It’s my first night in Germany and here I sit in my second hotel room of the day. I’m just trying to stay up a little longer before crashing and calling it a night. I’m wide awake, but want to try and reset my internal clock a bit. Especially since this hotel for some whacked reason doesn’t believe in clocks in the room. WTF is up with that?

The trip over here was uneventful. The flight was nice. They served dinner and breakfast which was a surprise and every so often they’d give visual updates of where we were and how much longer we had to go. The movie was “fun with dick and jane” which was cute, but not nearly as funny as I expected.

I breezed through the airport and actually got to the train early. The plan was to hook up with a listener at the airport. He said he would be wearing a Podcast Pickle hat which is hard to miss, but I couldn’t find him anywhere. I looked around. Bummed we didn’t cross paths. I’m still trying to figure out why I have yet to go through any form of customs. Feels a bit strange, but I guess I shouldn’t complain. I’ll end up getting a cavity search on the return trip or something to make up for it.

The train was great. Very fast and got to see some of the country side which I was looking forward to. Pulling into Cologne was amazing. it’s beautiful with so many different buildings, styles and people. I walked out of the train station to see the beautiful chapel sitting there. Amazing. Simply amazing. I’ll be meeting Nisah there tomorrow to do whatever it is he has planned. He’s been here before so I’m just rolling with it.

As I walked down the street looking for a taxi I suddenly saw some tourists with bags and realized that idiot boy me never grabbed my luggage from the train station! I went back and found it after getting a little lost and then was on my way to the hotel.

I checked in, crashed and then decided I’d get online to let Laura know I got here. With no Blackberry or Cell Phone service the net was the only option because I didn’t feel like paying that much for a phone call. That’s when I found out that I had no Internet in the room.

I went down stairs and asked about it and was told I was in the part of the hotel that doesn’t t have WiFi, but I could use a modem. A modem? They still make those? *grin* They did have a fee terminal I could use, but I couldn’t get into gMail USA and my Babson account seemed to only let me compose messages and not read. Don’t even get me going on the German keyboard. I couldn’t find an @ on it anywhere.

Instead of being an asshole and pissed off I went and took a nap and then went down and asked about changing rooms. They had told me last time I couldn’t because I had used the bathroom (sorry it was a long train ride and I had something to drink). I wanted to check about changing in the morning but they were cool and moved me to the side with WiFi and it’s very good.

I planned on going roaming around to find a pub for dinner but the skies opened up and it rained big time so a night at the restaruange here was in order. Good beer. Awesome food. A coffee that took nearly 30 minutes to get made. But, all in all a great first day in Germany.

Can’t wait to go exploring tomorrow!!!