First 6days in Germany

In short: I have spent six days in Germany: traveling, Weeze, Duesseldorf, Cologne, Frankfurt, etc. several soccer games (one at Lanxess arena), Museum of Communications, riding by bike, walking, having parties with my colleagues, friends, people I know, meeting the boss in an extraordinary way, picnic, different and a little bit extreme situations, meeting a lot of amazing people and having a lot of fun, etc. Great Germany!

P.S. Rapid travel story STARTS from the SECOND DAY! ;)
< --for lazy ones I suggest start reading from this day.


My first day in Germany:
11:50 The plane is slowly landing, the landscape becomes more and more visible: small villages with red roofs, green wood, a lot of wood, wind generators, high-speed traffic. So exciting! Closer and closer to the… wonderful land – Germany. Here I am! All the duties in the airport. And now I have to face with an expected as the biggest problem of the day – moving from the Weeze airport to the Weeze train station. I’ve heard that’s not quite easy here to find the right bus to the right station. I am somehow successful. I have to wait for an hour in the airport. That’s not a big deal because I have booked the train form Weeze station in three hours.
I notice the only young woman at the bus stop waiting the same transport as I do. I open the conversation…She interrupts me: “Latviete?” “Jā!” Great! So I have met an ERASMUS student from LV Oksana who is studying in Bonn and we are on the same way. She shares with a lot of information about the region and living here. Unfortunately, she has to catch the first train and I have to wait for mine. I do have 2 hours. So let’s discover Weeze.
Pretty nice town. My luggage is extremely heavy so after some minutes’ walk I find myself in a silent park. I am too tired. I do see one person nearby having a rest and sleeping on the grass. I have also a good mind to take a short sleep. I settle on small lonely bench next to the tree with one bag under my head, the massive one under my knees and the important one close to myself. An alarm-clokl. I have to be at the Weeze station. I successfully reach Duesseldorf by regional train. The train station here is impressive. I have to change the platforms and I do have half an hour until the ICE train to Cologne.
17:12 I am in Cologne. I am happy to see Anne. She picks me up and we drive from the main station to the Deutz station (2minutes left), then 10minutes’ walk. We enter a flat. Chris, the owner of the flat, is glad to see me. The flat looks convenient. However Anne warned me that it sometimes might be not so clean (because of living with a man:D:) ), heh, that’s not a big deal for me – they do not know yet but cleaning for me means the best thing to do. However following days will prove that what she calls “dirty” is actually almost perfect. In addition the flat is located near to the largest exhibition center of Cologne. Fantastic! And Lanxes arena also here. The city centre is reachable by feet in 20minutes. We make common dinner combined with booth Latvian and German food. The evening continues in pleasant conversations on the balcony, stories of Cologne and a lot of photos, videos, special ones of Cologne carnivals. In late evening we went to bed.

Next day
Morning starts with rich breakfast. Anne and Chris want me to taste plenty of German meals:) After the breakfast we take a walk to explore Cologne. We lift on 29th floor to see Cologne from above. Amazing sight. We have two hours to see an old town and some strategic venues like Sparkasse, Travel centre, etc.
It was not me, if here would not happen something extraordinary. I will be on my way to Frankfurt soon. Only yesterday I contacted some people to stay at in Frankfurt. (Actually, I planned to go to it after one day and I had a place to stay during that time, but as I decided to arrive one day earlier, staying came into the question.) I was going to use something similar to autostop but very common in Germany – driving together with those who drive in the favorable direction and contact each other via a web page. Anne helped me to contact the driver who picked me up at the main station at 14:00 We were five in the car – three Germans, one Turk and I, so that means that three people were in this car by chance by contacting the driver. And by traveling this way I saved about 7 EUR.
The speed is wonderful. I enjoy the speed fantastic on German roods driving nearly to 200km/h. With covetous eyes I was looking at the LKW Walter cars – the brand I almost adore, how great would have it been if I had an internship in this company…
In two hours we reached the city of money - Frankfurt. Actually I was first time in Frankfurt, actually I had no map of Frankfurt and actually it was 16:00 and I had no idea where to spend the night. I quickly found an internet cafe and had positive response from one person on couchsurfing.com with his contact address and phone number, I confirmed my staying at him and also searched several hostels in Frankfurt as alternatives if something went wrong. I was going to stay at Thomas and I read in his message that we were going to play or watch soccer. Hmm if he says – soccer – let it be soccer – but it means I have to buy sorts boots. Do I have to? No, he responds to my message. Here is some hours, I discover how to find Thoma’s flat by public transport and here is also time for me to investigate and took some photos of buildings of particular business field (..) I am personally interested in. I also had an insight in objects of Frankfurt and whole city in books’ shop so that I could know something of Frankfurt and could be a good conversation partner to Thomas and his friends. During the time I found one great park near to the centre.

20:00 so it’s time to meet Thomas at his artistic flat. Just put things in his apartaments and we were going to a bar to watch soccer together with Thom’s flat mates Dominik, Martin and Philip. After the soccer small party and conversations in the kitchen. The real challenge for guys was the title “Smiltērkšķu marmelāde tumšajā šokolādē” but after some attempts they became pretty god in spelling in Latvian:)
Thomas is an interesting person, the first vegan by the way I meet in my lifetime. (Basically to stay at people from couchsurfind.com in my opinion the only thing man needs is “his own story” – by that I mean the person should be interesting, exciting and so synergy of the time spent together is wonderful.) He is a young scientist, who stands by non-violence in military industry. With true interest I am listening about his scientific background (and here my face grows pale in remembering how big problem for me sometimes seems the course project in university:D :)
A word after a word. And I am enthousiastically in explaining something important to me. So it is about what is debating, what means the good debate and how great it is to debate. He is interested so this topic becomes dominant during the late night. Next morning will start with showing the greatest examples of debates and as a good example translating ViADK debate of expanding EU. The late night conversations end with the fairytale. Yeah, the real fairytale!:) “Little Red Riding Hood and the wolf”. I even could not remember when somebody told me a fairytale. Thomas did. It was special one in quiet voice with changeable intonation and a lot of specific effects. Amazing.


Next day
This day I had a special wish – I wanted to spend time related to my exact field – I wanted to visit the Museum of Communications in Frankfurt. So after the breakfast we took Thomas’ and Philip’s bicycles and rode around the city with the destination the “Museum of Communications”.
Frankfurt is beautiful indeed and the river Main as well. The museum was valuable however I was a little bit disappointed because I use to think that I see communications from broader perspective (I mean for example the demonstrations, journalism and great speakers etc. all is communication) but in this museum there was communication only from the technical point of view, the history of telegraph, telephone, radio, TV, computer. It was useful as well but…I anticipated more.
After an excursion by bikes we left the flat again and Thomas and I went to have a picnic. In the train we met René. In some minutes we arrived in a small town (with approximately 20 000 inhabitants:D). There we met Daniel – first time I met a typical American girl (yes, with an American smile, the sense of humor and speech style). Daniel was in Germany because she was doing some duties similar to the duties of a nanny (I like this chance and here in Germany that opportunity is common). Now we went to really rich family’s house with modern and splendid garden. Daniel had prepared the meal so we celebrated in the garden. What was the most exciting Daniel made a cake without using eggs and milk, it was special cake for people who are vegans. We had plenty of funny daily topics but one scientific is worth to mention – gender deconstruction, in explaining it means there is actually one gender on the Earth in seven expressions. I like this way of thinking - to break the structure of the society: Thomas explained that this system that we separate people into men and women is fair to men but it is not to the women – where can we count in the women who cannot have children?! And so on.
During last 12hours I had heavy both head ache and stomach ache so it meant that I had to end my travel and sooner return to Cologne. However Philip pretended to be a doctor in the morning and his special homeopathic tea was curable I still felt a little pain.
After the picnic we went to the station where Philip took me to Cologne by car because he was working nearby (in one of the worldwide recognizable software companies by the way). Philip’s car is messy, the guys warned me. Great! – chaos is great, it was ridiculous how many CD’s I could found on the car’s floor but Philip clearly knew where each of them where. I have always considered – that even chaos has its structure:D :)
During our way to Cologne we visited another small town, it was the town where Philip has lived for a year. At 20:30 we were in Cologne but Philip had to drive further. After an hour I reached Cologne city centre. So actually it was 21:30 and again I had no idea where to spend the night (because I could not disturb Anne and Chris, they waited me home after two days but due to my pain I had to come earlier and in addition it was almost dark late evening but later Anne will reproach me about staying at her and Chris:)).
Late, yes, no living space, yes, but it also meant that I have a possibility to see beautiful Cologne with its lights during the nighttime:) I found an internet cafe again (this time it was rather expensive) and looked for hostels to spend a night. Then I followed the provided information and using public transport reached the right street, on this street by accident I noticed two girls who where looking for something like I did and after the reply that they were looking for the same hostel we looked for it together and after some minutes we where in. Luckily they had almost last free space for me. So after the midnight I fell in a deep sleep.


Next day
This morning I woke up and everybody had left the shared room (however I had to check out until 9:30, probably I had spend the night with early birds or workers, I had no idea because when I entered the room people where already sleeping except the young couple from China).
I left the hostel and went to the city centre. I contacted Anne saying that I was going to arrive one day earlier. The method how I did it is worth to mention, my mobile was not working anymore so that I sent a messages by asking German young people to use their mobiles. There was no another way. But it was great that I could receive the messages. So at 14:00 I promised Anne to knock at the door.
I found a way to the flat (pretty easy from the Deutz station, just straight:D). Then I came in, shared my story and Anne told me that she “was going to meet some colleagues” (Anne was working at the same company I am going to work at, she left the work some days ago for 3months because it was also an internship and now she has to study) and she asked me to join. I was very tired and I felt pain in my stomach but I could not say no. So I had about 2 hours to sleep until the party.
I woke up, I made myself ready in half an hour (including a short bath). During the way to the train station Anne told me “it will actually be the half-year work party in the restaurant with more than 10 people from the company”:) Amazing. My manager (the company’s boss) at the last moment decided to join. So unexpected. Nice. Evening with my next colleagues and even my first meeting with the chief:D I do think I created nice first impression when sitting at the table with beer of Cologne Kölsch and seeing my next chief. It was a real challenge for me to hear so much German language around and they even didn’t intended to change it. Great! However Anne had to write her BA and she said that we were going to be there just some minutes, we where two of those last five colleagues who stayed some hours more until the end of the soccer:)

Next day
This is also one of the amazing days – I saw the emotions of crazy German fans watching the soccer game Germany:Serbia. Yeah, but at first there was an opportunity for me to sleep until the lunchtime. At 12:00 we met Anne’s two friends Thom and Pascal at the train station and then went together to the Lanxess arena – the same building where the world championship in hockey took place!!! And I am living about 10minutes’ walk to this arena.

I cannot even describe into words how great it was to watch this game. The company was the right one. All the German soccer songs lifted me up and at the end I even started sing together, a lot of beer, so funny, so many people, so crazy. I even didn’t know before that I do like watching sports games so much, especially with the company who are crazy about the game. By the way – there was a lot of public relations elements at this arena, the best one – the balloons for the clapping hands of Köln station. The day continued with playing soccer on the streets while going to our flat to go on celebrating. We ordered some picas and had a party on balcony (and this was also time for showing plenty of videos of Latvia starting from “My star” and finishing with “ Latvian Song and Dance Festival”).


Next day
Early morning. Me and Anne went to the main university of the Cologne (impressive!) and its huge library to give Anne’s books back. The system in library the same like in Latvia. At this time we started to talk about work a lot. She revealed me a lot of things what are and will be useful to me, she had done a little research and promised to introduce me with the results and several ideas came into my mind.
On the half way home we turned in cars’ renting company and Anne chose one of 150 cars located underground to rent and we drove home. Last sandwiches in the kitchen, memories from the funny yesterday. Laughter. Laughter. Laughter. Anne was on opinion that it’s been the best day to leave the Cologne:D Heh, I am not a party animal but for me it was such an usual party. The first one in my new apartments :) Quick packing of Anne’s suitcase. Sweet goodbyes. An official moment and I became a key holder. Great! The following part of the day for doing some little shopping and moving from temporary staying room into the new room of the flat.
I felt the summer! Now it’s time to turn to and pay serious attention to the practical work! And to continue to enjoy the summer as well! Everything should be ok!