Emo-Grunge Youth And Cobble Stone Streets

It was the first morning we were able to awake to nothing but ourselves. We awoke when we were no longer tired as opposed to our usual wake-up-because-of-someone-else habit. It was so nice for me to be able to take the laptop into the living room and muck around on it while Steph slept peacefully in the other room. Having an apartment is very nice. As we are in the residential part of Dusseldorf, we needed to bus into town. This was a little confusing as Dusseldorf, like Berlin, has the bus system, the S-Bahn, a sky train (type thing), and a U-Bahn. Unlike Berlin, these are only in certain areas. After hours of translating a few German websites into English and looking up Dusseldorf on multiple maps, I figured out we could take the 712 sky train (for lack of a better term) into town. In Berlin, we always caught the S-Bahn or U-Bahn and there were always ticket places outside and like Victoria, you pay for transit when you hop on the bus...this was not the case in Dusseldorf. Not only was there no ticket machine but no one in Germany seems to pay to take the public transit. There are a few honest ones in the crowd but the majority don't. I also have not seen a single cop ride the train to check people's tickets. Steph and I have decided that Germany must run on the honor system. In Paris, you couldn't even get into the subway without paying. We finally found a ticket machine once we hit the middle of Dusseldorf (a 5 minute train ride) but it was weird and not in English. I guess I'll take a closer look at it tomorrow. After hopping off the sky train, we found a little outside shopping center with cobble stone streets. It was so cute we decided to check it out. One thing that is going on in Dusseldorf right now is the Karneval which, I have gathered, is a big celebration where people dress up and party in the streets. We saw many costumes which ranged from doctors to animals to Peter Pan. We bought little German coloured leis for 2 euros to blend in a little bit. To Steph's great pleasure, there was a crepe stand where she promptly left me standing by the lei stand to get her Bailey's and Nutella crepe. She says they aren't the same as in Paris but they were still good. One thing I appreciate about Dusseldorf is that smoking does not seem to be such a big deal as in Berlin. Not very many people seem to do it which is nice so Steph doesn't feel like she is dying from second-hand smoke. We walked down to The Rhein which is very beautiful. It reminded me of the Inner Harbour. The weather is much nicer here (a sunny 11 degrees) as opposed to Berlin's minus 6 and so a walk by the river was actually very enjoyable. There was a beer garden down on the strip running down the Rhein and Steph and I witnessed a drunk German man, yelling at five other German men who were chanting away after him. It was so funny to see. After a stroll around, we headed back to our apartment and to buy some groceries. There are only a handful of brands that are the same as in Canada and so it is a little bit of a hit and miss when you don't know the language. We have found our new favourite grocery store: The Penny Markt. This place is so cheap but the service is so poor. We were standing in the line up of about 5 people in the one till that was open and the cashier was putting bags away. He would look up and see all of us standing there but continue to put bags away. It was incredible! That would never happen in North America! It wasn't until one of his co-workers came over and yelled at him did the Emo-Grunge Youth actually do his job. For dinner we had tortellini that wasn't refrigerated and chili pepper sauce because I didn't pay close enough attention when I was taking the jars off the shelves. In Germany, the fridges are smaller and so you only buy food for the week. This phenomenon was quickly understood and embraced by Steph. I, however, look at the empty fridge, think about grocery shopping every day and miss Canadian refrigerators. After dinner, Steph and I cuddled up to the laptop with a Tim Horton's French Vanilla Cappuccino and watched some more Family Guy. How nice it is to not be bothered about watching it every day. Steph also took a video tour of the apartment for you but it failed to upload so picture will be put on later :)