First day in Germany

28th april 2008

I knew last night’s partying a day before leaving was going to prove me costly.
My god this is one day that I will always remember as one where I was not yet packed tons of work and left and everything was going wrong.
Finally by gods grace and my own belief that sooner or later our worst fears are put to rest and 10 yrs down the line we look bac at how im mature we were when we panicked in a crunch situation.
Atlast I reached my second home , IGI airport.
As usual I was greeted by the long queues .My colleagues had already reached , making me late, a fact which I hate the most and makes me feel guilty like I have committed a crime.
It was not until I finally boarded the aircraft that I realized the nightmare was finally over and the trip had begun, to Germany.
Germany at one point of time used to be my fav soccer team for no reason what so ever.JLT-Just like that.The routing was via vienna, a really sad airport, though not very bad just sad so no reason.
This was my first visit to Europe so was special in a way.
Since I was the tour accountant I always was on my toes, as it is I am bad at maintaining accounts
And on top of that I forget very soon, a trait my old college room mates know very well.
So I bought this small pocket diary for my help and carried it with me all time.
We were headed to dusseldorf a small german city .You may have heard of it if you remember the story of William tell from our school gulmohar English reader of class IV OR V.
We were 3 right now and 3 more of my colleagues were joining two days later.
So this was a unique visit.We had booked an apartment for all 6.
The city was standard Europe /America.
Mostly wooden houses and green conifer trees and since we were in the beginning of summer and end of winter weather was pleasant ..though at nights it was supposed to get colder.
We found our apartment , was a regular house with a garden and at the end of the road.
I found the town very slow and easy paced.
But this was going to be the centr of our activity for the next 6 days.
The owner was a german lady and we had 2 rooms in the basement and one on the first floor.
So from there after offloading the luggage we headed to the exhibition center.
This event was the largest event in the wire and cable industry and we were hoping to meet every on e we know across the world.So was a very important event.
The first day was very tiring as the entire day was spent in arranging the booth.
By evening we were exhausted.We were joined soon by some more colleagues from India
Who were co exhibiting with us.
The exhibition center was the biggest one by any standards that I had seen.
It had its own train station, so u can imagine the size.
As the evening approached we decided to go out for dinner.
The only place was downtown also called as Alstad.
It was full of pubs , bars and many restaurants, coming here I felt the city was not so dead afterall.
We finally settled for some Lebanese food after scouting several restaurants .
Lebanese has some great vegetarian food ,.How I can forget Amy’s place the cute little lbanese restaurant near my home in buffalo where I also celebrated my 24th birthday.
Well so after a not so eventful first day we headed home.