After our trip to Amsterdam, which was incredibly fun, we returned to Germany. For a few hours I wandered around Neuss, the city my friend lives in these days, and visited a number of churches. Greg later picked me up again and we went to his place and had some food. I got to check my mail and we sort of watched some TV, although it was more of an excuse to take a nap.
Greg's flat, which he's sharing with his girlfriend, is really nice and comfortable. They moved in fairly recently, bought new furniture and decorated it quite nicely. While it was really good to see that he's doing well, I'm really getting nervous about everyone around me actually growing up…
The following day, Greg had to work so he dropped me off somewhere in Köln (Cologne) and I did some sightseeing. I visited the cathedral of Cologne (which is quite famous), walked around the city center, had some Chinese food and went to a number of other churches (again, for those not paying attention, I'm not religious at all, I just like old/Gothic buildings). Since I had enough time, I also decided to go to some hi-tech and music stores, something I haven't done in ages. It's amazing how cheap computer equipment has become. While I follow hard drive prices and know that storage is really cheap these days, I was amazed to see that things like DVD burners, wireless access points, scanners and flat screens are all affordable now. I remember the days when I paid over 500 GBP just for a 17″ screen alone, and that would get you a nice system now… I listened to loads of CDs and ended up buying some of them. I finally bought Funkmaster Flex vol. 4!
In the evening, Greg dropped me off at the Düsseldorf airport and apart from the plane being 1.5 hours late everything was supposed to go smoothly. I checked in and waited, doing some stuff on my laptop. At the time we were supposed to leave, nothing happened and people started getting nervous. More than half an hour later, they announced that we couldn't leave from this airport anymore because the airport doesn't have permission for departures after 10 o'clock. They said they'd transfer us by bus to Cologne airport and we'd leave from there. Fine. Unfortunately, some time later they announced that they didn't manage to find a crew in Cologne. The new plan was to get us hotel rooms and fly out in the morning. By then, many people were terribly pissed off since they could have updated us and/or transfered us to Cologne or hotels much earlier; we were also promised food which never arrived… a main problem was that the people at the gate weren't actually working for Air Berlin, so communication between all the involved parties wasn't easy. Anyway, all the important business men were worried about being late for meetings and stuff, but I didn't terribly mind, except for having wasted a number of hours… after some more waiting we finally got tickets for new flights (either one at 6 in the morning or one at 10, guess which one I took), and then got transferred to a hotel.
In summary, not the best experience, but not too bad either since I should be back home in time to visit the guest lecture of Daniel Dennett (one of the most famous contemporary philosophers in the area of theory of mind, consciousness and evolution) and meet someone this evening. Nevertheless, Air Berlin and the airport weren't really prepared for cancelled flights, although some of the staff was incredibly nice. At least now I know what we're paying the "plane cancellation fee" for when we buy tickets. Finally, having said all of this, the flight from Stansted to Düsseldorf went smoothly. (Update: today's flight back was fine too and I only had to wait 15 minutes for the next bus to Cambridge.)