a new week

I am in Düsseldorf again this week – hopefully my last week spent here. It is actually pretty cool to be working face to face with people but I would rather spend my evenings at home than at work or in some hotel at the end of the world.

So last Thursday it was finally time to go home. Having chosen the last train to drop me off in Frankfurt I asked the guy at reception to call me a taxi that can be paid by credit card. To be honest I never understood why Germany lives in the stone age when it comes to paying with credit cards – in the Nordic countries it is perfectly normal to pay with your credit card whatever small amount you are spending while it is almost impossible to get a cab in Frankfurt if you tell them you want to pay by credit card before getting into a car. Try it next time at the airport after landing from a non-Euro country and so having no Euros in your pocket and you will see for yourself what I am talking about ...

Aaaanyway – I got into the taxi and left for the train station just in time to catch my train. Needless to say, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut so I asked the driver if he had heard that I only have a credit card because I have no other means of paying. And of course he didn’t have a machine in his car for that. After a 5 minute discussion and a 2 minute lecture about the most recent swear word additions to the German language I promised him to transfer the money the next day and off we went to the train station. Good to know that either I am good at bullshitting people (which I know I am – at least sometimes) or that there is some good out there left in this world. Or both – whatever. Not only did the guy drop me in time at the train station without getting so much as a single cent but he drove so fast, we were there 10 minutes before the train would leave.

I wanted to do some more work on the way home but was too tired so I ended up watching a movie I got from my brother called CASHBACK. It is a wonderful movie – at least to the point where I stopped watching it and fell asleep. I woke up in time to get off the train and headed home. I still had no money so I couldn’t take a taxi and so I took the U-Bahn. The frequency is not the same after midnight as during the day and so I ended up at Willi Brandt Platz with a frustrated face staring at the sign saying “next train in 19 minutes”. There was a girl waiting for the train also and so we ended up sharing a taxi. It turns out she was from Venezuela and worked at O’Reilly’s as a graphic designer. Interestingly enough I now know that O’Reillys is owned by three brothers. She also told me some more stuff but I forgot already. I arrived at home shortly before 1 and found an apologetic message from the guy at the reception about the credit card incident. Apparently the guy forgot to order the proper taxi with the credit card capability and he got told off by the taxi company because I made such a mess about it. Me so sorry …

I spent Friday, Saturday and Sunday mostly working, sleeping, walking around town and doing some stuff around the house – among other things I got rid of that stupid thingie that is supposed to get rid of all the smoke and bad smell when you are cooking underneath it but because of security reasons it never worked when it should have. Now there are three small holes in the wall but it still looks better than ever. I felt like SELFMAN (the guy that used to repair everything himself years ago on Austrian TV). Plus I slept around 14 hours on Friday night. Don’t remember the last time I did that.

I dreamt of a donkey and a monkey and some funkey music. It went something like this ...