Die Woche der vielen Zuege

Or 'the week of many trains.'

Excluding my normal strassenbahn activities, I believe that I've been on around twelve trains this week. Of which I have only paid for four. I love my Semesterticket.

So the week of many trains began with a train to Dusseldorf on Monday morning with the Cologne crew. Because we clearly work far too hard here, the paedagogischer austauschdienst (my employer) decided that we all need a little mini holiday to Dusseldorf. 

Now firstly, I need to explain that there is a massive rivalry between Cologne and Dusseldorf. Predominantly over carnivals and beer. So, being an adopted Koelnerin, I was sceptical about Dusseldorf. But it is a beautiful city. So much more aesthetically pleasing than Cologne (sorry.) Firstly we went to the Landtag of Nordrhein-Westfalen which was a crazily designed building. I'm not going to lie, my favourite part of the visit was without a doubt the kaffee und kuchen at the end. Germans know how to do a good cake. There were four different varieties and we had the perfect number of people on the table to distribute the cake equally. Then an unidentified Spanish assistant came and ruined the perfect ratio. Still, Shane and myself managed to appear greedy and possibly offend some French assistants in one fail swoop with our ridiculous cake eating. Success.

Then it was onto train number two of the week to take Emily and me back to Cologne to see Alt-J. Something which I was VERY excited about. After a traumatic experience on the U-Bahn involving 'graffiti' and a crazy woman, we finally found the venue, which was essentially in an industrial estate. Unfortunately, this was a Two Door Cinema Club gig, with Alt-J as support. So Alt-J only played for about half an hour. But what a half hour. At the risk of sounding like a massive hipster dickhead, I nearly cried when I heard the first bars of Tessellate. It was magical, despite the unappreciative Germans around us. We watched a bit of Two Door Cinema Club, who were alright. Nothing to write home about. The night in Dusseldorf when we arrived back can be summed up with: darts, Magners, failed Doener search and Brits on tour. Dusseldorf on a Monday night is most certainly not buzzing.

On Tuesday after raping the free breakfast hard, we were all put onto a coach like schoolchildren to Essen. Because we were being treated like kids, we decided to act like them too, playing music loudly at the back of the bus and generally acting like 15-year old chavs. First stop was the Ruhr museum, which I can sum up in one word: coal. We then had some epic Turkish food for lunch in a restaurant we'd found on our previous trip to Essen, and were taken to an art gallery called Museum Folkwang. Which being honorary 15-year olds we found hilarious. I thought it was quite interesting, but being a group of about 50+ language assistants, security soon took a dislike to us resulting in us retreating to the cafe to eat overpriced cake (5 euro bottle of water Charlie?) and play a game of would you rather?

Tuesday night was more civilised: the majority of the Cologne girls and I went to a rather upmarket Indian restaurant where we ate rather beautiful curry. We then ended up in yet another Irish pub where I drank Heineken until I basically fell asleep.

Wednesday- the day I'd been dreading. For two reasons. 1. I knew we had to go back to reality. 2. I'd heard we had to watch a puppet show for 2 hours. Firstly we had a city tour of Dusseldorf which was interesting and the woman was amazingly lovely, but it was so so cold. Then came the puppet show. It wasn't as bad as I thought, but when it's entitled ,,Die unendliche Geschichte'' (the unending story) you know it's gonna get a little tedious. I was asleep on Shane's shoulder for about 75% of it so I feel unable to comment on how good/bad it really was.

Thursday was fairly uninteresting apart from turning up to school to find out it was a teacher training day which I hadn't been informed about, which obviously I thought was great. Thankfully the day was saved by Shane who invited me to go shopping with him and his friend Anne, so I spent a lovely few hours speaking German, discovering cute little shops and eating some great Japanese food at Bento Box.

Friday was Belgium day. And the day I finally discovered what utter useless scheisse Deutsche Bahn is. My train to Aachen was 15 minutes late, meaning I missed my nice shiny ICE train to Liege. Instead what greeted me was a train that looked like it hadn't been refurbished since the 60's. Not the best first impression of Belgium. 

However upon arriving in Liege, I changed my mind completely. Liege station is absolutely stunning. Google it. Rose took me to her house, which is ridiculously ancient and beautiful- a stark contrast to my flat here in Cologne. After a surreal dinner of green curry whilst watching BBC1, we ventured out to some bars. The first place we went (the name escapes me) was the craziest bar I've ever seen. There was something completely covered in ice gems, that's all I need to say. I had my first raspberry beer in a long time and met her German friend Anne who sounds American and speaks perfect English. Standard Germans really. After a brief stop in La Tipi where I was nearly dragged off by a very creepy French man saying things to me I couldn't understand, we entered Le Carre. Le Carre (or however you spell it, my french is nonexistent) is basically a maze of alleys filled with bars and people drinking in the street. Here I found out two things: Belgian beer is even cheaper than German beer and Belgian men are the creepiest people ever. 

On Saturday we had a Belgian/German fusion breakfast of veggie sausage and cheese sandwiches before heading out to see Liege by day. Liege is pretty, but in a really old-fashioned way. We went to this amazing cake shop and I had this chocolate-orange mousse thing which was incredible. Then we came across an Oxfam shop. Uninteresting you say? Oh no. I found THE best jumper I have ever seen. It's a hand-knitted tom and jerry cardigan. Too amazing.

I then sampled some pommes (I couldn't go to Belgian without eating chips) before hopping on a train to Brussels to go and see KASABIAN. We also saw a chocolate train in Brussel-Zuid station which was pretty awesome. 

I'm not going to bore you all with how amazing I thought Kasabian were, but they were SO GOOD. We were pretty close to the front which meant I had a perfect view of Serg. I sang, I danced, I jumped, I even spoke to some Belgian people. In english of course. It was so good. The train home was a haze of hyperness and tuc biscuits, which pleased the other passengers a lot at 1am. 

And today, after stealing Rose's bed and making her sleep on the caterpillar (the worst blow-up mattress you have ever seen) we wandered round a market where you could buy live chickens and turkeys, discovered my German bank card doesn't work in Belgium and drank gone-off Cecemel. 

So that concludes Die Woche der vielen Zuege. Apologies for the word-vomit like post, I promise next time I'll write something more well-constructed!