h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Woke up. Got out of bed. Dragged a comb across my head.

No, wait, that’s the start of a Beatles song…so: woke up. Around 5:30, cos I hadn’t packed the night before…so I got up extra early in order to pack, iron as necessary, and perform ablutions, and have time for breakfast. We made it out of the house by about 0715 and caught a train to London’s City Airport at 0725. The journey to City takes about 8 minutes, so we were there in plenty of time for our 0850 flight to Dusseldorf. The plane took off with Teutonic efficiency on the minute it was supposed to.

Landed at Dusseldorf and found the train station into the city centre. A bit of faffing about as it appears that the train station is being rebuilt at the moment, and only had one working ticket machine. Hmm…Teutonic efficiency starting to slip a little at the edges.

We arrived in Dusseldorf, where I immediately texted B’Elana and Sho. This proved to be a fairly fruitless strategy, as Bel had given the phone that I had her number for to her son, and Sho hardly ever checks her phone for texts. Nevertheless, we managed to locate the gang of h2g2ers, said hello/made introductions as appropriate, and after a bit more muddling about, we set off towards our hotels to check in and get rid of the luggage.

Having stood around outside the hotel waiting for the party to reassemble itself and have photos taken, we then headed towards the river, to find some lunch and, importantly, begin the process of consuming fermented vegetable products which is part and parcel of a h2g2 meet. As has been noted elsewhere, I was keen to sample authentic German delicacies and was thus directed to order leberkase from the menu. Hmm…interesting food. And you enjoy this, do you? For the unenlightened, leberkase is a kind of sausage-cum-paté that is sliced and fried, then served with a fried egg on top.

We were entertained by an Oompah band who showed up. Presumably they do that every Saturday…unless someone arranged it especially for the meet? Come on, own up now, who told them?

There was drama too, as an elderly lady at the next table collapsed and an ambulance was called. Didn’t appear to be anything more serious than heat exhaustion, (to my trained medical eye! ) but she was whisked off to hospital.

After that we meandered back through the town, stopping off on the way for a beer (or two) at a local brewery/pub. Eventually we made it to the big pointy building (technical term) and went up in the lift to the viewing platform some 260m above ground level, IIRC. We looked around in all directions, spotted some power stations and wind farms (HI and Hapi were ecstatic about this…the rest of us slightly bemused). Pictures of German townscape and countryside were duly taken. The lift down was an intimate affair, as a queue had formed, so the lift operator was testing the “Max. 19 persons” rule to destruction.

Contact had been made with the so we headed towards the pub in which he had ensconced himself, and had according to taste and inclination. HI’s icecream confection was called a Himbeer Queen. This led to a spontaneous conversation about 2legs. At around this point, Roymondo (I still can't get used to calling him Socket) texted "nipples!" to me, so we responded with Tentacles! Then we tried to predictively text tentacles in various different languages. Hey, the crazy things we get up to on h2g2 meets, eh?

The final locale of the meet was a steak bar. I ordered fajitas, and was thus provided with a paper bib to catch all the splashes I was bound to make whilst eating them. Needless to say, I didn’t make one – Germans must be such messy eaters! The fermented vegetable product continued to flow (quite literally when Sho got up to leave, sending my flying. B’Elana had had to leave earlier, and when Sho left the party started to wind down. Trillian’s Child, HI and myself wended our way back to our hotels (not terribly distant from each other) and arranged to meet for breakfast at 9am.

(Next morning)

At around 10 to 9 we awoke, and hurriedly arranged ourselves into a presentable format. TC was just heading in through the door as we arrived downstairs, and we enjoyed a typical continental breakfast of bread with cheese, salami and ham.

We said our goodbyes then, and were left with the prospect of entertaining ourselves on a rainy Sunday morning in Dusseldorf, as our train wasn’t due to leave until 1430. Hey, I like a challenge! In the end, we went back to the cafés along the river bank and sat there drinking coffee and doing the Saturday Times crossword, which we had had the foresight to bring with us. We then went back to the station and caught our train to Bruges, which formed the next part of our whistlestop European tour.

RF

Nipples.

Tentacles!

RF

Da-ja-vu pentacles

can't take you lot anywhere!

Huh. You lot get long and serious* conversations when you post your journals. I get nipples.

'snot fair.

RF

* OK, long.

there there... here have some:

Badgers.

Awww, poor RF.

Then again, what can I comment on nipples and tentacles?

noodles?

*giggles*

so, RF, how was Bruges?

Ah, you'll just have to wait for my In Bruges journal.

RF

pfft!

Oh no here comes the tree people ::

Nice place, Bruges, but I didn't notice either nipples or tentacles when I visited. But then, it was winter.

TRiG.