Not Mentioning the War

Köln vs Düsseldorf or: How I learnt to stop worrying about petty rivalries and love the carnival (part 1)

2007-02-22T20:32:00.000+01:00

Hi all!

As if to prove to you how bad I am at maintaining a blog, I finally present my second entry from Germany. To those who were wondering: yes, I survived the carnival and yes, it was lots of fun.

There is one thing you find out immediately when you are in the part of the world (more specifically the Ruhr area): there is a huge rivalry between Düsseldorf and Köln and its main exponents as far as I can tell are the carnival, which is 5 days of madness leading up to Rosenmontag (which was this Monday), and the beer (Kölsch vs Altbier). Both cities go over the top, try to outdo each other in decadence and pride themselves in it too - Sodom & Gomorrah's modern-day equivalents? :)

The two big days of the carnival are Thursday and Monday, so the obvious choice was to go to Köln on Thursday with ESN and then stay in Düsseldorf on Monday. Both were an experience - lots of drunk people (all very friendly) and bad German music (which can be so bad it's good).

The cliché image of Germans having Bratwurst und Bier definitely holds up this time of year. What appears to be the thing to eat is a Krakauer (over-sized sausage in a tiny piece of bread) with mustard - it goes amazingly well with beer. As mentioned Düsseldorf has it's own kind of beer - Altbier - which tastes a bit like a better version of Rodenbach. Wikipedia it if you want to find out more.

Anyway, lots more to tell and so little time to do so... to be continued :)

Seb

Arrival and Random Thoughts

2007-02-14T16:17:00.000+01:00

I'm in Germany! Today I finally got the Internet connection in my room sorted so here's my first post from Deutschland.

Pretty much everything has gone smoothly up till now. I got here by train on Saturday - it took only 4 hours from Gent - and quickly got to know most of the people in my building as there ended up being some sort of spontaneous (and very drunk) party here that night. Everyone has been exceedingly nice and helpful, as you would expect from people in the same situation: there isn't a single German in the whole building. My hallway is like some kind of Chinese ghetto and there are loads of Spaniards and Italians in the general vicinity too.

It's still quiet at uni at the moment cos there's a between-semester break on right now (till April) so the only people there are me, the professors and doctorate students - all of which have made me feel welcome. The whole uni is situated on one big campus which I'm living very close to and as a bonus I can even get on a tram which takes me from just outside here to almost exactly where I have to be. Lazy days! The food in the university cafeteria is a LOT better than in the ones in Gent too - thankfully.

You know what people say about German efficiency? As far as I can tell it's not exactly true. Sure, there's usually some sort of system in place but it appears to not necessarily be a very good one. I had to wait 4 days to get Internet access in my room because you can only register on Wednesdays between 2 and 5 pm - how fucking retarded is that. I also had to pay slightly over €150 'Sozialbeitrag'* for no apparent reason other than free public transport and very slightly cheaper food in the university cafeteria. I'm going to ride the tram everywhere now.

The weekend has now begun for me: Carnival starts here tomorrow until at least Monday. I'm going to Köln tomorrow with ESN which should be decadent/lots of fun. I'll be dressing up as a pimp... pics to follow.

Greetings from Düsseldorf!

*After charging me the €153.16 Sozialbeitrag they also wanted me to get them a €1.45 postage stamp, which I even had to go down the road for... Christ :)

First Post

2007-01-12T17:02:00.000+01:00

I decided this would be a good way to communicate with my friends back home and elsewhere during my stay in Germany - I'll be away for three months after all. Knowing me I'll make lots of entries the first week or two and then lose interest, but let's try anyway.