Arrival

Düsseldorf has a beautiful ultra-modern airport, though I was too drowsy to fully appreciate it. I did visit the McDonald’s there though, noting that Pulp Ficition was accurate as a quarter pounder is actually called a Royale with cheese in Europe.  We met Stephanie, one the employees of AIB, and climbed into one of the Mercedes-Benz and BMV taxis that waited at the curb. Driving in to city I was amzed by all the lush greenery and how every few seconds we seemed to be passing some kind of park. AIB’s office are in what in a brick warehouse that had been converted into flats, located in Düsseldorf’s Media Harbor next to the Rhine river which contains a collection of Frank Gehry buildings and other eclectic architecture. All of the students arrived at AIB and were introduced to the staff. We then took a short walk around along the Rhine and admired the beautiful bridge that spans it, just north of us. Then the host parents started to arrive to pick up their students. Finally in the late afternoon I was the only one left that hadn’t been picked up feeling like the last dog at the pound not to be chosen. Finally my host mum, Yvonne picked me up explaining the she had just gotten off work. We drove to her and her boyfriend’s Peter’s apartment which was on the third and fourth floor of above a Chinese restaurant and across the street from a welcoming looking Bierhaus. Their apartment was amazing; it looked like a picture from an IKEA catalogue. My room had a few overlooking the busy Kölner Landstrasse below. Yvonne works at an orphanage in Düsseldorf and sometimes spends the night working there and Peter works the night shift as a nurse at the local hospital meaning that I will have the whole place to myself for a few days a week. Peter doesn’t really speak English, so we mostly talked through Yvonne’s translating. But I think that the situation just serves as greater motivation to learn German and learn fast. We ate dinner and watched a little German TV. Until I was finally ready to go to sleep early and hop on the tram system back to AIB. 

Leaving on a jet plane...

My flight to Düsseldorf was a mixed bag. After the complimentary two glasses of wine, a Warsteiner beer, and a gin and tonic, I was hoping to sleep through the whole journey and avoid the showing of the German classic Drillbit Taylor. But there was lady next to me from Poland who was taking her 4 year-old son back to Poland. See gulped down a few glasses of white wine and laughed that she hadn’t been drunk since before she was pregnant. In half-English, half-Polish she spilled her entire life story. Moving from Poland to become a nure, getting pregnant at 40 with a son. She was from Chicago, where the long and demanding hours at the hospital downtown necessitated the hiring of a nanny. For some reason she chose a 74-year-old woman from Poland that was distant relative and was currently homeless in Chicago. Although I couldn’t imagine intrusting a child to a geriatric homeless woman in Poland the elderly are treated with such respect by their juniors that they are often able to do and get whatever they want. The nanny was horrible through, stealing from her, charging long distance phone calls and even beating her son with a belt once in a while, yet the woman didn’t fire the nanny for another two months deciding to take her son back to his grandparents in Poland. She told me all of this while son started bored in the seat next to her ripping apart the barf bags. She told he about being deposed at her job after a woman died after giving birth to twins who had undergone three previous c-sections. She told how she thought Chicago was dripping with racism, telling me that blacks, whites, mexicans and especially the polish would never get along. She told me about how America’s health system was the most corrupt and unfair system in the world. Then she fell asleep until we landed. I, however, found that I couldn’t sleep for more than 10 minutes at a time and landed in Düsseldorf with a little over an hour sleep under my belt. 

FYI: Alternate Blog Titles

-Deutschbag: The Hilarious Misadventures and Cultural Faux Pas of Garrett in Germany

-Gullible's Travels: Musings of an American tourist in Europe

-Fast Times At Reichstag Höch

-Deustche-Romp! or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Schnitzel

-Eur-o Drivin' Me Crazy!