A Trip to Köln and the Most Embarrassing Moment of My Life (Pt. 1)

by wanderingyoder

Apologies for taking so long to get a new post up, life has been busy. It’s been two weeks?! now, since my last update?

This post is in two parts because there is a lot to tell. A bit of background, the whole point of me going to Köln was for an interview with a company, somewhat nearby, for a job/internship later this year.

Alright, well two weeks ago, after Pablo left, it was just me an Jo for a couple days, because Micha went to Vienna to pick up their son. We watched a documentary about Monsanto, a company which Jo and Micha (and all organic farmers) have some very colourful things to say about. There was a really big banner/flag flying in the front of the farm expressing these feelings, very succinctly in a couple words and a big skull and crossbones. The documentary was really interesting, it’s another one of those controversial issues, GMOs.

Then, a girl from a nearby school came for a Praktikum (a student doing a practical internship for a couple weeks). She’s Lahtesia (Lah-teet-seeya) Then a day after that, Frederick, the farmer’s son came home from University in Vienna. When Micha called, she said something like “oh he’s got a different haircut”, he had dreads before, so I think we just assumed he’d cut them off.. way cooler than that. He’d cut most of them off and where he did, his hair was dyed rainbow. He had blue, green, red, purple, orange, giving me some ideas for my next haircut! Also this week we built a new water-holding device, for the cows on the pasture; got to do some welding, which was fun!

<<Saturday>> That weekend we spent Saturday in the city. There was a Stadtfest (literally city party) going on.. the usual, food stalls, local businesses had their own stalls and the standard clothing and miscellaneous crap for sale. At the same tim there was a Bluesfest going on, something quite big and well known, I don’t know about the whole country, but definitely the greater region/area. It went on for three days and there were lots of people camped out near the venue (I guess it’s just like any other music festival, just Blues music). We walked around pretty much the whole city, then stopped in front of a bar for a while to listen to a musician, he wasn’t bad.

After we’d had enough of the Stadtfest, we headed up a big hill nearby, to a farm there. The drama club from Frederick’s old school was preforming some kind of show there. We got there quite early and spent some time wandering/exploring the area, had a drink and then watched the show. It was several (~10) short skits, divided into two categories: school and life. I was relieved by looking at the programme, because when Frederick described it as a theatre/drama piece, I thought they would be performing part of Faust or something that would go straight over my head. It was really entertaining, very comedic, the actor(resse)s did a really good job acting, they also preformed a couple songs. It was a good time, I enjoyed it a lot! That was Saturday last week.

((more after the gap!))

<<Sunday>> Today, we (everyone at the farm, including Rocky and Sky –the two dogs) drove about a half hour away to another organic farm where there was a get-together of all Bioland (one of the two big organic organizations in Germany) farmers in this area. I think 5-6 or so different families/farmers came, it was nice. The host farm had a cafe there, they were renovating an old farm and hoped to eventually have their own milk cows. There was a barbecue and we ate good food, I just sat and listened to others mostly, I couldn’t really contribute to their conversations about this year’s hay harvest, or how their livestock was doing or what kind of new equipment/techniques they were using. One of the farmers asked me if I was interested in having my own farm and if that was why I was WWOOFing.. I’d never really thought about it, but who knows, maybe one day I will!! On the way back to the farm, Jo showed us the cheesery where the milk is sent. Most of the cheese we eat here is from that place, he said about 8-9 different farms send their milk there.

<<Tuesday>> My trip to Köln begins today! Here’s what my trip looked like: Mittelrot to Fornsbach Bhf, Fornsbach Bhf to Stuttgart Hbf, Stuttgart Hbf to Stuttgart ZOB, Stuttgart ZOB to Köln Deutz, Köln Deutz to Lindenburg S-Bahn station. It looks like a lot more than it really was. The longest leg was Stuttgart to Köln, with the bus it took about 6 hours, the other parts were shorter train/tram/underground rides or in the case of getting to the train station, a very nice drive. Speaking of my drive to the train station, you’ll never believe what my ride was.. A Lotus Elise. Yeah, probably doesn’t mean much to most of you, it didn’t mean anything to me when Micha told me about her nephew who was stopping by on Monday/Tuesday on his way back to Münich from France or England where he bought the car, well check it out:

Yup. I got to ride in that to the train station! I think I was less than a foot off the ground, it took a bit of maneuvering to be able to get out, but it was a really nice 7ish minute ride!

I got to the train station and had just enough time to buy a ticket and get on. Nothing went wrong with the train, I got into Stuttgart, to the train station (Hbf) and then eventually the bus station (ZOB) with the help of a couple friendly people. I saw a little MeinFernbus sign and waited.. I got there about 1/2 hour early, the website said 20 minutes.

As it got closer to the time the bus was supposed to arrive, more and more people gathered, I knew I was in the right place because most of them had printed out tickets just like my own. People started to get antsy when it was 10 minutes before we were supposed to leave and the bus had not shown up yet. Then it was past 11:15 (departure time) and still no sign of the bus. But it wasn’t long (20ish minutes) before a big green MeinFernbus rolled up to the bus stop. I got on and found a spot next to an middle aged gentleman, most of the seats were already filled. The bus had come from Münich and eventually will go to Essen, an 11 hour trip. I got off on one of the several stops before Essen, my trip was  about 6 hours long. Yes, I could’ve taken a train and an ICE train would only take 2ish hours or so but even the regular trains are not cheap at all. I am paying less, for a round trip bus ticket than a one way train ticket would cost.. but I am sacrificing time, comfort and (as illustrated earlier) reliability. I can’t complain though, you get what you pay for, and besides, the bus was actually quite nice! Actually, until recently (last year or so) the Deutsch Bahn had a law imposed monopoly, long-haul bus services like MeinfernBus were illegal!

Well besides being 20 minutes late, the bus trip was really nice. Comfortable-ish seats, snacks/drinks available for purchase and best of all, free WiFi! Which I made good use of, it’s actually really good I had that, because it allowed me to arrange a meet up with some people in Köln (it would turn out that I wouldn’t have any internet access at the place I stayed at -Jo’s sister). I was really grateful for that, when he heard that I was going to Köln he insisted that I should stay with his sister. I admit, I was a bit skeptical at first.. it’d be weird or uncomfortable or something, but it really wasn’t at all! She was really nice, if anything, I felt she was being too hospitable/polite. She has a son (Jo’s nephew) about my age, Aleko, I had fun spending some time with him. It took a bit of time for me to get to their house because I had the wrong address, but I did get there eventually!

We had dinner and then went to his school for a Cabaret (Groove, Alter = Groove, old one) that was being put on by the drama club or some group. It was a bit different than the other one I’d been to, only a couple days earlier. It was quite.. politically incorrect, but that just made it better for me. I found it hilarious. They had NSA jokes, they had CIA/Guantanamo Bay/water-boarding jokes, a song about horse meat (it was a huge scandal here in Europe a couple months ago, incase you didn’t know), gay marriage, North Korea, German youth culture.. They really went everywhere. There were also a lot of political jokes (many that I didn’t get) and some local Köln jokes that went right over my head. But I really loved their satire of America, whoever it was that played the American had a fantastic American accent! Afterwards Aleko and I spent some time with his friends, just wandering around at night in the city was really cool. We got back pretty late and I couldn’t get any internet access because Anna (Aleko’s mom) had gone to bed and he didn’t know the password, so it was really good I’d already made plans for the rest of Wednesday.

I was a bit nervous for the following day (Wednesday), because that was the whole reason I’d made the trip to Köln, for the interview…

Thus concludes part 1 of the Köln journey.. Now, picture time:

 

P.S. check back in a day or two for part 2.. more pictures and the story of the most embarrassing moment of my life!