Amung the Düsseldorfinarians

Düsseldorfian? Düsseldorfite? Düsseldorfinarian. Yes that must be it. However I now find myself in Essen. With the Essenarians…Essenites. Well this I admit was a bit of a whim. I do believe it’s Easter or something of the sort this weekend…or as I was told yesterday by someone “Happy nailing!!”. Easter is actually a pretty big deal in Germany…and I find myself in Essen. Essen is quite small and an industrial sort of town. I stayed the night in Düsseldorf last night at a particularly sweet hostel after quite an entertaining day of discovering methods of transport. Apparently stand by doesn’t exist here by the way. It gets into quite the story of odd fate when I get into it because the only reason I didn’t have to pay an arm, leg and my firstborn was because of my roommate which was only because I had left my keys in my door when I left in the morning. So I had been at the airport discovering frightening prices and was on my way to the train station when I realized my keys were definitely missing in action. So here we go. Of course it’s raining (it’s always raining, and when it isn’t, it’s hailing) and I head home full of curse words and hope that they actually are in the door of my room. Saving you my story as to how I got in the building, they were in the door. My roommate was also there (Tite) But I found out it’s actually Coyte? Pronounced cthiyte? Who knows. Anyways there he is in his skivvies because no one else is home, and he just woke up (at 1pm by now) and so I told him my little story of the morning and he takes it on to find me a ride. There’s a website here which organizes carpools to other cities because not everyone drives here or owns a vehicle, and it’s mildly profitable for the drivers as well. So Tite decides to escort me there and buy me breakfast on the way (I’m really spoiled here) and help me find my ride. Driving was quite an average middle aged guy, and along for the ride there was a very vogue Asian girl in high heels to Milan and back, another middle aged white woman with an interesting face and a Turkish younger guy as well, and another guy who sat up front so I can’t give tantalizing details on him. The little problem here was there were only 4 seats for passengers, and five of us. The middle aged German woman was the last to come in, and well…she was the least likely candidate to sit on the floor. So being the nice whatever Canadian, I sit on the floor ( I think I would have been the only one to offer anyways…) So four hours later on the floor of a sort of mini van camping vehicle thing, I was in Düsseldorf. Beautiful actually. Their transit is absurdly complex though, and of course the first person I ask for help is deaf…but well, I make it where I’m going eventually: to a sweet little hostel which turned out to be very enjoyable. The hostel was beautiful actually, and it looked as though it was attacked by art students, with big painted walls, murals and posters complete with big wooden spiral staircase. I’d recommend it…if you’re in the area. So it was raining. Though Düsseldorf has a reputation for an absurdly bopping nightlife I decided to stay in and watch The Core? with a few others who were staying there…terrible movie by the way (it’s the one where they decide they need to drill into the center of the earth to save the world or something). Anyways there’s about fifteen of us bumming around and we get to talking, and it turns out that 4 of the other people there (all females actually) were Canadian. I swear these Canadians are everywhere…like a fungus…a pretty nice, peacekeeping fungus luckily. There were Italian guys, one Brazilian, three Americans, a guy from Hong Kong but living in England (I admit I don’t think I’ve met an Asian with an English accent before), and there was a smattering of a few others as well. I ended up hanging out with the Canadians/Americans the next day and we all went to a castle together which was quite delightful, and I got to hear all about their sex lives…lovely.

It seems to be ‘escort Robekkah’ weekend. No, not Escort Robekkah…but I’ve had a strangely large group of people taking me places (especially train stations). So I head to the main station in Düsseldorf and ask these little old ladies where it is. My German is good enough to ask and understand their directions, but one of them didn’t speak a word of English and decided to take me there, find my ticket for me and be a little strange about it all. She was quite sweet and round, and had these eyebrows…they were completely scratched on in black pencil in a ^ shape but still with floating eyebrow hairs surrounding the artistic forehead endeavor. So she took me around and actually wouldn’t leave me alone until she asked a man if he spoke English, it turns out he was south African and took quite the liking to me. She departed after apparently passing me off to this other fellow who I admit I wasn’t entirely sure about (part of that could have been the lacking of the bottom half of his two front teeth). Regardless though he decided to follow me around the train station and wait half an hour with me for my train to Essen, all the while being very excited to speak broken English to me. My train finally comes thank whatever! I make it to Essen and while asking a teller guy where to go, he informs me he can’t help me, but the man behind me says he can. So he escorts me to my next train and sits and talks with me for a while. Swedish I believe and at the same conference thing here this weekend. Well I haven’t even indulged as to why I’m actually even here. I found out last week there was this big event thing and conference for alternative models and photographers, clothing designers what have you happening here which I was asked to model for. A business trip of sorts… It turns out the most famous models etc are here in all their dressed up glory and even made friends with me. So here I am. Internet here is disgustingly expensive, so I’m going to wait before posting this and there may be another insurgence of story time on the end of this. But for now...I have a wild clothing exhibition to attend to….