February 14, 2009: The Journey Begins

I awoke anxiously at 6:00. I was crazy excited to meet up with Eric and Kate at the airport. So I headed out and picked up a loaf of bread from my favorite local bakery, there is about 7 within three blocks of my house. I grabbed some flowers from the adjacent flower store and headed home. It was 8:30 now and I had until 9:20 to catch my bus to the airport so I watched some CNN.

I should add that in my lonely afternoons in my humble German abode that I have only two channels that have English content to watch so I do not watch much TV. However due to how annoying the ads on MTV are I usually find myself watching CNN. Yesterday I was watching Anderson Cooper 360 and he was talking about the Bombardier plane that crashed in Buffalo New York. He however kept on calling it a “Bomb-ba-deer” not “Bomb-bard-dee-eh” this really bothered me so I wrote CNN an email correcting his pronunciation. I was happy to hear that they had fixed the problem.

Anyways 9:20 rolled around, I caught the bus and was on my way to the airport. The bus got off at a train station close to the airport and I headed up to the top level where I found the coolest form of public transportation ever invented. I got up and saw the SkyTrain. It is a two-car computer controlled trolley suspended 15m above the ground that travels along the track system that it is hanging from. I got off this fantastic engineering marvel and headed to the arrives gate. Then the waiting began.

I waited at the gate for about half an hour, flowers in hand, along side all the other anxious people outside the arrivals gate. Finally I saw them and behind the door and they came out 5min later after fetching their baggage. Hugs and handshakes were exchanged and we headed up to the SkyTrain. I was happy to talk some English with my brother and Kate and happy to see that they enjoyed the SkyTrain almost as much as I did.

We got off the train, took a bus to my flat and naptime began. I went for a 5km run while they were napping, then read 5 chapters of my book. I woke them up. Apperently Eric had not heeded my emails warning of quote “not being a fool and staying up until 2am.” He had stayed up all night in Edmonton and was a sack of tired when he arrived. Nap Time finished up, we walked to the S-Bahn station, hopped the train and were on our way into town for some sightseeing.

First stop was the Köingsalle, a famous road lined with posh stores and rich people in fur coats. We saw a Audi R8 and a Lamborghini Gallardo, sweet. Eric and Kate were still tired and complaining mildly, but we trudged on. I took them to see the Frank Gharry buildings in the media harbor and we headed up the Düsseldorf TV Tower to get a view of the city, something that I had wanted to de for a while. After this we decided to head home. A walk along the Rhine, U-Bahn and S-Bahn trip brought us back home. I busied myself making dinner and the prince and princess took a nap. After dinner my plans of heading downtown to a techno club were nixed in favor of more sleep so instead we had a beer at the sports bar across the road. Bedtime quickly followed. I hope that tomorrow has these two bringing their A-game.