After breakfast we checked out of the hotel and went to the fair. We did mostly the same things again, but also checked out a few areas we hadn't previously been to (yes, ISM is big enough that you can miss entire sections of it). One of the Spanish companies my dad buys from had been slowly diminishing over the days. According to his contact there was a flu epidemic going around in the city they're from and apparently they had brought the flu with them. So slowly over the days more and more people had to stay home sick, and by this day their area was pretty empty compared to the first day :P Even our contact hadn't come to the last day. Talked a bunch with some other Spanish companies and when it was time we picked up our bags and went to the train.
That's when we proved that German efficiency is a myth. There were only two ticket machines at the station. I got the tickets easily enough like last time. Then we went to check the tracks. Found our train, went to the right track. Why were tracks 1-2 and 11-12 pointing to the same place? We deduce that our train is late after a combined "I heard that part what did you hear?" conversation concerning the German announcement, because ofc "the whole world speaks German and so we only do all announcements and information in German" is the standard attitude in Germany (not even the information desk at the main train station in Cologne spoke any English). The train finally arrived and we got on. After just a little while there's another announcement over the speakers in very fast and very slurred German. We kind of understood that the train wouldn't be stopping at two stations. We arrived at Düsseldorf Hbf 20 minutes late and there was another announcement in very fast and slurred German that mentioned flughafen and for a second we were all very concerned that we had to change trains because we only heard flughafen and didn't understand the rest (English pretty please?). But we noticed that nobody else travelling with suitcases was getting off the train so we also stayed put. We arrived at Düsseldorf airport 20-ish minutes late. And got on the sky train for the terminals. We got there and were transported 10 years back in time. Because self check-in apparently isn't all that common in Germany and so we had to do it the old-fashioned way and queue up by the bag drop. We go through the security check and then go have dinner.
After dinner we have a look at the board and it says gate 49. We go to the gate and wait around. When the boarding pass says that boarding should have started, but there's no sign of any staff we have another look at the board. Gate switched to 48. No announcement about the gate switch whatsoever. Go to the new gate and everyone is lined up to board although the screen says only priority boarding. Turns out everyone is boarding they just haven't put it on the screen. We get on the plane and then ofc there's a queue to the start off strip. Four planes before us. So we just sit around. The plane is late when we finally get up into the air, but the view sort of made up for it. Clear skies all the way to Copenhagen, it was brilliant.
We arrived back at my parents' place around 9pm. Tomorrow I'm getting up early to catch the train home to Södertälje.
Good night :)
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