Es gibt keine Abfahrt

Out of all the countries in Europe, it had to be Germany. Out of all the cities in Germany, it had to be the one Anne and I were flying into. We should have known when we walked out of the airplane into a very quiet Lufthansa gate at 08:53....then a quiet airport as we made our way to the train station there.  We sat at the station for about 40 minutes until Anne asked a guy walking by if he knew the best way out of the city. "Es gibt keine Abfahrt," he said. Apparently, in the 24 hours that we had traveled, Düsseldorf experienced a severe rain storm that took out a lot of trees and blocked many of the train routes in and out of the city. "There are no trains departing," Dennis had said. Wide-eyed, Anne and I stood in the middle of the station, and it can imagine a camera slowly panning from a close up of the two of us, with the heavy backpacks weighing us down, as the documentary of our trip cut to commercials. I really did think that maybe to keep myself from breaking down in tears out of frustration. 

Our goal had been to hop on a train after landing and head to Bruges, Belgium for some chocolate and waffles. Our goal now became to find a way out of the city and out of the chaos of travelers who were stranded amongst the fallen trees. Our new best friend, Dennis, had traveled by way of train to a friend's place and was just trying to head back home to Essen, and he was kind enough to let us tag along as he figured out how to get from the airport to the train station, der Bahnhof. Finally arriving at the station, we were met with such a huge crowd: people congregated at information booths, people sitting along the corridors with their suitcases and carry on bags, children tugging on mommies and daddies signaling they needed to go potty...

"What have we gotten ourselves into??" I thought silently as I surveyed the crowd and as my ears began taking in people's conversations. It took a few tries to finally start making sense of those long and rapidly spoken words. "Verkehr," I know that one! It means traffic..."Keine Abfahrt," no trains leaving. Nothing in what I eavesdropped made for a reassuring time at the station. We finally decided to go outside and see if we could take a bus to our original destination, and were laughed at by a travel agent when we asked if we could take a bus to Bruges, it was just too long and too complicated. We didn't know whether we would make it to Bruges or how. We had no internet connection to look for hostels in Düsseldorf; we hadn't planned on staying there so we had nothing. No info on the city, no prices for cheap restaurants, no locations for Internet cafés or free wifi spots.

"Let's walk around," I suggested. Walking would get us out of the immediate area of chaos and into quieter streets (I hoped) where Anne and I could sit and devise our Plan B. Leave it to us to walk around the city aimlessly and end up in the richest part of town. Suddenly, copy shops and travel agencies became Chanel, Dior, Louis Vuitton, and (we were confused about this last one) H&M. Imagine Anne and I, dressed in jeans and Nikes, with obviously tourist backpacks, sweat all over our bodies (no ladylike glistening for us at that point), walking alongside really nicely-dressed beautiful women as they got through their morning shopping sprees. We found a Starbucks in that area, and we convinced the barista to let us use their wifi connection. Anne got in touch with her roommate and we had an option to possibly stay at someone's dad's house in the city if we had no other roof over our heads for that night. That wouldn't be until 7pm and despite landing early in the morning and our walking around it was barely almost noon at the Starbucks. We had nowhere to leave our backpacks and both our shoulders were feeling the weight. 

"Let's walk back," I finally said. At this point we were thinking of things to do around the city, but we both got the feeling of just wanting to get away to a less chaotic place. So we walked back to the frenzy of a train station. Yes, we were very tired at that point. More than 12 hours of air travel, 4 hours of walking around in the hot sun, and about 30 pounds on our backs made us want to just sleep at the station. Correction, it made me want to sleep at the station. Anne just wanted out. Thanks to her, we managed to find out the city was offering free taxi cabs to people who would have normally taken the trains out of the city. This itself was an arduous task, as the cabs seemed to be somehow auctioned off (despite them being free). 

"Nach Essen!" The officer would announce a destination and signal for four people from the crowd to raise their hands if they were headed there. No less than 20 people raised tired arms for each destination. People were yelling at the officers about doing a crummy job, but hey, they were doing their best despite the multitude of people wanting out. I marched right to the front and, having decided our spontaneous destination was Köln (a town between Düsseldorf and our second destination, Heidelberg), yelled out "zwei!" each time the city was named. The offier always seemed to count me as the fourth person on a taxi, and I would shake my head to say no, I don't need one seat officer, I need two! 

"Sir Sind zwei! Wir gehen zusammen!" I don't know when it happened, but suddenly I was just another body in the crowd of people, yelling for my turn on a taxi. "It's two of us! We're together!" I had found my German voice and was making eye contact like I had been drilled by a grad student at SHLS on it. We finally got a cab and traveled for about an hour to our destination. As I sat on the taxi and enjoyed the view out of the city, I felt a sense of pride as I realized we had devised a Plan B and had managed to change our plans without going insane. I'm sure the views were beautiful, but I have to admit I passed out for most of the trip.

"Hier gehen sie raus," was what I woke up to. The driver let us know we had arrived and stopped the taxi in the middle of the street as he let us out. I giggled as it reminded me of my grandfather's hometown; drivers aren't afraid to own the roads they drive over. Next was finding a destination for us for the night, but more importantly for our packs. There was no way we were going to do any "exploring" of this new town with our backpacks on. We headed to Starbucks in search of free wifi and found a place. I am very excited to announce that these two California girls found their way on the city's metro system and made it to the hostel only getting lost once! 

We booked our room at the reception desk, left our backpacks there, and headed out for exploring and dinner as it was already 7pm. While exploring, I met a couple from Mexico whom I bonded with over our Spanish language; although, I'll admit our accents were a bit different. The one piece of advice they gave me as we started our trip was to be flexible and be ready to experience new things, no matter how unplanned they are. 

We managed to escape the train station chaos, we made our way to a city not on itinerary, we found our way around a city's metro system (Anne and I were like locals riding the train after two trips on it), we talked to locals to help us find a place to eat, and we bought breakfast at a German grocery store for 3,54. We may not have had Belgian waffles and some delicious Belgian chocolate, but I am happy to report we somehow survived our European initiation period and are successfully on our way to our second destination, Heidelberg, Germany. In the words of my new friends Miguel and Elena Hernández, ahora si con todo o con nada, let's make the most of these next 30 days!

Bis bald!

Seeing the sunset from the plane

Our plane let us know details about our flight: how high up we were, what time it was at our destination, how long we had left, etc.

In front of a really tall and Gothic-style church that has been under renovations almost for as long as it took to be built originally. 

My new friends, Miguel and Elena! They said they would love to house me if I were ever to travel down to Mexico. I enjoy meeting people like this; it might be one of my favorite things to do while traveling. It makes me sad we didn't take a picture with Dennis, but he was young enough to maybe be weirded out by two girls asking for a picture with him. On the other hand, maybe not... :)

The view from our hostel. This was taken around 9pm and it was still light out! 

Our breakfast on our first morning waking up in Germany. Hashtag, we travel the frugal way. Hashtag, yes that is Capri Sun with vitamins. It was delicious.