When we got back to Stuttgart after the Sindelfingen Plant tour yesterday, we did some shopping on Königstrasse, Stuttgart’s main shopping street, but by 2:30 we were bored.  We headed to the airport, thinking we could hang out and use their Wi-Fi until our flight at 10:25 pm, but the Wi-Fi at the airport was broken!  Once again, I’m not a fan of airports or flying…

Stuttgart Airport turned out to be surprisingly small and crappy (we didn’t notice when we first landed here on Tuesday).  After you go through security, there’s only one place to get cooked food and they closed at 7, just as we were about to go eat there!  There were 3 places open to buy sandwiches, but the sandwiches looked like they had been sitting out all day and weren’t appetizing at all.  We ended up eating Burger King, which Paul had to go back out of the secured area to get, and drinking an insanely overpriced €5 bottle of water from the sandwich store.  I really hate the fact that they don’t let you take bottled water through security!

Thankfully, our second Germanwings flight was much more pleasant than the first.  The check-in staff didn’t harass us to weigh or size-check our carry-on bags, so we were wearing multiple layers of clothing and carrying ludicrous amounts of stuff in our pockets for no reason.  Also, the flight attendants were very pleasant, unlike on our flight to Stuttgart where they seemed sick of their jobs.  The best part of the flight, though, was meeting the person sitting next to me, a half-Turkish half-Greek guy named Ilyas.  He struck up conversation by asking where we’re from, and for almost the entire flight we had a very pleasant chat getting to know one another.  Once again, we’ve met someone we’ll really keep in touch with after the trip!

To enter Turkey as a tourist, Canadians must to purchase a “90 Days multiple entry sticker type tourist visa” upon arrival for €45.  Our flight landed at 3 am Istanbul time so the visa booth was closed, but a security guy helped us find someone to re-open it.  Interestingly enough, we were the only people on the flight who needed to buy a visa!  By the time we got this sorted out and passed through customs and immigration, it was almost 4 am.  Since it would take another hour by shuttle bus to get to city center, it wasn’t worthwhile to pay for a hotel for the night so we found a comfortable bench in the airport and waited for the morning shuttle today.  Although the Sabiha Gökçen Airport is smaller than Stuttgart Airport, spending 6 hours here was far better than 6 hours at Stuttgart Airport.  Food and drinks are reasonably priced (a bottle of water cost 2 Turkish lira, which is about $1.40 CAD) and places were actually open at 4 am!  More importantly, the Wi-Fi actually worked, but there’s a small charge. 

At 10 am this morning, we caught the HAVAS shuttle bus to Taksim square, a major shopping, tourist and leisure district in the center of Istanbul (bus costs 12 lira per person and actually drops you off about a block from Taksim square).  Outside of the metro station, we picked up Akbil transit passes, which are small stainless steel “buttons” on a plastic holder (similar to a key fob).  You pay a refundable 6 lira deposit for the Akbil and then load whatever amount you want on it (just like London’s Oyster cards).  Contrary to what we read on the Internet, the Akbil doesn’t give you free transfers for 45 minutes, but it does reduce the transfer fare by 50% (e.g. we had to change from the funicular to the tram and instead of paying 1.50 lira per ride, the Akbil deducted 1.50 lira for the first ride and another 0.75 lira when we went through the gates to the tram). 

The last 24 hours have been excruciatingly long with far too much time spent at the airport, but I’m looking forward to exploring Istanbul!  First, though, we are taking a nap at the hotel

Apart from going to the museums, one of the things we really wanted to do while in Stuttgart was tour the Mercedes-Benz Sindelfingen Plant, where the S-Class, E-Class, C-Class, CL-Class, CLS-Class, and Maybach vehicles are made.  We had read that all you have to do is phone well in advance to make a reservation, but all of the numbers we tried went to automated messaging services that were in German!  Finally, on our first day in Stuttgart, Paul managed to find a phone number (+4970319070403) for the Mercedes-Benz European Delivery Center, which is at the Plant, and they were able to schedule us in for the English tour today, before our flight to Istanbul this evening.  We are so glad we had a late flight and could fit this tour in…

Since we had to check out of the hostel before heading to Sindelfingen, we stored our backpacks in a large locker at the main hauptbahnhof, where we caught the S-Bahn to Sindelfingen (you can rent lockers for €2 per hour €4 for 24 hours).  The train ride took about 30 minutes and then we hopped on a free shuttle to the Mercedes plant (a bus leaves from bus stop #9 or 10 next to the train station every half an hour).  When we arrived, we realized we could have brought our backpacks with us because they have luggage storage at the customer service center (which makes sense because most of the people that come here to take delivery of their new vehicle are from outside of Germany), but again, hindsight is always 20/20!

After checking in, we headed up to the customer lounge, where a number of people (most of them obviously waiting to pick up a new car) were enjoying the assortment of free drinks and snacks (things like crackers with smoked salmon, pastries, fruit, soup, etc.).  Since we had half an hour to kill, we grabbed a bit of food and a coke and sat down to watch people take delivery of their new car in the huge delivery bay below the lounge.  Paul was expecting the delivery area to be nicer than it was, but having worked at several dealerships, I was quite impressed – it’s the largest delivery bay I’ve ever seen (you could probably fit a hundred cars in total in the room) and as soon as one car went out, another one was moved in to take its place!  Later, on the tour, we learned that they deliver an average of 300-400 cars per day at Sindelfingen, which is astounding, compared to the 3-10 deliveries per day I used to deal with when I worked at Mercedes-Benz in Vancouver.

When it was time for the tour to begin, we were ushered into a room with six other people (all of whom were coincidentally here to pick up a new E-Class) for an audio-visual introduction, which told us a bit of history and some basic facts about the plant and which vehicles are produced where.  Our tour guide then gave us safety glasses and a headset so we could hear him once in the factory, and we hopped on a shuttle bus to get to the first building, where we saw robots weld and put together the body frame of the S-Class.  Seeing the robots move around and put things together with amazing speed and precision using laser sensors was probably the coolest part of the whole tour – I’d almost rather have one of the robots than one of the cars they’re putting together!  The safety glasses pressed against my eyeglasses was not a good sensation, but we were so close to the robots that we almost got hit by welding sparks a few times so I understand why they’re necessary

Once we finished in this building, we dropped off our safety glasses (thank God) and the shuttle bus brought us to the next building, where we saw dashboards (that had been put together and configured elsewhere) get mounted by robots into almost complete S-Class body frames, before the doors are installed.  From here, we walked along and saw the cars move backwards and forwards through 12 continuous assembly lines as the electrical components were hand installed by master level workers.  Our guide then walked us to another building which was attached to the one we were in, and we saw where the engines get mounted into the almost complete vehicles.  Unfortunately, the elevator which brings in the almost complete body frame had just malfunctioned, bringing the entire assembly line to a halt, so we didn’t get to see much of what goes on in this area.  

The entire tour took a total of about 2 hours and afterwards we caught the free shuttle back to the S-Bahn station to get back to Stuttgart.  I think it’s one of the coolest things we saw on this trip, especially since it was all totally free!  We felt a little out of place since we were the only ones in our group not picking up a car, and the snobby American couple from Alabama didn’t help (the wife had the nerve to say “have you held one of those keys in your hand? They’re wonderful” when we got to the final assembly area and I wanted to respond “B*tch please, I’ve driven every car they make except the SLR” but I held my tongue).  But we owned two Mercedes before we left on this trip and it’s likely we’ll get another when we’re done travelling, except next time, I’m taking European delivery!  For now, we’re hoping to get into the Honda factory tour when we’re in Japan next year – it would be interesting to see how their factory compares to the Mercedes factory!

As you may know (either from knowing us personally or from reading the about section), this trip became reality partially because I was working in the car industry as a finance manager and got laid off. This career path began at Mercedes-Benz Canada, and although I’ve long since left the company, I remain loyal to the brand and still believe they make some of the best cars in the world. Today at the Mercedes-Benz Museum, I was reminded of all the reasons I believe that, and even felt a bit of remorse about leaving the company, but everything happens for a reason and if I hadn’t quit, I don’t think I’d be here visiting the museum now!

Compared to the Porsche museum (or any car museum for that matter!), the Mercedes-Benz Museum is massive, encompassing 16,500 square meters of exhibit space spread out over 8 floors. Although the building is a few years old, it’s still a very modern facility and the circular design makes it easy to follow – you simply take the elevator up to the 8th floor and work your way down in circles. Each floor has a specific theme, ranging from “The Invention of the Automobile” to “Races and Records,” and it more or less goes in chronological order.

The audio-guide is included with your 8 euro entrance fee, but unless you plan to spend at least fours hours at the museum, you probably won’t use it that much. We spent about 3 hours there and I ended up only using the audio guide to watch a few films, hear about certain vehicles I was interested in, and listen to the introduction to each floor, which plays automatically when you head down the ramp to the next floor (there’s a sensor). I think if you listened to everything on the audio guide, watched all the movies, and read all of the exhibits, you could be there from open to close!

Because of my employment with Mercedes-Benz Canada, I already knew quite a bit of history about the company, but the museum was a good memory refresher. Like most people, I tend to forget that Karl Benz and Gottlieb Daimler started two totally separate companies, and never even met each other in their lifetimes. It was to ensure survival during the war that the two companies (Benz & Cie. and Daimler-Motoren-Gesellscaft) pooled their interests together and created the Mercedes-Benz brand the whole world recognizes today. Nowadays, I don’t think anyone can imagine Mercedes without the Benz

Unlike the Porsche museum, on the “Times of Change” floor the Mercedes Museum acknowledges the company’s involvement with the Nationalist Socialist government, the ways in which they benefited from the “Fuehrer State” (such as government contracts which boosted sales), and the fact that they used forced laborers from concentration camps when they got into arms production during the war. While their apologies and financial retribution can never fully make up for their participation, I appreciate the fact that within a museum dedicated to all the great things they’ve accomplished, they still acknowledge this significant black mark on the company’s past. I, for one, didn’t know that they used forced laborers and I found a lot of info on this floor to be quite interesting.

When we finished with the museum (and by finished I mean quickly looked at everything of interest), we went to return the audio guide and were happily surprised that we could keep the lanyard that was holding it as a souvenir! I think the lanyard alone is worth the 8 euro admission fee! Before heading back to the hostel, we had a look around the dealership attached to the museum, which is also impressively large, but only 3 floors, not 8. Although it’s quite a nice dealership, there didn’t appear to be that many people shopping there and we only saw a handful of sales people. I wonder how many cars they actually sell each month…

Part of the reason we are flying to Istanbul via Stuttgart (other than the fact that it saves us money) is because Paul actually wanted to go to Stuttgart because it’s where the automobile was invented and Mercedes-Benz, Maybach, and Porsche are all still produced in Stuttgart or nearby towns, and each has a museum you can visit.  Since we woke up late, we decided to just go to the Porsche museum today, and save the larger Mercedes-Benz Museum for tomorrow, when we will force ourselves to get up on time…

In addition to heading out the door late, we ran into some difficulty when trying to buy a public transit pass.  Paul had read online that there is a €13.90 three day tourist card, which allows you unlimited travel in all zones for three consecutive days, but we couldn’t find this ticket on the self-serve machines at the S-Bahn station.  We went to ask at the ticket office and had to wait 20 minutes for the only rep that spoke English to finish with the girl she was helping, only to find out that they don’t sell this type of ticket, you can only buy it at the tourist information office at the main train station or at the airport!  Since it was such a big savings (€13.90 for three days vs. €15 for one day), we walked to the tourist information office, which was about 1.5km away, and bought transit passes there before heading to the Porsche museum.

The current Porsche museum is a beautiful modern facility that was just opened in January of this year, at the Porsche headquarters in Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen.  It was a bit smaller than I had expected (5600 square meters of exhibition space spread over 2 floors), but they’ve created a nice looking display and the info in the exhibits was interesting and well written.  My only complaint is that it was a bit confusing since the escalator takes you to the middle and you’re not sure whether you should go forwards, backwards, left, or right.  It took me a couple turns to get oriented, but I discovered that going forwards is best if you want to go through the exhibit in chronological order, starting with how Ferdinand Porsche began as an electrical engineer, became technical director at Austro-Daimler, and then founded his own design office and designed the Volkswagen Beetle, the first “German People’s Car.” 

The rest of the floor features about 80 “icon” cars (in chronological order going counter-clockwise), small exhibits related to the technical achievements of Ferdinand Porsche, and a bit about his son, Ferry Porsche.  Going up the ramp to the smaller second floor, you arrive at a larger exhibit dedicated to “100 years of Ferry Porsche”  and learn how Ferry Porsche transformed the company his father founded into the car manufacturer we know today.  As I put together information to write this blog, I find it interesting that, apart from a mention that Ferry Porsche assumed responsibility for the company when his father was taken into custody by the French in 1946, there is no acknowledgement of the ugly part of the company’s past – their involvement with the Nazis.  It was with the Nazi party’s help that the Volkswagen Beetle went into production, and Ferdinand Porsche’s arrest was actually for his involvment in war crimes, but there is no mention of this anywhere in the museum.  Although he was found not guilty, it would still be nice if they acknowledged the company’s involvement, because they definately were tied with the Nazi party in some way.

At the end of the day, my Porsche museum experience has enlightened me about the brand and the men behind its name.  Nothing they produce will ever be my dream car, but knowing the history of the company, I can see why they are some people’s dream car.  Racing legacy just isn’t my thing 

Our flight today was not until 5 pm, but since we had to check out of the hotel at noon, we decided to just head to the airport and kill a few hours there instead of wandering around with our backpacks.  Had I known how small the Budapest Ferihegy International Airport is, though, I would have opted to eat lunch somewhere around the hotel before going to the airport because the options there were pathetic and overpriced.  If you’re ever flying in or out of Hungary, be forewarned that the Ferihegy is the largest of the country’s five airports, but it’s the smallest airport I’ve been to and there’s only a handful of places to eat, with only one place serving hot food (although there is a second terminal about 2 km away that we didn’t go to).  Terminal 1 is so small, in fact, that there aren’t even check-in counters for each airline – they share counters so you can only check in 3 hours before your flight when your appropriate airline has taken over a section of counters.

This was our first time flying with German Wings, a low-cost airline similar to Ryan Air.  Everyone harps about how Ryan Air is so strict about carry-on luggage, but today’s experience with German Wings was ten times worse than anytime we’ve taken Ryan Air!  At the check-in counter, they made everyone place their bag (even if it’s just a purse!) on the conveyor belt scale (the one you put your checked luggage on normally) and if you’re under the 8kg limit, they tag your bag as carry-on approved.  With our backpacks, the lady at the check-in counter also asked us to put them in the size checker.  My backpack, the Osprey Aura 35, is fairly small as far as backpacks go, but it has a curved backpanel for ventilation which makes it fit awkwardly into the size checker.  Because I couldn’t slide it in and out of the size checker easily, the check-in lady said it was too big for cabin baggage at first.  But, after a bit of rough shoving and yanking by Paul (accompanied by us snapping at each other) showing that the bag does fit in the checker, she said “ok, it’s too big but it’s ok” and finished checking us in, letting me keep my bag with me but not giving me an approved tag.

Paranoid that we’d get checked again at boarding and maybe have to go back and check my bag (which costs an extra 20 euro and would be a huge hassle), I pulled almost everything out of my bag and tried to re-pack it better once we went through security.  We managed to transfer a bit more stuff to Paul’s bag, but the shape of my bag just doesn’t make it possible to slide it in and out of the size checker easily!  Between the hassle of worrying about the weight and size of your carry-on baggage and the hassle of going through airport security, flying as a method of transport is, for me, the worst possible option.  I’d rather take a bus, train or boat any day, but unfortunately the train ride to Istanbul would have been ridiculously long (over 30 hours) and bus and boat aren’t even an option.  Thankfully, they didn’t check our bags when we boarded and we got through this flight without any further hic-ups.

We fly again on Friday to get from Stuttgart to Istanbul, and I’m not looking forward to the fight that will surely accompany our next packing blitz.  We fight every time we pack about how much stuff we have because I’m a hoarder and Paul doesn’t get the fact that living off a 35-litre backpack with about 11kg of stuff for 9 months is as small as it’s gonna get!  To get down to the 8kg weight limit we already put a lot of stuff in our pockets (it’s hilarious because we look pregnant in a lumpy sort of way) and I don’t know what else I can take out of my bag so we don’t run into problems on Friday.  I guess that Thursday night I’ll have to get creative…

After chatting with a few travelers at the hostel tonight, I thought it might be helpful to relay some of our thoughts on staying at hostels vs. hotels vs. bed and breakfasts since we’ve recently been asked by a few people which we think is better.  The short answer is there is no one or the other we would pick – it really depends on the place itself.  Hostels generally have more of a social atmosphere and a younger clientele, but we’ve stayed at a lot of hostels that have people in their 30s and 40s staying there.  The nice thing about hostels is they usually have a fully equipped kitchen so you can cook a meal if you want, the bad thing is that it’s almost always shared bathrooms, which can be gross.  B&Bs can really be hit or miss, but we’ve been happy with the two we’ve stayed at so far.  Like I said before, though, at a B&B, you’re in someone’s home so you tend to feel like you have to stay quiet and out of the way.  Hotels in Europe have been fairly good so far, but at a hotel you’ll never meet anybody or get advice about where to go or what to see (unless you’re at a small owner-run hotel like the one we stayed at in Avignon).  The plus side of a hotel is the noise insulation (you don’t get woken up as other people come and go) and the privacy, especially having your own bathroom.  It’s also nice to have someone clean your room everyday, although we generally turn the housekeeping staff away because they come so early! 

For comparison sake, here’s a list of our accommodations so far:
1. Lisbon, Portugal – Rossio Hostel; loved everything except the showers
2. Porto, Portugal – Rivoli Cinema Hostel; great but no social atmosphere
3. Madrid, Spain – Barbieri Internation Hostel; worst place we’ve stayed so far
4. Barcleona, Spain – Itaca Hostel; great private double room that felt like a hotel
5. Montpellier, France – Les Arbousiers B&B (Jean-Luc & Ann d’Auzac); fantastic hospitality & a big spacious room, option for home cooked meal for dinner
6. Nimes, France – Campanile Nimes Centre; not close to anything but ok budget hotel
7. Avignon, France – Hotel Boquier; nice owner-run small hotel
8. Nice, France – Ibis Nice Centre; first stay at this budget hotel chain, no frills but very clean & fairly new
9. Lyon, France – Ibis Lyon Centre Perrache; bigger room & cheaper than Nice
10. Geneva, Switzerland – City Hostel Geneva; dorm-style hostel so no social atmosphere,  private twin room w/nice bunk beds, Wi-Fi broken
11. Bern, Switzerland – Bern Backpackers Hotel Glocke; great except for check-in policy sucked and there weren’t enough bathrooms
12. Lucerne, Switzerland – NH Lucerne Hotel; a step-up from Ibis, bigger & more luxurious room but not worth regular price
13. Strasbourg, France – Hotel Le Grillon; 2nd worst place we’ve stayed, very dirty, felt like I was in an attic, shared bathrooms
14. Rouen, France – Ibis Rouen Centre; standard small Ibis room but not close to city center!
15. Le Mont-Saint-Michel – Hotel Formule Verte; very basic budget hotel but ok
16. Caen, France – Bristol Hotel; cramped over-priced budget hotel, bad Wi-Fi
17. Paris, France – Ibis Paris Gare de L’est; typical Ibis but a bit older
18. Munich, Germany – Ibis Muenchen City; typical Ibis, bathroom a bit small
19. Berlin, Germany – Best Western Hotel City Ost; not in city center but commute was no problem, a bit better than Ibis, bathroom was nicer
20. Hamburg, Germany – Ibis Hamburg Alster Centrum; again typical Ibis
21. Dusseldorf, Germany – Ibis Dusseldorf Zentrum; not close enough to center
22. Cologne, Germany – Station Hostel for Backpackers; room was nice, bathroom was gross, didn’t socialize with anyone at the hostel
23. Luxembourg – Novotel Luxembourg Kirchberg; much nicer than Ibis but not worth regular price
24. Brussels, Belgium – lucdelux B&B; small basic room but comfortable
25. Brugge, Belgium – Lybeer Travellers’ Hostel; 3rd worst place we’ve stayed but good social atmosphere & really good Wi-Fi

Tonight we finished Germany in the best way possible – completely drunk with a group of random strangers!  Could there be a better way to say goodbye to the country that drinks more beer than any others?  I think not

We started our day by getting lost while searching for the major sights/landmarks of Köln that were marked down on the rather difficult to read map the hostel had provided.  After doing a couple loops around a shopping center called Olivandenhof, we tried to stop for lunch at Globetrotter, a major outdoor specialty retailer in Europe (the store in Köln is their largest store, complete with a cold chamber, a rain simulator, a climbing tunnel, and a restaurant).  Their restaurant was severely short-staffed, however, and we got fed up after waiting an hour for food that never came so we left and went across the street to get brats from a vendor outside.

As we ate our brats, we followed the highlighted sightseeing route on our map to the Roman tower which used to be part of an old Roman wall around Köln.  We continued on to St Gereon church, a Romanesque church dating from the 11th and 13th centuries, and then finished off our sightseeing by stopping by the Saturn hi-fi store, which holds the world’s largest CD collection according to info on the map.  I didn’t find the store that impressive, but I was amused by the way they labeled different sections of music, especially when we found a section called “Black Music.”  Now that would never fly in North America!

Tired from walking, we stopped for a break at a coffee shop, which turned out to be a bad idea because I got the worst piece of chocolate cake I’ve ever had in my life!  It looked like it was filled with chocolate icing but it turned out to be a really disgusting chocolate pudding which was so bad Paul had to laugh.  I thought Germans were known for great desserts?!?!

Since we had a bit of time before going back to the hostel for Paul to work, we wandered back to town center and stumbled upon a large wine garden where there were about 20 booths selling different types of wine by the glass or the bottle and a couple of booths selling food.  I love German white wines and the horrendous chocolate cake left me feeling completely unsatisfied, so we decided to stop for glass of wine and a snack called schnippel, which is basically grated potato deep fried with bacon on top.  It was greasy but tasted good, the wine was really nice (although I have no idea what I ordered since everything was in German so I pointed at a random bottle), and we shared a table with a nice couple from southern Germany so overall I was glad we made this stop and it helped restore my mood before heading back to the hostel for a while.

Paul wrapped up work at about 10 pm and we headed out to get some dinner.  After a bit of contemplation (all the restaurants nearby looked the same), we decided to try a place called Gaffel Kolsch Brauereiausschank.  Sitting on the patio, we struck up conversation with some people about our age at the table next to us, and one thing led to another and we ended up inside the restaurant for beers with them when they stopped serving outside on the patio.  I don’t remember the last time I drank this much – our group conisisted of six guys and two girls (including Paul and me) and we went through 7 trays (consisting of 11 glasses each) of Kölsch!  One of the German guys with us ended up passing out at the table halfway through the night and we said our goodbyes and headed back to the hostel to do some drunken packing at 1 am!  This is one night of our trip I will definitely remember

When we were planning our trip, a few of our friends discussed the possibility of meeting up with us in May, but when we told them our routing would put us in Germany in May, they all responded with the same “well, Germany was not on the top of my list of places to go to…” and they all decided not to meet up with us in May.  I can’t say I blame them, since Germany wasn’t on the top of my list of countries to visit either, but as we finish up our time in Germany, I have to say I’ve changed my mind and I think Germany should be on the top of more people’s lists!  The sights and history have been interesting, the people are serious looking but friendly, almost everyone speaks English so there’s hardly any communication barrier, and the food has been consistently good.  Germany has surprisingly become one of my favourite countries visited so far!

Our fifth and final German city (for this leg of the trip) is Cologne (German: Köln), a name which most people associate with the perfum Eau du Cologne (it did in fact originate in the city of Cologne).  Because our hostel, the Station Hostel for Backpackers, has a weird check-in policy that requires you to check in by noon to confirm your reservation, we took an early train from Düsseldorf this morning.  Already tired and grumpy from having to wake up early, I was totally unimpressed by the fact that we were sitting near a group of loud and rowdy German guys who were drinking beer on the train at 10 am!   I have no idea how German people aren’t grossly obese when they eat such heavy foods (like brats and schnitzel) and drink all day starting at 10 am!

My mood didn’t improve when we arrived at the hostel and found out that, although you must check in by noon, your room won’t be ready until 2 pm.  We put our bags in storage lockers in the basement of the hostel and headed out to get some lunch, where, thankfully, things started to get better once we started drinking Kölsch, the local beer of Köln.  Kölsch is a style distinctive to Köln because, by law, only beers brewed in and around Köln can be called Kölsch.  There are several different brands of Kölsch (each restaurant carries one specific brand) and they each taste different from one another, but generally speaking it’s a pale, straw-coloured clear beer which tastes light and sort of fruity, and comes served in little 0.2 litre glasses (called Kölsch-Stange).  Personally I think the small glasses are wonderful because, unlike with regular pint-size glasses, I can actually finish my beer before it gets warm and then order another cold glass!  Next to the brew we drank at Hofbräuhaus, Kölsch is probably my favourite kind of beer now

After lunch we wandered around a bit and stumbled upon the Kölner Philharmonie, Köln’s main concert hall.  I saw a bunch of kids coming out with cute balloons which were red with white polka dots so we decided to go in and see if I could get a balloon too.  Inside there were a variety of activities, kids and balloons everywhere (I guess there was some kind of kid’s concert today) so we did a quick loop, grabbed a balloon and left.  Sadly my balloon didn’t last long, as soon as we sat down at a nearby park Paul decided to play with it and knocked off the piece holding the air in, causing my pretty balloon to sputter away and deflate!

When it was close to 2 we headed back to the hostel and got our room, which turned out to be a decent looking private twin room with two separate beds instead of a bunk bed.  While it seems like they put some money into refinishing the bedrooms, the bathrooms in this hostel are in need of some repair –  they’re worst we’ve seen in any hostel so far, even worse that the hostel in Madrid!  I think this building used to be an office building which they converted into a hostel and it looks like they took a toilet stall and turned it into a shower, but didn’t adjust the lighting so it’s all dark and cramped in the one shower stall in the bathroom.  There’s an extra shower down the hall but it smells really really funky, like rotten sewage, so I won’t be using that shower either.  Thankfully we’re only here for 2 nights so I might just go without a shower period….

Hindsight is always 20/20, and in hindsight, we should have just skipped Düsseldorf, Germany!  Paul had added it to our itinerary after reading somewhere that it was a nice city and the “fashion capital” of Germany, but neither of us found it particularly worth seeing.  The coolest thing we saw was the door knocker in the picture above and in total we only took 15 pictures today!

We arrived yesterday, after a little over 3 hours of train travel from Hamburg.  We had booked to stay at another Ibis hotel because it’s right by the train station, which is usually right in the center of town, but in Düsseldorf the city center is actually about 1 km away from the train station and the area by the hotel is rather isolated with no restaurants or shops really close by.  This is kind of a pain because in the evenings we only have time to grab a quick bite since Paul can’t be too far from his computer/Internet during working hours, so after arriving we didn’t do much apart from getting some food.

Today we started by heading to Königsallee, Düsseldorf’s “most famous thoroughfare” according to Lonely Planet.  It didn’t look like anything I hadn’t seen before and I started experiencing random sharp pains in my right hip (maybe we’ve been on our feet too much this trip?) so our pace got progressively slower as we walked. By lunchtime I wasn’t in the mood to continue walking so we did a short loop around the historic center, stopped into the Church of St. Lambertus, then started looking for somewhere to eat lunch. 

As we walked closer and closer to the hotel, we couldn’t agree on something to eat and ended up at a Persian restaurant halfway between the hotel and city center, fearing we wouldn’t see anymore restaurants if we continued to go closer to the hotel.  Although the rice was better than the rice that came with the Persian food we had in Munich, the koobideh in Munich was much tastier.  Still, we were happy with the food we got and it was probably the best option available to us!

Perhaps my opinion of Düsseldorf is skewed by the fact that our hotel wasn’t in a great location and my hip started hurting for unknown reasons today, but I don’t think I would recommend a visit to Düsseldorf, even though it’s ranked to have the highest quality of life in Germany.  The people weren’t as friendly as the Hamburgers, the buildings not as impressive as Berlin or Munich, and the food selection didn’t seem as good either.  Considering how far we had to travel to make this two day stop, in hindsight I would have just said “let’s skip it!”