You Can't Win 'Em All

Last year, we had an amazing time in Vienna mooching around Christmas markets, eating Christmassy food, drinking Christmassy drinks, humming Christmassy songs and generally feeling Christmassy.  It was such a good time, we were inspired to try to repeat the fun with different surroundings.  Dusseldorf was recommended, not only for itself, but also it's proximity to Cologne, and so we booked some tickets for a weekend at the end of November.

And so began the epic fail.

We arrived on the Friday night and wandered down to the river front to start taking in the atmosphere.  We ate reibekuchen (similar to last year's kartoffelpoffel) with apple sauce and drank gluhwein.  We rode the, erm, Dusseldorf Eye while drinking gluhwein - very little skill required there, I might add.  All was going well and we fell asleep planning to hit Cologne the next day and then cover the rest of Dusseldorff on the Sunday.

On Saturday we navigated our way to the train station, managed to buy two tickets to Cologne from the confusing ticket machines and boarded a train.  As it pulled out of the station, Kyle started to investigate where exactly the Markets were...  What do you know?  They were due to start the next weekend....!  So we hopped off the train again at the first stop and headed back to D-town.

So the rest of Saturday was spent roaming the streets, drinking all the gluhwein (red and white, oh the variety) and eating all the reibekuchen.

Argh, this is so hard to write - the lameness intensified...

Mmmm, pensioner brekkie

We thought we could spend the Sunday rinsing and repeating Saturday's Plan B, but fate had other plans...  It turns out, the last Sunday in November, in Germany, is something-a-rather Day of the Dead.  The day where you stay home, be quiet and remember... the dead.  Needless to say, 98% of the shops were shut.  So we had brunch with some pensioners, ate ice cream in a closed shopping mall in the middle of winter and then went to the airport 2 hours early and "watched" the ABs play Ireland on our phones.

It is NEVER too cold for ice cream, especially when it is the ONLY thing to do

Boo.  Hiss.  Crappy.