by the strength of the hatred of America. At one point when we were talking about the sights in Berlin Des said, “And Hitler blew this place up for an excuse to invade another country... like 9/11”. I was just shocked to hear something like that just brought up so casually. I talked to Amy about it later and apparently that is a common attitude among most Europeans. But they said things like all American movies are propaganda with flags and stuff in the background. They teased me a lot (that’s just how Des is though) but they didn’t say anything bad about me in general it was just interesting to hear what other people think of us. We really did a good job messing things up, that’s for sure. Then it was off to bed.

The next day I slept until 1... whoops lol (i blame the sickness) and my eye was a lot better. So we set out to see the sights of Berlin. First we had to stop off a few places so Des could deliver some of his work to the jewelers, but then we were off to our first stop, the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. It is this really cool old church that was blown up in WWII (1943) but not all of it went down and they left what survived standing as a reminder. Apparently when it got blown up people were in the rubble trying to save anything they could, which is how they built a new church in 1961 out of the glass from the rubble of the first church. It was really incredible, my favorite sight we saw there.

Then we took the tube (which was of course super punctual) to a chocolate store.... that had whole buildings made of chocolate! They had the church and the major buildings and a bubbling chocolate volcano! We got some chocolate and went to look at the main government buildings. It was kinda crazy because they were obviously filming something on the steps of one of the buildings. There were lots of people and booms and makeup artists... it was all very official, but we had no idea what it was.

Then we moved on to see the big red carpet area of Berlin, where the movie premiers and stuff are. Then we went and saw some remnants of the Berlin Wall, which was pretty cool. There is a line of sidewalk that is a different color that runs all through the city showing where the wall used to be. It was kind of crazy to think about how we just walked over no problem and not too long ago people were dying to get over, cool to think about. Not far from there on the east side we went and saw and old parking lot... nothing special at first and something that tourists would not know about, but since we were with a local we found out that it’s where Hitler’s bunker used to be and it’s actually where he died. Crazy to think about. It’s just a nothing parking lot but it’s where Hitler died.

Next we too another subway and saw the Berlin Holocaust Memorial, which was actually really powerful. It’s a bunch of evenly spaced concrete blocks and get bigger as you walk through them. I think it’s to represent all the people who died in a single concentration camp or something like that, I’m not sure, but it defiantly got the point across and made an impact.

Then it was off to two of the the most famous sight in Berlin, the Bradenburg Gate and the Rieghstag. It was crazy to stand in the green where people piled in to listen to Hitler’s speeches. Then we walked a mile long stretch to get to the Siegessaule- The Victory Column in the Tiergarten- a park in the center of Berlin. It’s to commemorate the Prussian victory in the Danish-Prussian war, it’s a huge tower with a golden statue of a woman on top. Amy and I (Des is afraid of heights) climbed the bazillion and three stairs (ok maybe it’s only 285 steps, but it felt like a bazillion. They even had chairs on the landings so people could rest haha) to get to the top - 220 feet up. My sick lungs were pretty mad at me, but i got to see what is undoubtedly one of the greatest views in Berlin. You could see everything. It was way cool. When we were done we were cold and tired... we got a lot in for one day! so we headed home.

Amy and I made Spaghetti Bolognese and we were fascinated by the ridiculously cheap beer prices and the bottle recycling machine in the store. After dinner we just had beer and chatted. It was a really nice night.

Then once again i did not die in my sleep coughing and Amy and I got up headed out to explore and get some postcards and such before we caught our car home. We saw some other old church (surpise i know) and found a tourist shop by the blown up church from the day before. We got back to the house (with Amy’s brilliant navigation skills and smarts on the subway... i would have been disastrously lost without her) we made it back, said goodbye to Des and got in our car share back to Dusseldorf. This time it was just a young guy and his mom instead of a van full of kids but it was a good ride and the guy (who was easy on the eyes hehe) gave us tips on where to go and all that once we got there.

We left our stuff in the bus station and since our flight was at 5:30 am the next morning and there was a bus leaving at 3:00 am we just decided to get some dinner and check out the pub scene in Dusseldorf. We had a really good dinner and then boped over to an irish pub (we just couldn’t keep away) then went to another pub and got the Dusseldorf brew... which wasn’t that great and as we were sitting there some guy randomly gave us roses and then a girl scantily clothed girl got up on the bar and started shaking it (she was obviously hired.... not some random girl haha) so we moved on to a bar that was so full of guys Amy thought it was a gay bar, but it turns out it was just a business convention haha. Then we went back to the bus station, got some brats (which were amazing!) and waited for the bus.... and this is where molly’s travel hell begins.

So we had an hour long bus ride to the airport, then we checked in and all that and waited for the plane. We got through security, who looked at my ticket, check in, who looked at my ticket, the guy to get into the gate, who looked at my ticket, and through the people who let you outside to get onto the plane, who looked at my ticket. Then we got onto the plane and the flight attendant guy looked at my ticket and said, “this ticket is for next week. you have to get off the plane”. And so i was kicked off the plane and sent back to the information desk. I was alone (Amy’s ticket was fine so she left) at 6:00 am in the Dusseldorf Weeze Airport... so i kinda freaked out. I promptly bought a phone card (which was ridiculously over priced of course) and called Dad sobbing. After much searching and collaborating and crying we discovered that the cheapest option was going to be the flight to Dublin for 260 euro.... ouch. That flight left at 2:30 pm and it was around 6:30 by the time i got my ticket and everything and i was exhausted, but i was terrified to fall asleep because i didn’t want to sleep through my next flight. So I lay down on a bench and tried so hard not to fall asleep... but i just couldn’t do it. so i set my iPod alarm to go off every hour. So i got a little bit of restless paranoid sleep before i finally got on the right flight. So I got to the Dublin Airport and found out that there was a bus that went right to UL, but that i had to wait two hours for it. So after waiting i finally got onto the bus... but it turned out to be the slowest bus in the whole world. It took five hours to drive what is normally a three hour ride, and of course i wouldn’t let myself sleep on the bus because i was paranoid i’d miss my stop to top it all off. But i finally made it and i can honestly say that i have never been and probably never will be so happy to see my house in my entire life. haha

But through travel hell, eye infection, sickness, and hangovers, i had an amazing trip! I saw some really incredible sights and i absolutely love Amy. It was definitely a once in a life time trip. Sorry it took me so long to get to writing this by the way. My ever lasting sickness just took all my motivation away, it was terrible. But after 4 weeks i went to the doctor and he confirmed that i had a chest infection, but it has finally cleared up and i’m all better now! No more constant coughing and all that! Just in time for the miserable Irish weather to set in haha.

Well that’s all for now, i’ll write about my hanging around Ireland life soon. Love you all!