Essen, part 1.

We woke up this morning around 5:30 in order to catch the 7:30 train to Essen, Germany so that we could have as much time with Sidonie as possible. Sidonie is a college friend of Rachael’s who is in a show in Essen called Buddy: The Buddy Holly Story. She was nice enough to ask us to stay with her tonight (free of charge!) so we’re hightailing it to Germany. We brought her some Thin Mints and Peanut Butter M&Ms because Germany is conspicuously missing those two things. We’re super excited because she is going to give us a tour of the theatre and we get to see the show tonight! We’re also super excited because Sidonie has a washer and dryer!!! LAUNDRY, woohoo!

So, we learned something this morning. It would have been a lot easier if someone had told us this from the get-go, so we’re telling you. Using a Eurail pass is basically like flying standby. You’re not guaranteed or assigned a seat. If you’re on the train, you’re on. If you’re not, you’re not. It makes sense now that we think of it, but we just didn’t get it before. We knew that we may have to pay a reservation fee, but we didn’t realize it wasn’t compulsory. If your travel plans are flexible, it’s best to show up at the station in the morning and hang out until you find a free train rather than paying a fee and reserving a seat. We got lucky because there was virtually no one on the train with us.

So, once we activated our rail passes at the ticket window, we waited by the departure screens to see which platform the train would be on. We found our platform and boarded the train. This rail pass thing is a piece of cake!

When we got to Cologne (or Köln, to the Germans) we got on another train to Essen. Easy, peasy, lemon squeezie! We met Sidonie at the McDonald’s at the train station and had a grand reunion. She lives really close to the train station so we walked to her apartment and dropped off our packs and freshened up before lunch. We wanted to eat something Essen-y for lunch so we went to a neat café. Rachael ended up eating a BBQ chicken sandwich while Katie opted for the Schnitzel Bombay, which was a schnitzel with some delish curry biz on top. After that, we walked around the neighborhood some more and were introduced to German pretend-WalMart and pretend-Target. Both were okay and definitely serve their purpose. Sidonie lives in the perfect spot in town and she has a great apartment. She is literally a ten-minute walk from everything she could possibly need.

Sidonie had a last-minute rehearsal this afternoon so we stuck around her apartment and did laundry and napped before meeting her at the theatre around 5:45. The theatre is really neat and (Katie is writing this) I’m sure Rachael will give a full description later. We’re both pretty exhausted. As a matter of fact, goodnight! We’ll fill you folks in on the rest tomorrow!

XOXO K&R