Amsterdam → Düsseldorf – 24 January 2015

The flight from SFO to Amsterdam was uneventful, other than about an hour of medium turbulence as we passed over the Rocky Mountains. The flight came in 20 minutes early, which was, it turned out later, all to the good. I got through customs in record time—there wasn’t even anyone at the exit station to ask if I had anything to declare or not.

So, everything was going great until I got to the train station at the airport, at which point I found out that due to weather (they had had some snow), fewer trains than usual were running. In fact, notes taped to the automatic kiosks said that no trains were running. I missed the first train to the central train station as it was too packed to get on. I squeezed aboard the next one for the 30-minute trip to Amsterdam Centraal. I decided to go for the 12:35 p.m. train to Düsseldorf, even though I had a reservation for the 4:35 p.m. train. I didn’t want to spend more time hanging around Amsterdam than necessary (which, by the way, explains the lack of pictures).

I got my ticket, along with two other Americans whom I had met at the airport train stop. We went to track 2b (or not 2b, ha ha) where the train usually stopped, only to be told at literally the last minute by a train system employee that the train was going to be at track 7b. We all made a mad dash over there, and the rest of the trip was very relaxing. One thing I did learn was that it’s hard to get good pictures from a train going 140 km/hr (87 mph). These are the only ones that weren’t badly blurred

Once in Düsseldorf, I said goodbye to the people I traveled with (they were going further to Stuttgart), got my bearings—I thought— and headed to the hotel. Of course, I was going the wrong direction, and after asking four people who didn’t know where Ludwig-Erhard Allee was, asked one person who not only knew but was headed that way.

The hotel room is rather small (How small was it? It was so small, even the mice were hunchbacked!) There are no drawers in the room, only open shelves. The bathroom is incredibly small; only a foot of space between the toilet and the wall. But who cares; I’m not going to be spending a lot of time in the room except to sleep, and the bed is reasonably comfortable. Here’s a picture of the room and the view. As is typical of hotels in Europe, what we in the US call the “first floor” is called “ground floor” there, so the elevator buttons start at zero, not one.

Here are some pictures on the way from the hotel back to the train station; I went there in search of things like shaving cream, toothpaste, etc.

I then went in search of a SIM card for my phone. It turns out that the phone may not be as unlocked as Verizon told me it was. If I can’t get the phone to work, I may just buy a real cheap cell phone and go with that. After the shopping, I went out for lunch/dinner. I saw this statue, and wondered later why I didn’t turn around to get a picture of whatever the statue was taking a picture of.

Today’s Signage

Saw this one at one of the train stations we passed through on the way out of the Netherlands.

The sign translates to “Mmm, delicious!”

I have no idea what these stores sell, but I like the font.

No, this is not for a place that sells ergonomic chairs. “Back” in German means “bake,” so this is one of the many pastry stores in the area of the train station.

This one is interesting. It’s an ad for a cheese pocket and soft drink combo. The lower case text in black reads from lower left to upper right, and translates roughly to “To every mmmm...belongs an aaah.” I automatically read it in the correct direction, which somewhat astonished me. I guess left to right takes precedence over top to bottom. As I was taking a picture, the owner of the store asked me what I was doing, and I just said, “I’m a tourist, and I wanted to show this to my friends.” Apparently that was good enough of an excuse.