A Week In Germany: Monday

23. 01. 2012


A day totally without interest.

Up early in response to Bob’s wake up calls, the ringing phone and the wall hung jumbo screen TV springing to life at the same time. He is now on his meeting packed business trip. Surfed the internet to run out the 19 euros we paid for 24 hours of internet access so we didn’t miss Sunday with the grandchildren. Worth every cent.

This morning’s news is mostly of the What Will We Do With the Problem Called Newt variety.  Bob tells me he is surging in Florida now. Not very surprising as he is a good old Southern boy who would have great appeal for Floridians who vote Republican. In other words not the grandmothers from New York.

A giant breakfast to hold me through the day. Had a nice chat with the friendly Texan who fries up the eggs at the breakfast buffet. He came to Germany in the mid-1980s as a GI, and never wanted to leave. We agreed on the joys of ex-patriation. He said his problem is remembering to speak English when he visits Texas. At least I don’t have that problem. I just have to modify idiomatic usage, like the time I insulted Megan by saying a day was very dull, meaning the weather was grey and looked to remain colourless all day. Of course she thought I was whinging about her efforts to keep me entertained. And then there is whinging, a great word, far better than whining. I did see twee used by an American writer recently. Maybe it was in a review of Downton Abbey.

And those were the interesting parts of the day. After that I went to the train station in Frankfurt, met Bob, took a train to Düsseldorf, waited in the Düsseldorf station for Bob to return from a meeting, and then we took a train to Cologne where we are spending the night. Frankfurt’s train station has a terrific magazine shop and a nice waiting area to sit. Düsseldorf has an okay magazine shop, but does not have a single chair or bench in the whole station. They do have a Dunkin Donuts however, but Dunkies also has no place to sit, so I had to go to Starbucks with my concealed donut. I went with a traditional glazed because most of the varieties on offer were heavily iced, many in garish colours.

I can’t say much about the Cologne train station other than it was very crowded because it was rush hour, so we were in and out. I can say that Cologne’s gigantic wedding cake of a Gothic cathedral knocks your socks off when you step outside because it is right there.

A question could be posed as to who thought it would be a good idea to put a train station, now a very large and busy train station, on the front steps of a Gothic masterpiece?

We had dinner at a Brauerei —a brewery restaurant—recommended by the hotel’s desk clerk. The restaurant was inexplicably filled with groups of men having dinner together. Maybe Monday is Men’s Night Out in Cologne.

And now it is time to end this wholly unremarkable day.